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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #53829 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53829)
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pagan Ideas of Immortality During the Early
-Roman Empire, by Clifford Herschel Moore
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
-
-
-Title: Pagan Ideas of Immortality During the Early Roman Empire
-
-Author: Clifford Herschel Moore
-
-Release Date: December 29, 2016 [EBook #53829]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAGAN IDEAS OF IMMORTALITY ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Sonya Schermann, Chuck Greif and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
-file was produced from images generously made available
-by The Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- Ingersoll Lectures on Immortality
-
-
- IMMORTALITY AND THE NEW THEODICY. By George A. Gordon. 1896.
-
- HUMAN IMMORTALITY. Two supposed Objections to the Doctrine. By
- William James. 1897.
-
- DIONYSOS AND IMMORTALITY: The Greek Faith in Immortality as
- affected by the rise of Individualism. By Benjamin Ide Wheeler.
- 1898.
-
- THE CONCEPTION OF IMMORTALITY. By Josiah Royce. 1899.
-
- LIFE EVERLASTING. By John Fiske. 1900.
-
- SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY. By William Osler. 1904.
-
- THE ENDLESS LIFE. By Samuel M. Crothers. 1905.
-
- INDIVIDUALITY AND IMMORTALITY. By Wilhelm Ostwald. 1906.
-
- THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY. By Charles F. Dole. 1907.
-
- BUDDHISM AND IMMORTALITY. By William S. Bigelow. 1908.
-
- IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? By G. Lowes Dickinson. 1909.
-
- EGYPTIAN CONCEPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY. By George A. Reisner. 1911.
-
- INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY IN THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. By George
- H. Palmer. 1912.
-
- METEMPSYCHOSIS. By George Foot Moore. 1914.
-
- PAGAN IDEAS OF IMMORTALITY DURING THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE. By
- Clifford Herschel Moore. 1918.
-
-
-
-
- PAGAN IDEAS OF
-
- IMMORTALITY DURING THE
-
- EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE
-
-
-
-
- The Ingersoll Lecture, 1918
-
- Pagan Ideas of
-
- Immortality During the
-
- Early Roman Empire
-
- By
-
- Clifford Herschel Moore, Ph.D., Litt.D.
-
- _Professor of Latin in Harvard University_
-
- [Illustration: colophon]
-
- Cambridge
- Harvard University Press
- London: Humphrey Milford
- Oxford University Press
-
- 1918
-
- COPYRIGHT, 1918
- HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
-
-
-
-
- THE INGERSOLL LECTURESHIP
-
-_Extract from the will of Miss Caroline Haskell Ingersoll, who died in
- Keene, County of Cheshire, New Hampshire, Jan. 26, 1893_
-
-
-_First._ In carrying out the wishes of my late beloved father, George
-Goldthwait Ingersoll, as declared by him in his last will and testament,
-I give and bequeath to Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., where my
-late father was graduated, and which he always held in love and honor,
-the sum of Five thousand dollars ($5,000) as a fund for the
-establishment of a Lectureship on a plan somewhat similar to that of the
-Dudleian lecture, that is--one lecture to be delivered each year, on any
-convenient day between the last day of May and the first day of
-December, on this subject, “the Immortality of Man,” said lecture not to
-form a part of the usual college course, nor to be delivered by any
-Professor or Tutor as part of his usual routine of instruction, though
-any such Professor or Tutor may be appointed to such service. The choice
-of said lecturer is not to be limited to any one religious denomination,
-nor to any one profession, but may be that of either clergyman or
-layman, the appointment to take place at least six months before the
-delivery of said lecture. The above sum to be safely invested and three
-fourths of the annual interest thereof to be paid to the lecturer for
-his services and the remaining fourth to be expended in the publishment
-and gratuitous distribution of the lecture, a copy of which is always to
-be furnished by the lecturer for such purpose. The same lecture to be
-named and known as “the Ingersoll lecture on the Immortality of Man.”
-
-
-
-
-PAGAN IDEAS OF IMMORTALITY DURING THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE
-
-
-
-
-I
-
-
-The invitation of the committee charged with the administration of the
-Ingersoll lectureship and my own inclination have agreed in indicating
-that aspect of the general subject of immortality, which I shall try to
-present tonight. I shall not venture on this occasion to advance
-arguments for or against belief in a life after death; my present task
-is a humbler one: I propose to ask you to review with me some of the
-more significant ideas concerning an existence beyond the grave, which
-were current in the Greco-Roman world in the time of Jesus and during
-the earlier Christian centuries, and to consider briefly the relation
-of these pagan beliefs to Christian ideas on the same subject. In
-dealing with a topic so vast as this in a single hour, we must select
-those elements which historically showed themselves to be fundamental
-and vital; but even then we cannot examine much detail. It may prove,
-however, that a rapid survey of those concepts of the future life, whose
-influence lasted long during the Christian centuries, and indeed has
-continued to the present day, may not be without profit.
-
-The most important single religious document from the Augustan Age is
-the sixth book of Virgil’s Aeneid; for although the Aeneid was written
-primarily to glorify Roman imperial aims, the sixth book gives full
-expression to many philosophic and popular ideas of the other world and
-of the future life, which were current among both Greeks and Romans.[1]
-It therefore makes a fitting point of departure for our considerations.
-In this book, as you will remember, the poet’s hero, having reached
-Italian soil at last, is led down to the lower world by the Cumaean
-Sybil. This descent to Hades belongs historically to that long series of
-apocalyptic writings which begins with the eleventh book of the Odyssey
-and closes with Dante’s Divine Comedy. Warde Fowler deserves credit for
-clearly pointing out that this visit of Aeneas to the world below is the
-final ordeal for him, a mystic initiation, in which he receives
-“enlightenment for the toil, peril, and triumph that await him in the
-accomplishment of his divine mission.” When the Trojan hero has learned
-from his father’s shade the mysteries of life and death, and has been
-taught the magnitude of the work which lies before him, and the great
-things that are to be, he casts off the timidity which he has hitherto
-shown and, strengthened by his experiences, advances to the perfect
-accomplishment of his task.[2]
-
-But we are not concerned so much with Virgil’s purpose in writing this
-apocalyptic book, as with its contents and with the evidence it gives as
-to the current ideas of the other world and the fate of the human soul.
-What then does the poet tell us of these great matters? We can hardly do
-better than to follow Aeneas and his guide on their journey. This side
-of Acheron they meet the souls of those whose bodies are unburied, and
-who therefore must tarry a hundred years--the maximum of human
-life--before they may be ferried over the river which bounds Hades. When
-Charon has set the earthly visitors across that stream, they find
-themselves in a place where are gathered spirits of many kinds, who have
-not yet been admitted to Tartarus or Elysium: first the souls of infants
-and those who met their end by violence--men condemned to death though
-innocent, suicides, those who died for love, and warriors--all of whom
-must here wait until the span of life allotted them has been completed.
-These spirits passed, the mortal visitors come to the walls of Tartarus,
-on whose torments Aeneas is not allowed to look, for
-
- “The feet of innocence may never pass
- Into this house of sin.”
-
-But the Sybil, herself taught by Hecate, reveals to him the eternal
-punishments there inflicted for monstrous crimes. Then the visitors pass
-to Elysium, where dwell the souls of those whose deserts on earth have
-won for them a happy lot. Nearby in a green valley, Aeneas finds the
-shade of his own father, Anchises, looking eagerly at the souls
-which are waiting to be born into the upper world. In answer to
-his son’s questions, the heroic shade discloses the doctrine of
-rebirths--metempsychosis--with its tenets of penance and of
-purification.[3] Finally, to fulfill the poet’s purpose, Anchises’
-spirit points out the souls of the heroes who are to come on earth in
-due season; the spirits of future Romans pass before Aeneas in long
-array; and at the climax he sees the soul of Augustus, that prince who
-was destined in the fullness of time to bring back the Golden Age and to
-impose peace on the wide world. This prophetic revelation ended, Aeneas
-enlightened and strengthened for his task, returns to the upper world.
-
-This book seems at first a strange compound indeed of popular belief,
-philosophy, and theology, which is not without its contradictions. On
-these, however, we need not pause; but for our present interest we must
-ask what are the main ideas on which this apocalypse is based. First of
-all, a future life is taken for granted by the poet; otherwise the book
-could never have been written. Secondly, we notice that, according to
-ancient popular belief, the souls of those who had not received the
-proper burial rites, were doomed to wander on this side of Acheron until
-a hundred years were completed, and also that souls which were
-disembodied by violence or by early death, were destined to live out
-their allotted span of earthly existence before they could enter the
-inner precincts of Hades. Again the poet represents some few as
-suffering eternal torments for their monstrous sins or enjoying immortal
-bliss because of their great deserts. And finally, he shows that the
-majority of souls must pass through successive lives and deaths, until,
-purified from the sin and dross of the body by millennial sojourns in
-the world below, and by virtuous lives on earth, they at last find
-repose and satisfaction. The popular beliefs which concern details of
-the future life we shall leave one side for the moment; let us rather
-first observe that Virgil’s ideas as to rewards and punishments in the
-next world, as well as his doctrine of successive rebirths and deaths
-with their accompanying purifications, rest on a moral basis, so that
-the other world is conceived to be a complement of this: life on earth
-and life below are opportunities for moral advance without which final
-happiness cannot be attained. Whence came these ideas of the future life
-and how far were they current in the ancient world of Virgil’s day?
-
-Naturally it does not follow that, because Rome’s greatest poet chose to
-picture souls surviving their corporeal homes, the average man believed
-in a future life, but there is abundant evidence that the poet was
-appealing to widespread beliefs, when he wrote his apocalyptic book.[4]
-In fact from the earliest times known to us, both Greeks and Romans held
-to a belief in some kind of extended life for souls after the death of
-the body.[5] Both peoples had their cults of the dead, rites of tendance
-and of riddance, festivals both public and private, which leave no doubt
-that the great majority of men never questioned that the spirits of the
-departed existed after this life, and that those spirits were endowed
-with power to harm or to bless the living.[6] But beyond this rather
-elementary stage of belief the Romans never went of themselves. The
-Greeks, however, began early to develop eschatological ideas which had,
-and which still have, great importance.
