SECTION X.. _on the Antiquity of the Dogma of the Immortality of the Soul--a

On the Antiquity of the Dogma of the Immortality of the Soul--A Fragment.

The dogma of the immortality of the soul is at once the most consoling and the most repressing idea that the mind of man can receive. This fine philosophy was as ancient among the Egyptians as their pyramids; and before them it was known to the Persians. I have already elsewhere related the allegory of the first Zoroaster, cited in the "Sadder," in which God shows to Zoroaster a place of chastisement, such as the Dardaroth or Keron of the Egyptians, the Hades and the Tartarus of the Greeks, which we have but imperfectly rendered in our modern tongues by the words "inferno," "enfer," "infernal regions," "hell," "bottomless pit." In this place of punishment God showed to Zoroaster all the bad kings; one of them had but one foot; Zoroaster asked the reason; and God answered that this king had done only one good action in his life, which was by approaching to kick forward a trough which was not near enough to a poor ass dying of hunger. God had placed this wicked man's foot in heaven; the rest of his body was in hell.

This fable, which cannot be too often repeated, shows how ancient was the opinion of another life. The Indians were persuaded of it, as their metempsychosis proves. The Chinese venerated the souls of their ancestors. Each of these nations had founded powerful empires long before the Egyptians. This is a very important truth, which I think I have already proved by the very nature of the soil of Egypt. The most favorable grounds must have been cultivated the first; the ground of Egypt is the least favorable of all, being under water four months of the year; it was not until after immense labor, and consequently after a prodigious lapse of time, that towns were at length raised which the Nile could not inundate.

This empire, then, ancient as it was, was much less ancient than the empires of Asia; and in both one and the other it was believed that the soul existed after death. It is true that all these nations, without exception, considered the soul as a light ethereal form, an image of the body; the Greek word signifying "breath" was invented long after by the Greeks. But it is beyond a doubt that a part of ourselves was considered as immortal. Rewards and punishments in another life were the grand foundation of ancient theology.

Pherecides was the first among the Greeks who believed that souls existed from all eternity, and not the first, as has been supposed, who said that the soul survived the body. Ulysses, long before Pherecides, had seen the souls of heroes in the infernal regions; but that souls were as old as the world was a system which had sprung up in the East, and was brought into the West by Pherecides. I do not believe that there is among us a single system which is not to be found among the ancients. The materials of all our modern edifices are taken from the wreck of antiquity.