-
-The eleventh book of the Odyssey, as I have already said, is the oldest
-“Descent to Hades” in European literature. The souls of the dead are
-there represented as dwelling in the land of shadows, having no life,
-but leading an insubstantial existence, without punishment or reward.
-Such a future world could have no moral or other value; it could only
-hang over men as a gloomy prospect of that which awaited them when the
-suns of this world had forever set. But in the seventh and sixth
-centuries B.C. other ideas came to the front, which were influential
-throughout later history. In those two centuries fall the first period
-of Greek individualism and a religious revival--two things not wholly
-disconnected. The Orphic sect, which appeared in the sixth century, was
-made up of religious devotees who adopted a purified form of the
-religion of Dionysus.[7] The center of the Orphic faith and mystic
-ceremonial was the myth of the birth, destruction, and rebirth of the
-god. According to the story, Dionysus was pursued by the Titans, powers
-hostile to Zeus. In his distress the god changed himself into various
-creatures, finally taking on the form of a bull, which the Titans tore
-in pieces and devoured. But the goddess Athena saved the heart and gave
-it to Zeus who swallowed it. Hence sprang the new Dionysus. The Titans
-Zeus destroyed with his thunderbolt and had the ashes scattered to the
-winds. From these ashes, in one form of the myth, man was made, and
-therefore he was thought to unite in his person the sinful Titanic
-nature and the divine Dionysiac spark. The parallelism between this
-story and the myths of Osiris, Attis, and Adonis is at once evident.
-They are all gods who die and live again, and thus become lords of death
-and life, through whom man gains assurance of his own immortality.
-
-Our chief concern with the Orphics here is that they seem to have
-introduced among the Greeks the idea that the soul of man was divine,
-was a [Greek: daimôn] which had fallen, and for its punishment was
-imprisoned in the body as in a tomb. In its corporeal cell it was
-condemned to suffer defilement until released by death, when it passed
-to Hades. Its lot there depended on its life on earth. As an Orphic
-fragment says: “They who are righteous beneath the rays of the sun, when
-they die, have a gentler lot in a fair meadow by deep flowing
-Acheron.... But they who have worked wrong and insolence under the rays
-of the sun are led down beneath Cocytus’s watery plain into chill
-Tartarus.”[8] The soul’s sojourn in Hades therefore was a time of
-punishment and of purification, even as life itself was a penance for
-sin. According to a common belief, at least in Plato’s day, after a
-thousand years the soul entered a new incarnation, and so on through ten
-rounds of earth and Hades, until at last, freed from sin and earthly
-dross by faithful observance of a holy life on earth and by the
-purification which it underwent below, it returned to its divine abode;
-but those who persisted in sin were condemned to all the punishments
-which man’s imagination could devise; the wicked were doomed to lie in
-mud and filth, while evil demons rent their vitals. Indeed the horrors
-which the medieval Christian loved to depict in order to terrify the
-wicked and to rejoice the faithful, were first devised by the Orphics
-and their heirs, for exactly the same purpose.
-
-But what bases did the Orphics find for their belief in the divine
-nature of the soul? In their mythology they had said that man was
-created out of the ashes of the Titans in which a spark of Dionysus
-still remained. But in fact they seem to have rested on faith or
-intuition, without working out clearly a philosophic answer. They were
-indeed deeply conscious of man’s dual nature; they perceived that on the
-one hand he is pulled by his baser instincts and desires, which they
-naturally attributed to the body, and that on the other hand he is
-prompted by nobler aspirations, which they assigned to his soul. This
-higher part of man’s dual self was, for them, the Dionysiac element in
-him. And man’s moral obligation they held to be to free this divine
-element from the clogging weight of the body, to cease to “blind his
-soul with clay.” So far as we are aware, the Orphics were the first
-among the Greeks to make the divinity of the soul a motive for the
-religious life, and perhaps the first to see that, if the soul is
-divine, it may naturally be regarded as eternally so, and therefore as
-immortal. What more momentous thoughts as to the soul’s nature and its
-destiny could any sect have introduced than these? They were shared by
-their contemporaries, the Pythagoreans; in fact it is hard to say with
-certainty which sect developed these concepts first.[9]
-
-But the Orphic-Pythagorean confidence in the immortality of the soul
-was at the most only an emotional belief. It remained for Plato in the
-early fourth century to give that belief a philosophic basis and thereby
-to transform it into a reasonable article of religion. This he
-fundamentally did, when he brought his concept of the reasoning soul
-into connection with his doctrine of “forms” or “ideas.” He maintained
-that behind this transient phenomenal world known to us through the
-senses, lies another world, the world of ideas, invisible, permanent,
-and real, which can be grasped by the reason only. These permanent
-ideas, he said, are of various grades and degrees, the supreme idea
-being that of the Good and the Beautiful, which is the cause of all
-existence, truth, and knowledge; it at once comprehends these things
-within itself and is superior to them; it is the Absolute, God.[10]
-
-But all the ideas, including the Absolute, are, as I have just said,
-apprehended not by man’s senses but by his intellect. Therefore, argues
-Plato, man’s reasoning soul must have the same nature as the ideas; like
-them, it must belong to the world above the senses and with them it must
-partake of the Absolute. Moreover, since the ideas are eternal and
-immortal, it inevitably follows that man’s reasoning soul has existed
-from eternity and will exist forever.[11]
-
-This is not the occasion to discuss the validity of Plato’s doctrine.
-Aristotle stated, once for all, the fundamental objections to his
-teacher’s views.[12] But we shall readily grant that, if we accept
-Plato’s doctrine, his conclusions as to the immortality of the soul may
-logically follow and that no further evidence is needed to convince us.
-Yet Plato was not content to let the matter rest on this single
-argument, for in other dialogues he adduces proofs which do not seem so
-convincing to us as to their author. He attempts to prove immortality
-from the self-motion of the soul, again from the dim recollections out
-of an earlier existence which enable one to recall axiomatic truths or
-to recognize relations, as in mathematics--things which one has never
-learned in this present life. On another occasion he argues from the
-unchanging nature of the soul and from the soul’s superiority to the
-body. But he seems to have thought the most convincing proof was the
-fact that the notion of life is inseparable from our concept of the
-soul; that is, a dead soul is unthinkable. For all these reasons,
-therefore, he argued that the soul must be immortal.[13]
-
-Whatever we may think of Plato’s different proofs, they have furnished
-the armories of apologists almost down to our own day. In antiquity they
-were constantly repeated, in whole or in part, not only by devoted
-members of the Academy and later by the Neoplatonists, but by the
-Eclectics and others, like Cicero in the first book of his Tusculan
-Disputations, and at the close of Scipio’s Dream; they were borrowed by
-the Stoics, and some eight hundred years after Plato had first
-formulated them, they were employed by St. Augustine in his tract _De
-Immortalitate Animae_. The religious intuition of the Orphic and
-Pythagorean then was given a rational basis by Plato, and thus
-supported, proved so convincing to antiquity that Plato’s views were the
-most important of all in supporting belief in the soul’s immortality.
-They were in large measure taken up by the Christian church, and, as has
-been often shown, the doctrine of a spiritual immortality apart and free
-from the body, was of immense service to primitive Christianity, when
-the hope of the early return of Christ to found a new kingdom on earth
-faded before the lengthening years.
-
-To Plato himself his belief in immortality was of the greatest moment,
-for the whole fabric of his ethical and political philosophy is built
-against the background of that doctrine. And indeed we should all grant
-much validity to the argument that the human reason, though weak and
-limited, is one with the divine and infinite reason; otherwise the human
-could have no understanding of the divine. But when it is further argued
-that if the human reason is of the same nature with the divine, it must
-be eternal and immortal, we may reply that, even so, we are not
-convinced that the individual soul must therefore have a conscious and
-separate existence through all eternity; its identity may be lost by
-absorption into the universal reason, the supreme idea. This is a matter
-on which Plato nowhere delivers a clear opinion, but his thought is so
-plainly centered on the individual soul that we can hardly believe that
-it was possible for him to conceive of the soul’s personality ever being
-lost in the Absolute.
-
-Although Plato and his greatest pupil, Aristotle, regarded man’s
-reasoning soul as spiritual, something distinct from matter, few ancient
-thinkers were able to rise to the concept of the immateriality of man’s
-reasoning nature. The Stoics, who in their eclectic system borrowed from
-both Plato and Aristotle, as well as from many other predecessors, held
-to a strict materialism which they took from Heraclitus. But to their
-material principle they applied a concept which they took from
-Aristotle, for they recognized in all things the existence of an active
-and a passive principle, and they said that by the action of the former
-on the latter, all phenomena were produced. The active principle they
-called reason, intelligence, the cause of all things. It was the
-world-reason which, according to their view, permeated every part of
-the cosmos, causing and directing all things. To express their concept
-of its nature, they often named it Fire, the most powerful and active of
-the elements, or rather the primordial element; again they often called
-it God, for they did not hesitate to speak of this immanent principle as
-a person. Furthermore, since man is a part of the cosmos, the
-world-reason expresses itself in him. Indeed man’s reason, the directing
-element of the human soul, is itself a part of the world-reason, or in
-Epictetus’ striking phrase, man is “a fragment of God.”[14] At this
-point the Stoic and the Platonist were in accord, although the paths of
-thought which they had travelled were very different. Yet the Stoic
-could not agree with the Platonist that the individual soul survived
-forever, since he held to a cyclical theory of the cosmos, according to
-which this present universe was temporal. It had been created by the
-eternal fire, by the world-reason, from itself, and it was destined in
-due season to sink back again into universal fire. Meantime, according
-to the views of most Stoics, the souls of the just would survive this
-body, ascending to the spheres above the world, where they would dwell
-until absorbed once more into the divine element from which they sprang.
-To the souls of the wicked only a short period at most of post-corporeal
-existence was granted--brevity of life or annihilation was their
-punishment.[15]
-
-Strictly speaking, the prospect of the limited existence after death,
-which the Stoics held out as virtue’s reward, should have had little
-value for the philosophic mind, especially as their philosophy offered
-no warrant that personality would survive at all. But it would seem that
-men at every period of human history have had immortal longings in them
-so strong that they have eagerly embraced the assurance of even a brief
-respite from annihilation; certain it is that to many Greeks and Romans
-the Stoic doctrine of a limited existence after death was a strong
-incentive to virtue and a consolation in the midst of this world’s
-trials.
-
-But no doctrine of the post-corporeal existence of the soul has ever had
-the field entirely to itself. We know that in antiquity even the Stoic
-conception of the soul’s limited survival, to say nothing of Platonic
-beliefs in actual immortality, met with much opposition and denial among
-the intellectual classes. The Epicureans, with their thorough-going
-atomistic materialism, would not allow that the soul had any existence
-apart from the body; on the contrary, they held that the soul came into
-being at the moment of conception, grew with the body, and, at the
-body’s death, was once more dissolved into the atoms from which it
-first was formed. Epicurean polemics were directed against both popular
-superstitions and Platonic metaphysics; the attacks had the advantage of
-offering rational, and for the day scientific, explanations of natural
-phenomena, which fed human curiosity as to the causes of things, and
-which, if accepted, might logically lead to that freedom from the soul’s
-perturbation which was the aim of the teaching. Moreover, the noble
-resignation, the high moral and humane zeal, which characterized the
-Epicurean School at its best, as well as its easy decline into
-hedonistic appeals, made it popular, especially in the last two
-centuries before our era. But the very fire and passion of Lucretius,
-its most gifted Latin exponent, give us the impression that after all
-most men were not moved to find the peace which the poet promised them,
-if they would but accept the doctrine of the soul’s dissolution at the
-moment of death.
-
-The Sceptics also, who claimed not an inconsiderable number of
-intellectuals, doubted the possibility of a future life, or found
-themselves unable to decide the matter at all. Like Tennyson’s Sage they
-would declare:
-
- “Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone,
- Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone,
- Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one:
- Thou canst not prove that thou art immortal, no,
- Nor yet that thou art mortal.”
-
-Indeed it is true that of all the philosophic sects at the beginning of
-our era, only those which were imbued with Platonic and
-Orphic-Pythagorean ideas, had confidence in the soul’s immortality. The
-Stoic position we have already discussed. Some scholars, following
-Rohde,[16] claim that there was little belief in any kind of a future
-life among the educated classes at the time we are considering; this I
-hold to be an error, although it is certain that the Epicureans and
-Sceptics had a large following. In any case we need to remind ourselves
-that the intellectuals are always a small minority, whose views may not
-represent in any way popular beliefs.
-
-We are, however, not without evidence that there were doubters among the
-common people. Flippant epigrams and epitaphs show that men could at
-least assume a cynicism toward life and a light-heartedness toward death
-which equal Lucian’s. More than once we can read funerary inscriptions
-to this effect: “I was nothing, I am nothing. Do thou who art still
-alive, eat, drink, be merry, come.”[17] Or sentiments like this: “Once I
-had no existence; now I have none. I am not aware of it. It does not
-concern me.”[18] Again we find the denial: “In Hades there is no boat,
-no Charon, no Aeacus who holds the keys, no Cerberus. All of us, whom
-death has taken away are rotten bones and ashes; nothing more.”[19] The
-sentiments are perhaps as old as thinking man. They have at times
-touches of humor which call forth a smile, as in the anxious inquiries
-of Callimachus’ epigram: “Charidas, what is below?” “Deep darkness.”
-“But what of the paths upward?” “All a lie.” “And Pluto?” “Mere talk.”
-“Then we’re lost.”[20]
-
-Such expressions, of course, must not be given too much weight in our
-reckoning. The longing for annihilation, which appeals at times to most
-weary mortals, also led to dedications “to eternal rest” or “to eternal
-sleep.”[21] But after all the number of such epitaphs is comparatively
-small. In the nature of the case many funerary inscriptions give no
-testimony for or against a belief in immortality; but large numbers
-show confidence, or a hope, in a future life.
-
-
-
-
-II
-
-
-The time has now come for us to return from our rather long historical
-survey to Virgil’s Apocalypse, and to listen to the words with which
-Anchises’ shade taught his eager son:
-
- “Know first that heaven and earth and ocean’s plain,
- The moon’s bright orb, and stars of Titan birth
- Are nourished by one Life; one primal Mind,
- Immingled with the vast and general frame,
- Fills every part and stirs the mighty whole.
- Thence man and beast, thence creatures of the air,
- And all the swarming monsters that be found
- Beneath the level of the marbled sea;
- A fiery virtue, a celestial power,
- Their native seeds retain; but bodies vile,
- With limbs of clay and members born to die,
- Encumber and o’ercloud; whence also spring
- Terrors and passions, suffering and joy;
- For from deep darkness and captivity
- All gaze but blindly on the radiant world.
- Nor when to life’s last beam they bid farewell
- May sufferers cease from pain, nor quite be freed
- From all their fleshly plagues; but by fixed law,
- The strange, inveterate taint works deeply in.
- For this, the chastisement of evils past
- Is suffered here, and full requital paid.
- Some hang on high, outstretched to viewless winds;
- For some their sin’s contagion must be purged
- In vast ablution of deep-rolling seas,
- Or burned away in fire. Each man receives
- His ghostly portion in the world of dark;
- But thence to realms Elysian we go free,
- Where for a few these seats of bliss abide,
- Till time’s long lapse a perfect orb fulfills,
- And takes all taint away, restoring so
- The pure, ethereal soul’s first virgin fire.
- At last, when the millennial aeon strikes,
- God calls them forth to yon Lethaean stream,
- In numerous host, that thence, oblivious all,
- They may behold once more the vaulted sky,
- And willingly to shapes of flesh return.”[22]
-
-These words express the commingled beliefs of Orphic, Pythagorean,
-Platonist, and Stoic. How extensively such beliefs were held by Virgil’s
-contemporaries we cannot say with accuracy, but certain it is that this
-book and this passage would never have made the religious appeal which
-they made in antiquity, if they had not corresponded to widespread
-convictions.
-
-But Virgil’s sixth book contains much more than the eschatological views
-of philosophic schools; it reflects to an extraordinary degree popular
-ideas and practices. I have already referred to the fact that it
-represents a mystic initiation of Virgil’s hero as preparation for his
-holy task. Now we know that at all times the convictions of the majority
-of men are founded not on the arguments which thinkers can supply, but
-on hopes, intuitions, and emotional experiences. Such were the grounds
-on which the Orphic built his hope of the purified soul’s ultimate
-happiness. More popular than Orphism were the Greek mysteries, of which
-the most important were those celebrated annually at Eleusis in Attica.
-There the story of the rape of Proserpina, of Demeter’s search for her
-daughter, and of the daughter’s recovery, formed the center of a mystic
-ceremonial. Originally these mysteries were no doubt agricultural rites
-intended to call to life the dead grain in the spring. But before the
-seventh century, B.C., the festival had been transformed; the miracle of
-the reviving vegetation, of the grain which dies and lives again, here,
-as so many times elsewhere, had become the symbol and assurance of human
-immortality.[23]
-
-Before admission to the annual celebration the would-be initiate was
-duly purified. During the celebration the initiated, by their own acts,
-recalled Demeter’s hunt for her daughter, roaming the shore with
-lighted torches; like the goddess, they fasted and then broke their fast
-by drinking a holy potion of meal and water; in the great hall of
-initiation they witnessed a mystic drama, perhaps saw holy objects
-exhibited and explained. In any case they underwent an emotional
-experience which so confirmed their intuitional belief in immortality,
-that they were confident of peace and happiness in this life and of
-blessedness in the life to come, where they would join in the sacred
-dance, while the uninitiated would be wretched. Many are the expressions
-of this ecclesiastical confidence. The Homeric hymn of Demeter promised:
-“Blessed is he among mortal men who has seen these rites.”[24] Pindar,
-early in the fifth century, wrote: “Happy he who has seen these things
-and then goes beneath the earth, for he knows the end of life and its
-Zeus-given beginning.”[25] Sophocles said: “Thrice blessed are they who
-have seen these rites, and then go to the house of Hades, for they alone
-have life there, but all others have only woe.”[26] At the close of the
-fifth century Aristophanes made his chorus of mystae sing: “For we alone
-have a sun and a holy light, we who have been initiated, and who live
-honorably toward friends and strangers, reverencing the gods.”[27] In
-the third century of the Christian era, an official of the mysteries set
-up an inscription which declares: “Verily glorious is that mystery
-vouchsafed by the blessed gods, for death is no ill for mortals, but
-rather a good.”[28]
-
-It is difficult for us now to appreciate the widespread influence of
-these Eleusinian mysteries. They had many branches; at Eleusis they
-continued to be celebrated until 396 A.D., when Alaric the Goth
-destroyed Demeter’s ancient shrine. Other Greek mysteries also
-flourished in the Mediterranean world: those of Samothrace; the
-mysteries of Bacchus, whose excesses brought down the displeasure of the
-Roman Senate in 186 B.C.; and in later times the mysteries of Hecate or
-Diana. All had this in common, that they gave the initiate assurance of
-a happy immortality.
-
-Under the Roman Empire the longing for religious satisfaction through
-mystic rites and revelations found new and exotic sources of
-gratification. Slaves, traders, and finally soldiers from Hellenized
-Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, carried their gods throughout the
-Mediterranean world, and even beyond, to the Atlantic Ocean, to
-Hadrian’s Wall in Britain, to the Rhine and Danube, and to the borders
-of the African desert. The invasion of the West by these oriental gods
-began in 204 B.C., when, in answer to the Roman Senate’s invitation, the
-Asiatic Great Mother of the Gods took up her residence in Rome. Many
-other divinities came during the succeeding centuries; but three
-remained most prominent: the Great Mother of the Gods, whom I have just
-mentioned, with her attendant Attis; Egyptian Isis and her associate
-divinities, who were worshipped in Rome as early as Cicero’s day; and
-the Persian Mithras, whose cult became influential in the West toward
-the close of the first century of our era.[29] These religions added to
-their exotic charm that spell which great age casts over men’s
-imaginations. Osiris, the husband of Isis, had been lord of the dead in
-Egypt for more than two thousand years; Attis and the Great Mother
-belonged to an immemorial antiquity; while Mithras had his origin in the
-remoter East, at a period to which neither Greek nor Roman knowledge
-ran. Moreover, Attis and Osiris, like Dionysus and Persephone among the
-Greeks, or the Semitic Adonis and Tammuz, were gods who died and lived
-again, and who therefore became warrants of man’s immortality. Mithras
-belonged to another class of divinities. He was held to be the
-benefactor and constant supporter of mankind. According to the sacred
-legend, he had himself wrestled with the powers of darkness and had
-established civilization on earth, before he ascended to heaven, whence
-he was believed to aid his faithful followers in their constant struggle
-against the servants of Ahriman, the lord of wickedness.
-
-The devotees of these gods formed sacred communities, admission to which
-was obtained by secret initiation; the rituals were mysteries in which
-the devotee had pictured to him, or himself acted out, the sacred drama,
-whereby he received assurance of divine protection here and of a happy
-immortality hereafter. The initiate, moreover, was believed to
-experience a new birth and to enter into union with his god, so that he
-became Osiris-Serapis, or Attis, or Mithras, even as the Dionysiac
-devotee became a Bacchus.
-
-To the question how the comforting assurance of present safety and of
-future immortality was given the initiate, we can return no more
-satisfactory answer than we can make in the case of the Greek mysteries;
-yet we may get some hint from the words which the Latin writer,
-Apuleius, puts into the mouth of his hero, Lucius, who was initiated
-into the rites of Isis. This is all that he might tell: “I approached
-the bounds of death. I trod the threshold of Proserpina. I was carried
-through all the elements and returned again to the upper air. At dead of
-night I saw the sun glowing with a brilliant light. The gods of heaven
-and of hell I approached in very person and worshipped face to
-face.”[30] Obscure as these words are, much is plain. In some way the
-devotee was made to believe that he, like Virgil’s hero, had passed
-through the world of the dead and had been born again into a new life;
-he had touched the elements--earth, air, water, and fire, the very
-foundations of the visible cosmos; he had seen the sun which ever shines
-on the consecrated; and he had been granted the beatific vision.
-Therefore he knew that his salvation was secure forever.
-
-Furthermore in these mystery religions preparation for the emotional
-experiences of initiation was made by means of lustral baths, fasting,
-abstinence, and penance; once consecrated, the devotee supported his
-religious life by following a prescribed regimen and by participating in
-frequent holy offices; degrees of initiation and grades of office marked
-his advance in faithful proficiency; while magic words and formulae,
-committed to memory, assured him a safe passage from this world to the
-next.
-
-The oriental mysteries enjoyed a widespread popularity, except in
-Greece, under the Roman Empire down to the latter half of the third
-century. Then they began to lose their hold in the Roman provinces
-before the growing power of Christianity; yet in the city of Rome they
-stubbornly held their ground until the end of the fourth century. The
-first St. Peter’s was built hard beside a shrine of the Great Mother of
-the Gods; there for three-quarters of a century the old and the new
-mysteries strove in conscious rivalry, until at last Cybele was forced
-to yield to Christ.
-
-The last centuries before the birth of Jesus and the opening centuries
-of our era were marked by an increasing religious longing and unrest,
-first among the Greeks and then among the Romans. There was a weariness
-and a dissatisfaction with the inherited forms of religious expression;
-and many felt a sense of separation from God, of a gulf between the
-human and the divine, which they hoped might be bridged by a direct
-revelation, by a vision, which would grant immediate knowledge of God.
-These eager desires led in part to an increase in superstition and
-credulity, over which we need not now pause; in part to the resort to
-the oriental mysteries of which I have just spoken; and in part to a
-revival of Pythagorean mysticism and of mystic Platonism among the
-intellectuals, who no longer felt that the reason and the will gave them
-the assurance which they required.
-
-The later mystic philosophies laid much stress on an ascetic discipline
-in this life, to secure the soul’s purification, and all taught that the
-great end of man was to attain to the knowledge of God, wherein lay
-man’s supreme happiness. Such knowledge, it was thought, could come only
-through a revelation. Here these philosophies agreed with the teaching
-of the oriental mysteries, and indeed with popular belief as well. On
-the question of the immortality of the soul, however, the later mystics
-brought forward no new arguments. Plotinus, the greatest of the
-Neoplatonists, virtually repeats the proofs adduced by the founder of
-the Academy.[31] Undoubtedly during the opening centuries of the
-Christian era there was a growing belief in the soul’s immortality, or
-at least an increasing hope of a future life, but such hopes and
-beliefs, outside Christianity, were not based on new arguments. Plato
-had once for all in antiquity, supplied the philosophic grounds for
-confidence. Only in modern times have new arguments of any weight been
-adduced.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Let us now pause to summarize the results of the considerations which
-have thus far occupied us. We may fairly say that, in spite of popular
-doubt, intellectual scepticism, and philosophic denial, beliefs in some
-kind of existence beyond the grave were widespread in the Greco-Roman
-world at the beginning of our era. For many, probably for most, belief
-did not advance beyond inherited intuitions, fears, or hopes, which were
-fostered by tendance of the dead, prescribed by immemorial custom. Many,
-both the simple and the learned, found their assurance in diverse forms
-of Greek mysteries; others, again, strengthened to endure the buffetings
-of this life by the resolute doctrines of Stoicism, were satisfied with
-the extended, though limited, future existence vouchsafed the virtuous;
-while the later Platonists, returning to the mystic Orphic-Pythagorean
-elements which had influenced the founder of their school, offered
-their disciples arguments in favor of a genuine immortality. Under the
-Empire the supports of faith became more numerous and appealing. At the
-lowest end of the scale were charlatans, as there had been since Plato’s
-day,[32] who imposed on the fears and hopes of their victims for their
-own mercenary ends. Higher were those inspiring Eastern mysteries which
-were carried to the remotest provinces, binding their devotees by
-initiation, ritual service, and a prescribed regimen, more constantly to
-a religious life than Greek mysteries had ever done; and the great end
-of all was the assurance that the souls of the faithful should not die,
-but should mount to the upper heavens to be at one with God.
-
-The last vital philosophy of antiquity was Neoplatonism, on which we
-have just touched; the chief aim of the Neoplatonist also was to secure
-union with the Divine, and his greatest article of faith was the soul’s
-immortality. If this theosophic philosophy seem to any of poor account,
-I would remind him that by Origen and Augustine Neoplatonism was brought
-into Christian thought, where it has been operative ever since.
-
-
-
-
-III
-
-
-In view of the facts with which we have been occupied we shall not make
-the error of thinking that Christianity brought the hope of immortality
-among men, for, as we have seen, hope--nay, sure confidence, in the
-soul’s survival was widespread throughout the ancient world when Jesus
-began his ministry. What can we say of early Christian teaching, and how
-was it related to its pagan environment?
-
-Christianity grew out of Judaism. Now it is a striking fact that the
-Jews were later than most of the peoples about them in conceiving of
-individual immortality.[33] Clinging to monotheism and absorbed in the
-life of their nation, they had cut themselves off from some of the ideas
-developed by their neighbors. To follow out the intricate and uncertain
-history of eschatological ideas among the Jews would be too difficult
-here. We may simply say that when Jesus began his ministry a
-considerable part of the Jews had abandoned the expectation of a
-material kingdom of God and looked forward to a spiritual kingdom on a
-transformed earth or in heaven. In this kingdom those would share, who
-through God’s grace and their own righteousness had won a place therein;
-but the wicked were either to be punished forever or to be utterly
-destroyed. To these ideas Jesus’ teaching was closely related, although
-he gave a nobler meaning to Jewish doctrine, and he did not limit the
-hope of a future existence so narrowly as some would do. Moreover, he
-adopted from the law the teaching which made salvation and future
-happiness depend on a love for God and for one’s fellow-men, which would
-result in an unselfish life of righteousness. Salvation, he taught, was
-a present experience, open to every man who conformed to the
-requirement.
-
-After the crucifixion of Jesus, the Apostles and their successors
-naturally made his person, death, and resurrection the great means
-through which his followers secured salvation. Paul, moreover, taught
-that through faith--using the word in a somewhat unusual sense--the
-believer secured the actual presence of Christ within him, entered into
-a mystic union with the divine Saviour, by which the man was freed from
-sin and reborn into a new spiritual life; this new life was confirmed by
-the indwelling Holy Spirit which completed the man’s moral
-regeneration. In the Fourth Gospel we find a similar doctrine of a
-mystic union with Christ, secured by belief in Him as the incarnate
-Word--a belief which brought about a spiritual rebirth and therewith
-gave a present warrant of eternal life.[34]
-
-It is unnecessary for our present purpose to examine the beliefs of the
-earliest Christians as to the resurrection or the second coming of
-Christ, which they expected to take place within their own time--these
-beliefs and many others the Apostolic Church derived naturally from
-their Jewish tradition and from the teachings of Jesus. I shall ask you
-rather to focus your thought on the fundamental ideas of this early
-Christianity: that is to say, on the revelation of God, the punishment
-of sin by suffering or annihilation, the mystic union with the Divine,
-and a happy immortality as a reward for faith and righteousness. Were
-these ideas foreign to the peoples of the Mediterranean area? No, our
-survey has reminded us that on the contrary they were familiar over wide
-stretches of the Greco-Roman world.
-
-Do not misunderstand me here. Of course I am not making the elementary
-blunder of saying that because certain beliefs of the Christians and the
-Pagans were similar, they therefore were identical, or that they were
-derived from one another, or that the many factors of which they were
-composed were the same. No one with any knowledge of the history of
-religious thought could maintain that. But the point which I do wish to
-emphasize is this, viz.: that the eschatological ideas widely current in
-the Mediterranean world were such that Christianity found a favorable
-environment when it began its proselyting work. This seems to me one of
-the most significant facts in the relation of early Christianity to
-paganism. The Christian teachings as to the means by which the assurance
-of a happy immortality was to be secured could hardly seem very strange
-at first hearing to any one who was familiar with mystery religions or
-with much of the religious philosophy current in the pagan world during
-the early Christian centuries. Closer examination would reveal
-fundamental differences between Christian belief and the pagan hope. But
-it is not insignificant that Christianity spread most rapidly at first
-in Syria and Asia Minor, countries long familiar with those mystic
-religions, which had promised what the nobler faith supplied.
-
-
-
-
-IV
-
-
-Although we now have examined the conditions which, to my mind, are the
-most significant in the relation of pagan ideas of immortality to those
-of early Christianity, there yet remain matters which, if less
-important, are still of more than merely curious interest. We shall now
-look at some of these questions.
-
-What notions of heaven and of hell did the Greeks and Romans have? This
-inquiry is often made. The reply is easily given. Man has always painted
-hell and paradise after his own conception of suffering and of
-happiness, just as truly as he has made God after his own image.
-Consequently the ancient’s ideas of the future life ranged all the way
-from the grossest materialistic concepts to highly spiritualized
-beliefs. Plato in the Republic makes Adeimantus say that some seem to
-think that an immortality of drunkenness is virtue’s highest meed.[35]
-But Socrates conceived the future state to be something very different;
-a place in which he could hold high discourse with the great ones of the
-past.[36] In general, however, punishment and rewards were of a material
-sort, for such are most easily imagined and understood. Has it been
-otherwise with Christians? The answer is to be found in Christian
-apocalypses, medieval monuments, renaissance art, and in our own minds.
-Of course there developed in Greek thought what we might call an
-orthodox geography and scheme for the other world, of which Virgil gives
-us a just picture. Interesting as it might prove to examine the details
-of this picture, we will rather turn to other matters.
-
-When Christianity spread among the Gentiles, it at once came under
-influences which inevitably left their marks in its thought and
-practice. Let me offer two illustrations.
-
-Early in the hour I spoke of Aeneas’ journey through the lower world as
-an initiation by which he was enlightened and strengthened for the great
-task that lay before him; and we have now seen that in all the
-mysteries, both Greek and oriental, there were initiatory rites, in
-which the novice symbolically died to the old life and was born again
-into a new existence. Moreover, through his emotional experience he
-received assurance that his salvation was secure forever. The idea of
-the new birth belongs to Christianity also from the first. Paul held
-that it was brought about by faith; the author of the Fourth Gospel
-taught that it was secured by love and belief. Baptism in primitive
-Christianity was at first symbolical--an act of ritual purification,
-which was believed to indicate the remission of sins and the bestowal of
-the Holy Spirit.[37] But by the second century Christianity had become a
-mystery in the Greek sense, into which the novice, after a period of
-preparation, was duly initiated by baptism; and indeed the act was
-believed to have a magic power to secure immortality, closely parallel
-to that of the pagan initiation.[38] We all know that the
-ecclesiastical confidence which such belief inspires is far from unknown
-today.
-
-Again you will recall that when Anchises’ shade was instructing Aeneas
-in the meaning of life and death, he said:
-
- “Nor when to life’s last beam they bid farewell
- May sufferers cease from pain, nor quite be freed
- From all their fleshly plagues; but by fixed law,
- The strange, inveterate taint works deeply in.
- For this, the chastisement of evils past
- Is suffered here, and full requital paid.
- Some hang on high, outstretched to viewless winds;
- For some their sin’s contagion must be purged
- In vast ablution of deep-rolling seas,
- Or burned away in fire. Each man receives
- His ghostly portion in the world of dark.”
-
-Thus the sojourn of the soul in the world below for the thousand years
-which must elapse before it could be born again, was a period of
-cleansing from ancient sin. This idea of purification we have already
-seen to be as old as the Orphics; it was made an important element by
-Plato; and indeed all who held to the doctrine of rebirths regarded the
-periods between earthly existences as times of moral punishment and
-cleansing. There were certain analogies in Mithraism. Orthodox
-Christianity could not adopt the doctrine of metempsychosis, although
-some Gnostics found this possible, by rejecting the resurrection of the
-body. But beyond question the Greek doctrine of post-mortem purgation
-from sin, combining with ideas inherited from the Old Testament, has
-been influential in the development of a Christian belief in
-purification, especially by fire, in an intermediate state between death
-and paradise. The doctrine of purgatory, in somewhat different forms,
-has been held by both the Eastern and the Western Churches. Although
-this doctrine did not become a definite part of the theology of the
-Western Church until the time of Gregory the Great (590-604),
-nevertheless traces of it can be found in the earlier Church writers.
-Origen held that even the perfect must pass through fire after
-death;[39] St. Augustine was less confident, but he thought it not past
-belief that imperfect souls might be saved by cleansing flames.[40] The
-Western Church, from St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth to Bellarmino
-in the sixteenth century held the doctrine that the cleansing fire was
-as material as that of any Stoic; but today that view has in large part
-been abandoned.[41]
-
-These two illustrations must suffice to suggest the ways in which
-Christian thought was influenced by its pagan environment.
-
-Finally we will consider an example of parallelism between pagan and
-Christian ideas. It is evident that the Greeks, who made such large use
-of successive rebirths, following periods of punishment and
-purification below, thought of these repeated lives and deaths as
-forming a moral series, so that moral progress, or degeneracy, at one
-stage was inseparably connected with both the preceding and the
-following stages. To them life here and life in the other world were
-indissolubly bound together. This was also as true of Stoicism with its
-limited reward for uprightness, as it was of Platonism. The Greek
-mysteries, which did not concern themselves with metempsychosis, by the
-fifth century before our era likewise made future happiness depend in
-part at least on righteousness in this life; the oriental mysteries too
-made this existence the condition of the next. In short, we may say that
-wherever men believed in any kind of a future existence, they almost
-universally held to the common belief that future happiness was to be
-the reward of a virtuous life on earth. But this is one of the
-fundamental principles of Christianity. Paganism, therefore, was in
-accord on this point with its enemy, and thereby favored the propagation
-of the new religion; moreover, the superior ethical demands of
-Christianity and its humanitarian principles no doubt found a ready
-response, especially in enlightened circles.
-
-So we have returned to that which seems to me most important in the
-relations of paganism and of early Christianity. In many ways paganism
-provided an environment favorable for the spread of the religion which
-Jesus founded. The two were at many points irreconcilable, and the
-former has not always benefited the latter by its influence; but it is a
-grave historical error not to recognize the areas in which the thought
-of the two ran parallel. Is the nobler faith the poorer because its
-paths were made broad by the pagan in his search after Immortality?
-
-
-
-
-NOTES
-
-
-1. Eduard Norden, _Aeneis_, _Buch VI_, Leipzig, 1903, is most useful for
-its commentary, especially on religious and philosophic matters.
-
-2. W. Warde Fowler, _The Religious Experience of the Roman People_,
-Macmillan Co., 1911, pp. 419 ff.
-
-So Dante’s journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise secured his
-conversion and salvation, bringing him finally to freedom and to
-knowledge. _Paradiso_, XXXI, 85-87 and XXXIII entire.
-
-3. Metempsychosis was the subject of the Ingersoll lecture by Professor
-George Foot Moore in 1914. Therefore that theme is not discussed here.
-
-4. Cf. Friedländer, _Roman Life and Manners_, Routledge, London, 1910,
-iii, chap. II.
-
-5. On the pre-Hellenic periods, see Schuchhardt, _Schliemann’s
-Excavations_, New York, 1891, passim; Lagrange, _La Crète Ancienne_,
-Paris, 1908, chap. II; Baikie, _The Sea-Kings of Crete_, London, 1910,
-chap. XI.
-
-6. Cf. Fairbanks, _Greek Religion_, New York, 1910, pp. 168-188;
-Stengel, _Griechische Kultusaltertümer_, 2d ed., Munich, 1898, § 80;
-Wissowa, _Religion und Kultus der Römer_, 2d ed., Munich, 1912, § 36; W.
-Warde Fowler, _Religious Experience of the Roman People_, London, 1911,
-passim; and especially Lecture XVII, “Mysticism--Ideas of the Future
-Life;” C. Pascal, _Le Credenze d’Oltretomba_, 2 vols., 1912.
-
-7. B. I. Wheeler, _Dionysos and Immortality_, Ingersoll Lecture for
-1898-99. The classic work on Orphism is Rohde, _Psyche: Seelencult und
-Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen_, 3d ed., Tübingen, 1903, vol. ii.
-
-8. _Frg._ 154 Abel.
-
-9. Apparently Orphism was already established at Croton in southern
-Italy when Pythagoras arrived there about 530 B.C.; but the matter is
-very uncertain. It is clear that Orphism and Pythagoreanism soon
-coalesced, even if they were originally distinct.
-
-10. _Rep._, vi, 508 f. It should be said that the identity of Plato’s
-supreme idea with God is denied by some Platonists; but cf. _Phil._ 22C;
-_Tim._ 28A-29E, 57A, 92C.
-
-11. The doctrine of ideas is developed in the _Phaedo_, _Phaedrus_,
-_Meno_, _Symposium_, and especially in the _Republic_. In the _Sophist_
-and the _Parmenides_, Plato criticizes his own views acutely.
-
-12. _Metaphys._, i, 9; vi, 8; xii, 10; xiii, 3.
-
-13. _Phaedrus_, 245 (cf. _Laws_, x, 894B ff., xii, 966E); _Phaedo_, 72
-ff., 86, 105; _Meno_, 81 ff.
-
-14. _Diss._, i, 14, 6; ii, 8, 11.
-
-15. Cf. E. V. Arnold, _Roman Stoicism_, University Press, Cambridge
-(Eng.), 1911, chap. XI.
-
-16. Rohde, _Psyche_, ii^3, 379 ff.
-
-17. _CIL._, ii, 1434; cf. 1877, 2262.
-
-18. _CIL._, v, 1939.
-
-19. _CIL._, vi, 14672 = _Ins. Graec._, xiv, 1746.
-
-20. Call., _Epig._, 13, 3 ff.
-
-21. _CIL._, iii, 5825; vi, 9280, 10848; x, 6706; etc.
-
-22. _Aen._, vi, 723-751. Translation by Theodore C. Williams, Houghton
-Mifflin Company, Boston, 1908.
-
-23. On these mysteries, see Rohde, _Psyche_, i^3, pp. 278 ff.; Farnell,
-_Cults of the Greek States_, iii, 126-213; A. Mommsen, _Feste der Stadt
-Athen_, pp. 204-277, 405-421.
-
-24. 480 f.
-
-25. _Frg._ 137.
-
-26. _Frg._ 753.
-
-27. 454 ff.
-
-28. _Eph. Arch._, iii (1883), p. 81, 8.
-
-29. On these and other oriental gods, see F. Cumont, _The Oriental
-Religions in Roman Paganism_, Chicago, 1911; also G. Showerman, _The
-Great Mother of the Gods_, 1901; Hepding, _Attis_, 1903; W. Budge,
-_Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection_, 2 vols., 1911; G. A. Reisner,
-_The Egyptian Conception of Immortality_, Ingersoll Lecture for 1911; F.
-Cumont, _Textes et Monuments relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra_, 2 vols.,
-1894-1900; Id., _Les Mystères de Mithra_, 2 ed., 1902; English
-translation, 1910.
-
-30. Apuleius, _Metamorphoses_, xi, 23.
-
-31. _Enn._, iv, 7.
-
-32. Cf. Plato, _Rep._, 364 B ff.; _Demosth._, xviii, 259; Apul., _Met._,
-viii, 24 ff.
-
-33. R. H. Charles, _A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life
-in Israel, in Judaism, and in Christianity_, London, 1899, is a
-convenient book, but one which must be used with caution.
-
-34. A. Harnack, _Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte_, i, 4th ed., 1909;
-English translation from the third German edition, 1901; G. B. Stevens,
-_The Theology of the New Testament_, 1903; H. Holtzmann, _Lehrbuch der
-neutestamentlichen Theologie_, 2 vols., 2d ed., 1911.
-
-35. _Rep._, ii, 363 D.
-
-36. _Apol._, 41.
-
-37. It should be said that even in the earliest period Christian baptism
-had certain magical notions attached to it; not, however, the belief
-that it secured immortality.
-
-38. Cf. Hatch, _The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages on the Christian
-Church_, X, B; Anrich, _Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf
-das Christentum_, 1894, pp. 168 ff., especially 179 ff.
-
-39. _Hom. in Num._, xxv; _in Ps._ xxxvi, 3.
-
-40. _C. D._, xx, 25; xxi, 13 (where Virgil’s verses given above are
-quoted), 26; _de octo Dulcitii Quaest._, _Qu._ i, 13; _Enchiridion_,
-lxix.
-
-41. St. Thomas, _Opera_ (Venice, 1759), xii, p. 575, _Distinctio_ xxi,
-_Quaes._ 1, _Sol._ 3; xiii, p. 347 ff., _Distinctio_ xliv, _Quaes._ 3,
-_Art._ 4, _Quaestiunc._ 3; Bellarmino, _de Purgatorio_, II, x-xii.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
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-Title: Pagan Ideas of Immortality During the Early Roman Empire
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-Author: Clifford Herschel Moore
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-Release Date: December 29, 2016 [EBook #53829]
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-
-<hr class="full" />
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="311" height="500" alt="" title="" />
-</div>
-
-<div class="bbox">
-
-<p class="c"><span class="eng">Ingersoll Lectures on Immortality</span></p>
-
-<p class="c">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</p>
-<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Immortality and the New Theodicy.</span> By George A. Gordon. 1896.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Human Immortality.</span> Two supposed Objections to the Doctrine. By
-William James. 1897.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Dionysos and Immortality</span>: The Greek Faith in Immortality as
-affected by the rise of Individualism. By Benjamin Ide Wheeler.
-1898.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">The Conception of Immortality.</span> By Josiah Royce. 1899.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Life Everlasting.</span> By John Fiske. 1900.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Science and Immortality.</span> By William Osler. 1904.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">The Endless Life.</span> By Samuel M. Crothers. 1905.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Individuality and Immortality.</span> By Wilhelm Ostwald. 1906.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">The Hope of Immortality.</span> By Charles F. Dole. 1907.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Buddhism and Immortality.</span> By William S. Bigelow. 1908.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Is Immortality Desirable?</span> By G. Lowes Dickinson. 1909.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Egyptian Conceptions of Immortality.</span> By George A. Reisner. 1911.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Intimations of Immortality in the Sonnets of Shakespeare.</span> By George
-H. Palmer. 1912.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Metempsychosis.</span> By George Foot Moore. 1914.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Pagan Ideas of Immortality During the Early Roman Empire.</span> By
-Clifford Herschel Moore. 1918.</p></div>
-
-</div>
-
-<p class="c">
-PAGAN IDEAS OF<br />
-
-IMMORTALITY DURING THE<br />
-
-EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE<br />
-<br /><br /><br /><br /><span class="eng"><big>The Ingersoll Lecture, 1918</big></span></p>
-
-<h1>
-Pagan Ideas of<br />
-
-Immortality During the<br />
-
-Early Roman Empire</h1>
-
-<p class="c">
-By<br />
-<br />
-Clifford Herschel Moore, Ph.D., Litt.D.<br />
-
-<i>Professor of Latin in Harvard University</i><br />
-<br />
-<img src="images/colophon.png" width="80" alt="colophon" title="" />
-<br />
-<br />
-Cambridge<br />
-Harvard University Press<br />
-London: Humphrey Milford<br />
-Oxford University Press<br />
-<br />
-1918<br />
-<br />
-COPYRIGHT, 1918<br />
-HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS<br />
-</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p class="cb">THE INGERSOLL LECTURESHIP</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary=""
-style="border: 2px black solid;margin:2em auto 2em auto;max-width:25%;
-padding:1%;">
-<tr><td>
-<p class="c">
-<a href="#I">I </a>,
-<a href="#II">II </a>,
-<a href="#III">III </a>,
-<a href="#IV">IV</a>.<br />
-<a href="#NOTES">NOTES</a><br />
-</p>
-</td></tr>
-</table>
-
-<p class="cb"><i>Extract from the will of Miss Caroline Haskell Ingersoll, who died in
-Keene, County of Cheshire, New Hampshire, Jan. 26, 1893</i></p>
-
-<p><i>First.</i> In carrying out the wishes of my late beloved father, George
-Goldthwait Ingersoll, as declared by him in his last will and testament,
-I give and bequeath to Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., where my
-late father was graduated, and which he always held in love and honor,
-the sum of Five thousand dollars ($5,000) as a fund for the
-establishment of a Lectureship on a plan somewhat similar to that of the
-Dudleian lecture, that is&mdash;one lecture to be delivered each year, on any
-convenient day between the last day of May and the first day of
-December, on this subject, “the Immortality of Man,” said lecture not to
-form a part of the usual college course, nor to be delivered by any
-Professor or Tutor as part of his usual routine of instruction, though
-any such Professor or Tutor may be appointed to such service. The choice
-of said lecturer is not to be limited to any one religious denomination,
-nor to any one profession, but may be that of either clergyman or
-layman, the appointment to take place at least six months before the
-delivery of said lecture. The above sum to be safely invested and three
-fourths of the annual interest thereof to be paid to the lecturer for
-his services and the remaining fourth to be expended in the publishment
-and gratuitous distribution of the lecture, a copy of which is always to
-be furnished by the lecturer for such purpose. The same lecture to be
-named and known as “the Ingersoll lecture on the Immortality of Man.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_1" id="page_1"></a>{1}</span></p>
-
-<h1>PAGAN IDEAS OF IMMORTALITY DURING THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE</h1>
-
-<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
-
-<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>HE invitation of the committee charged with the administration of the
-Ingersoll lectureship and my own inclination have agreed in indicating
-that aspect of the general subject of immortality, which I shall try to
-present tonight. I shall not venture on this occasion to advance
-arguments for or against belief in a life after death; my present task
-is a humbler one: I propose to ask you to review with me some of the
-more significant ideas concerning an existence beyond the grave, which
-were current in the Greco-Roman world in the time of Jesus and during
-the earlier Christian centuries, and to consider<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_2" id="page_2"></a>{2}</span> briefly the relation
-of these pagan beliefs to Christian ideas on the same subject. In
-dealing with a topic so vast as this in a single hour, we must select
-those elements which historically showed themselves to be fundamental
-and vital; but even then we cannot examine much detail. It may prove,
-however, that a rapid survey of those concepts of the future life, whose
-influence lasted long during the Christian centuries, and indeed has
-continued to the present day, may not be without profit.</p>
-
-<p>The most important single religious document from the Augustan Age is
-the sixth book of Virgil’s Aeneid; for although the Aeneid was written
-primarily to glorify Roman imperial aims, the sixth book gives full
-expression to many philosophic and popular ideas of the other world and
-of the future life, which were current among both Greeks and Romans.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_1" id="anc_1"></a><a href="#note_1">[1]</a></span>
-It therefore makes a fitting point of departure<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_3" id="page_3"></a>{3}</span> for our considerations.
-In this book, as you will remember, the poet’s hero, having reached
-Italian soil at last, is led down to the lower world by the Cumaean
-Sybil. This descent to Hades belongs historically to that long series of
-apocalyptic writings which begins with the eleventh book of the Odyssey
-and closes with Dante’s Divine Comedy. Warde Fowler deserves credit for
-clearly pointing out that this visit of Aeneas to the world below is the
-final ordeal for him, a mystic initiation, in which he receives
-“enlightenment for the toil, peril, and triumph that await him in the
-accomplishment of his divine mission.” When the Trojan hero has learned
-from his father’s shade the mysteries of life and death, and has been
-taught the magnitude of the work which lies before him, and the great
-things that are to be, he casts off the timidity which he has hitherto
-shown and, strengthened<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_4" id="page_4"></a>{4}</span> by his experiences, advances to the perfect
-accomplishment of his task.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_2" id="anc_2"></a><a href="#note_2">[2]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>But we are not concerned so much with Virgil’s purpose in writing this
-apocalyptic book, as with its contents and with the evidence it gives as
-to the current ideas of the other world and the fate of the human soul.
-What then does the poet tell us of these great matters? We can hardly do
-better than to follow Aeneas and his guide on their journey. This side
-of Acheron they meet the souls of those whose bodies are unburied, and
-who therefore must tarry a hundred years&mdash;the maximum of human
-life&mdash;before they may be ferried over the river which bounds Hades. When
-Charon has set the earthly visitors across that stream, they find
-themselves in a place where are gathered spirits of many kinds, who have
-not yet been admitted to Tartarus or Elysium: first the souls of infants
-and those who met their end by violence&mdash;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_5" id="page_5"></a>{5}</span>men condemned to death though
-innocent, suicides, those who died for love, and warriors&mdash;all of whom
-must here wait until the span of life allotted them has been completed.
-These spirits passed, the mortal visitors come to the walls of Tartarus,
-on whose torments Aeneas is not allowed to look, for</p>
-
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
-<span class="i0">“The feet of innocence may never pass<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Into this house of sin.”<br /></span>
-</div></div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="nind">But the Sybil, herself taught by Hecate, reveals to him the eternal
-punishments there inflicted for monstrous crimes. Then the visitors pass
-to Elysium, where dwell the souls of those whose deserts on earth have
-won for them a happy lot. Nearby in a green valley, Aeneas finds the
-shade of his own father, Anchises, looking eagerly at the souls which
-are waiting to be born into the upper world. In answer to his son’s
-questions, the heroic shade discloses the doctrine of
-rebirths&mdash;metempsychosis&mdash;with its<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_6" id="page_6"></a>{6}</span> tenets of penance and of
-purification.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_3" id="anc_3"></a><a href="#note_3">[3]</a></span> Finally, to fulfill the poet’s purpose, Anchises’
-spirit points out the souls of the heroes who are to come on earth in
-due season; the spirits of future Romans pass before Aeneas in long
-array; and at the climax he sees the soul of Augustus, that prince who
-was destined in the fullness of time to bring back the Golden Age and to
-impose peace on the wide world. This prophetic revelation ended, Aeneas
-enlightened and strengthened for his task, returns to the upper world.</p>
-
-<p>This book seems at first a strange compound indeed of popular belief,
-philosophy, and theology, which is not without its contradictions. On
-these, however, we need not pause; but for our present interest we must
-ask what are the main ideas on which this apocalypse is based. First of
-all, a future life is taken for granted by the poet; otherwise the book
-could never have been written. Secondly,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_7" id="page_7"></a>{7}</span> we notice that, according to
-ancient popular belief, the souls of those who had not received the
-proper burial rites, were doomed to wander on this side of Acheron until
-a hundred years were completed, and also that souls which were
-disembodied by violence or by early death, were destined to live out
-their allotted span of earthly existence before they could enter the
-inner precincts of Hades. Again the poet represents some few as
-suffering eternal torments for their monstrous sins or enjoying immortal
-bliss because of their great deserts. And finally, he shows that the
-majority of souls must pass through successive lives and deaths, until,
-purified from the sin and dross of the body by millennial sojourns in
-the world below, and by virtuous lives on earth, they at last find
-repose and satisfaction. The popular beliefs which concern details of
-the future life we shall leave one side for the moment; let us<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_8" id="page_8"></a>{8}</span> rather
-first observe that Virgil’s ideas as to rewards and punishments in the
-next world, as well as his doctrine of successive rebirths and deaths
-with their accompanying purifications, rest on a moral basis, so that
-the other world is conceived to be a complement of this: life on earth
-and life below are opportunities for moral advance without which final
-happiness cannot be attained. Whence came these ideas of the future life
-and how far were they current in the ancient world of Virgil’s day?</p>
-
-<p>Naturally it does not follow that, because Rome’s greatest poet chose to
-picture souls surviving their corporeal homes, the average man believed
-in a future life, but there is abundant evidence that the poet was
-appealing to widespread beliefs, when he wrote his apocalyptic book.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_4" id="anc_4"></a><a href="#note_4">[4]</a></span>
-In fact from the earliest times known to us, both Greeks and Romans held
-to a belief in some kind of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_9" id="page_9"></a>{9}</span> extended life for souls after the death of
-the body.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_5" id="anc_5"></a><a href="#note_5">[5]</a></span> Both peoples had their cults of the dead, rites of tendance
-and of riddance, festivals both public and private, which leave no doubt
-that the great majority of men never questioned that the spirits of the
-departed existed after this life, and that those spirits were endowed
-with power to harm or to bless the living.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_6" id="anc_6"></a><a href="#note_6">[6]</a></span> But beyond this rather
-elementary stage of belief the Romans never went of themselves. The
-Greeks, however, began early to develop eschatological ideas which had,
-and which still have, great importance.</p>
-
-<p>The eleventh book of the Odyssey, as I have already said, is the oldest
-“Descent to Hades” in European literature. The souls of the dead are
-there represented as dwelling in the land of shadows, having no life,
-but leading an insubstantial existence, without punishment or reward.
-Such a future world could have no moral<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_10" id="page_10"></a>{10}</span> or other value; it could only
-hang over men as a gloomy prospect of that which awaited them when the
-suns of this world had forever set. But in the seventh and sixth
-centuries <small>B.C.</small> other ideas came to the front, which were influential
-throughout later history. In those two centuries fall the first period
-of Greek individualism and a religious revival&mdash;two things not wholly
-disconnected. The Orphic sect, which appeared in the sixth century, was
-made up of religious devotees who adopted a purified form of the
-religion of Dionysus.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_7" id="anc_7"></a><a href="#note_7">[7]</a></span> The center of the Orphic faith and mystic
-ceremonial was the myth of the birth, destruction, and rebirth of the
-god. According to the story, Dionysus was pursued by the Titans, powers
-hostile to Zeus. In his distress the god changed himself into various
-creatures, finally taking on the form of a bull, which the Titans tore
-in pieces and devoured. But the goddess Athena saved<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_11" id="page_11"></a>{11}</span> the heart and gave
-it to Zeus who swallowed it. Hence sprang the new Dionysus. The Titans
-Zeus destroyed with his thunderbolt and had the ashes scattered to the
-winds. From these ashes, in one form of the myth, man was made, and
-therefore he was thought to unite in his person the sinful Titanic
-nature and the divine Dionysiac spark. The parallelism between this
-story and the myths of Osiris, Attis, and Adonis is at once evident.
-They are all gods who die and live again, and thus become lords of death
-and life, through whom man gains assurance of his own immortality.</p>
-
-<p>Our chief concern with the Orphics here is that they seem to have
-introduced among the Greeks the idea that the soul of man was divine,
-was a [Greek: daimôn] which had fallen, and for its punishment was
-imprisoned in the body as in a tomb. In its corporeal cell it was
-condemned to suffer defilement until released by death,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_12" id="page_12"></a>{12}</span> when it passed
-to Hades. Its lot there depended on its life on earth. As an Orphic
-fragment says: “They who are righteous beneath the rays of the sun, when
-they die, have a gentler lot in a fair meadow by deep flowing
-Acheron.... But they who have worked wrong and insolence under the rays
-of the sun are led down beneath Cocytus’s watery plain into chill
-Tartarus.”<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_8" id="anc_8"></a><a href="#note_8">[8]</a></span> The soul’s sojourn in Hades therefore was a time of
-punishment and of purification, even as life itself was a penance for
-sin. According to a common belief, at least in Plato’s day, after a
-thousand years the soul entered a new incarnation, and so on through ten
-rounds of earth and Hades, until at last, freed from sin and earthly
-dross by faithful observance of a holy life on earth and by the
-purification which it underwent below, it returned to its divine abode;
-but those who persisted in sin were condemned to all the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_13" id="page_13"></a>{13}</span> punishments
-which man’s imagination could devise; the wicked were doomed to lie in
-mud and filth, while evil demons rent their vitals. Indeed the horrors
-which the medieval Christian loved to depict in order to terrify the
-wicked and to rejoice the faithful, were first devised by the Orphics
-and their heirs, for exactly the same purpose.</p>
-
-<p>But what bases did the Orphics find for their belief in the divine
-nature of the soul? In their mythology they had said that man was
-created out of the ashes of the Titans in which a spark of Dionysus
-still remained. But in fact they seem to have rested on faith or
-intuition, without working out clearly a philosophic answer. They were
-indeed deeply conscious of man’s dual nature; they perceived that on the
-one hand he is pulled by his baser instincts and desires, which they
-naturally attributed to the body, and that on the other hand he is
-prompted by nobler<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_14" id="page_14"></a>{14}</span> aspirations, which they assigned to his soul. This
-higher part of man’s dual self was, for them, the Dionysiac element in
-him. And man’s moral obligation they held to be to free this divine
-element from the clogging weight of the body, to cease to “blind his
-soul with clay.” So far as we are aware, the Orphics were the first
-among the Greeks to make the divinity of the soul a motive for the
-religious life, and perhaps the first to see that, if the soul is
-divine, it may naturally be regarded as eternally so, and therefore as
-immortal. What more momentous thoughts as to the soul’s nature and its
-destiny could any sect have introduced than these? They were shared by
-their contemporaries, the Pythagoreans; in fact it is hard to say with
-certainty which sect developed these concepts first.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_9" id="anc_9"></a><a href="#note_9">[9]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>But the Orphic-Pythagorean confidence in the immortality of the soul
-was<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_15" id="page_15"></a>{15}</span> at the most only an emotional belief. It remained for Plato in the
-early fourth century to give that belief a philosophic basis and thereby
-to transform it into a reasonable article of religion. This he
-fundamentally did, when he brought his concept of the reasoning soul
-into connection with his doctrine of “forms” or “ideas.” He maintained
-that behind this transient phenomenal world known to us through the
-senses, lies another world, the world of ideas, invisible, permanent,
-and real, which can be grasped by the reason only. These permanent
-ideas, he said, are of various grades and degrees, the supreme idea
-being that of the Good and the Beautiful, which is the cause of all
-existence, truth, and knowledge; it at once comprehends these things
-within itself and is superior to them; it is the Absolute, God.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_10" id="anc_10"></a><a href="#note_10">[10]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>But all the ideas, including the Absolute, are, as I have just said,
-apprehended<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_16" id="page_16"></a>{16}</span> not by man’s senses but by his intellect. Therefore, argues
-Plato, man’s reasoning soul must have the same nature as the ideas; like
-them, it must belong to the world above the senses and with them it must
-partake of the Absolute. Moreover, since the ideas are eternal and
-immortal, it inevitably follows that man’s reasoning soul has existed
-from eternity and will exist forever.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_11" id="anc_11"></a><a href="#note_11">[11]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>This is not the occasion to discuss the validity of Plato’s doctrine.
-Aristotle stated, once for all, the fundamental objections to his
-teacher’s views.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_12" id="anc_12"></a><a href="#note_12">[12]</a></span> But we shall readily grant that, if we accept
-Plato’s doctrine, his conclusions as to the immortality of the soul may
-logically follow and that no further evidence is needed to convince us.
-Yet Plato was not content to let the matter rest on this single
-argument, for in other dialogues he adduces proofs which do not seem so
-convincing to us as to their author. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_17" id="page_17"></a>{17}</span> attempts to prove immortality
-from the self-motion of the soul, again from the dim recollections out
-of an earlier existence which enable one to recall axiomatic truths or
-to recognize relations, as in mathematics&mdash;things which one has never
-learned in this present life. On another occasion he argues from the
-unchanging nature of the soul and from the soul’s superiority to the
-body. But he seems to have thought the most convincing proof was the
-fact that the notion of life is inseparable from our concept of the
-soul; that is, a dead soul is unthinkable. For all these reasons,
-therefore, he argued that the soul must be immortal.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_13" id="anc_13"></a><a href="#note_13">[13]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Whatever we may think of Plato’s different proofs, they have furnished
-the armories of apologists almost down to our own day. In antiquity they
-were constantly repeated, in whole or in part, not only by devoted
-members of the Academy and later by the Neoplatonists,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_18" id="page_18"></a>{18}</span> but by the
-Eclectics and others, like Cicero in the first book of his Tusculan
-Disputations, and at the close of Scipio’s Dream; they were borrowed by
-the Stoics, and some eight hundred years after Plato had first
-formulated them, they were employed by St. Augustine in his tract <i>De
-Immortalitate Animae</i>. The religious intuition of the Orphic and
-Pythagorean then was given a rational basis by Plato, and thus
-supported, proved so convincing to antiquity that Plato’s views were the
-most important of all in supporting belief in the soul’s immortality.
-They were in large measure taken up by the Christian church, and, as has
-been often shown, the doctrine of a spiritual immortality apart and free
-from the body, was of immense service to primitive Christianity, when
-the hope of the early return of Christ to found a new kingdom on earth
-faded before the lengthening years.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_19" id="page_19"></a>{19}</span></p>
-
-<p>To Plato himself his belief in immortality was of the greatest moment,
-for the whole fabric of his ethical and political philosophy is built
-against the background of that doctrine. And indeed we should all grant
-much validity to the argument that the human reason, though weak and
-limited, is one with the divine and infinite reason; otherwise the human
-could have no understanding of the divine. But when it is further argued
-that if the human reason is of the same nature with the divine, it must
-be eternal and immortal, we may reply that, even so, we are not
-convinced that the individual soul must therefore have a conscious and
-separate existence through all eternity; its identity may be lost by
-absorption into the universal reason, the supreme idea. This is a matter
-on which Plato nowhere delivers a clear opinion, but his thought is so
-plainly centered on the individual soul that we can hardly<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_20" id="page_20"></a>{20}</span> believe that
-it was possible for him to conceive of the soul’s personality ever being
-lost in the Absolute.</p>
-
-<p>Although Plato and his greatest pupil, Aristotle, regarded man’s
-reasoning soul as spiritual, something distinct from matter, few ancient
-thinkers were able to rise to the concept of the immateriality of man’s
-reasoning nature. The Stoics, who in their eclectic system borrowed from
-both Plato and Aristotle, as well as from many other predecessors, held
-to a strict materialism which they took from Heraclitus. But to their
-material principle they applied a concept which they took from
-Aristotle, for they recognized in all things the existence of an active
-and a passive principle, and they said that by the action of the former
-on the latter, all phenomena were produced. The active principle they
-called reason, intelligence, the cause of all things. It was the
-world-reason which,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_21" id="page_21"></a>{21}</span> according to their view, permeated every part of
-the cosmos, causing and directing all things. To express their concept
-of its nature, they often named it Fire, the most powerful and active of
-the elements, or rather the primordial element; again they often called
-it God, for they did not hesitate to speak of this immanent principle as
-a person. Furthermore, since man is a part of the cosmos, the
-world-reason expresses itself in him. Indeed man’s reason, the directing
-element of the human soul, is itself a part of the world-reason, or in
-Epictetus’ striking phrase, man is “a fragment of God.”<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_14" id="anc_14"></a><a href="#note_14">[14]</a></span> At this
-point the Stoic and the Platonist were in accord, although the paths of
-thought which they had travelled were very different. Yet the Stoic
-could not agree with the Platonist that the individual soul survived
-forever, since he held to a cyclical theory of the cosmos, according to
-which this present universe<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_22" id="page_22"></a>{22}</span> was temporal. It had been created by the
-eternal fire, by the world-reason, from itself, and it was destined in
-due season to sink back again into universal fire. Meantime, according
-to the views of most Stoics, the souls of the just would survive this
-body, ascending to the spheres above the world, where they would dwell
-until absorbed once more into the divine element from which they sprang.
-To the souls of the wicked only a short period at most of post-corporeal
-existence was granted&mdash;brevity of life or annihilation was their
-punishment.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_15" id="anc_15"></a><a href="#note_15">[15]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Strictly speaking, the prospect of the limited existence after death,
-which the Stoics held out as virtue’s reward, should have had little
-value for the philosophic mind, especially as their philosophy offered
-no warrant that personality would survive at all. But it would seem that
-men at every period of human history have had immortal longings in them
-so<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_23" id="page_23"></a>{23}</span> strong that they have eagerly embraced the assurance of even a brief
-respite from annihilation; certain it is that to many Greeks and Romans
-the Stoic doctrine of a limited existence after death was a strong
-incentive to virtue and a consolation in the midst of this world’s
-trials.</p>
-
-<p>But no doctrine of the post-corporeal existence of the soul has ever had
-the field entirely to itself. We know that in antiquity even the Stoic
-conception of the soul’s limited survival, to say nothing of Platonic
-beliefs in actual immortality, met with much opposition and denial among
-the intellectual classes. The Epicureans, with their thorough-going
-atomistic materialism, would not allow that the soul had any existence
-apart from the body; on the contrary, they held that the soul came into
-being at the moment of conception, grew with the body, and, at the
-body’s death, was once more dissolved into the atoms from which it
-first<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_24" id="page_24"></a>{24}</span> was formed. Epicurean polemics were directed against both popular
-superstitions and Platonic metaphysics; the attacks had the advantage of
-offering rational, and for the day scientific, explanations of natural
-phenomena, which fed human curiosity as to the causes of things, and
-which, if accepted, might logically lead to that freedom from the soul’s
-perturbation which was the aim of the teaching. Moreover, the noble
-resignation, the high moral and humane zeal, which characterized the
-Epicurean School at its best, as well as its easy decline into
-hedonistic appeals, made it popular, especially in the last two
-centuries before our era. But the very fire and passion of Lucretius,
-its most gifted Latin exponent, give us the impression that after all
-most men were not moved to find the peace which the poet promised them,
-if they would but accept the doctrine of the soul’s dissolution at the
-moment of death.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_25" id="page_25"></a>{25}</span></p>
-
-<p>The Sceptics also, who claimed not an inconsiderable number of
-intellectuals, doubted the possibility of a future life, or found
-themselves unable to decide the matter at all. Like Tennyson’s Sage they
-would declare:</p>
-
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
-<span class="i0">“Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one:<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Thou canst not prove that thou art immortal, no,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Nor yet that thou art mortal.”<br /></span>
-</div></div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="nind">Indeed it is true that of all the philosophic sects at the beginning of
-our era, only those which were imbued with Platonic and
-Orphic-Pythagorean ideas, had confidence in the soul’s immortality. The
-Stoic position we have already discussed. Some scholars, following
-Rohde,<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_16" id="anc_16"></a><a href="#note_16">[16]</a></span> claim that there was little belief<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_26" id="page_26"></a>{26}</span> in any kind of a future
-life among the educated classes at the time we are considering; this I
-hold to be an error, although it is certain that the Epicureans and
-Sceptics had a large following. In any case we need to remind ourselves
-that the intellectuals are always a small minority, whose views may not
-represent in any way popular beliefs.</p>
-
-<p>We are, however, not without evidence that there were doubters among the
-common people. Flippant epigrams and epitaphs show that men could at
-least assume a cynicism toward life and a light-heartedness toward death
-which equal Lucian’s. More than once we can read funerary inscriptions
-to this effect: “I was nothing, I am nothing. Do thou who art still
-alive, eat, drink, be merry, come.”<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_17" id="anc_17"></a><a href="#note_17">[17]</a></span> Or sentiments like this: “Once I
-had no existence; now I have none. I am not aware of it. It does not
-concern me.”<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_18" id="anc_18"></a><a href="#note_18">[18]</a></span> Again we find the denial: “In<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_27" id="page_27"></a>{27}</span> Hades there is no boat,
-no Charon, no Aeacus who holds the keys, no Cerberus. All of us, whom
-death has taken away are rotten bones and ashes; nothing more.”<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_19" id="anc_19"></a><a href="#note_19">[19]</a></span> The
-sentiments are perhaps as old as thinking man. They have at times
-touches of humor which call forth a smile, as in the anxious inquiries
-of Callimachus’ epigram: “Charidas, what is below?” “Deep darkness.”
-“But what of the paths upward?” “All a lie.” “And Pluto?” “Mere talk.”
-“Then we’re lost.”<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_20" id="anc_20"></a><a href="#note_20">[20]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Such expressions, of course, must not be given too much weight in our
-reckoning. The longing for annihilation, which appeals at times to most
-weary mortals, also led to dedications “to eternal rest” or “to eternal
-sleep.”<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_21" id="anc_21"></a><a href="#note_21">[21]</a></span> But after all the number of such epitaphs is comparatively
-small. In the nature of the case many funerary inscriptions give no
-testimony for or against a belief in<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_28" id="page_28"></a>{28}</span> immortality; but large numbers
-show confidence, or a hope, in a future life.</p>
-
-<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
-
-<p>The time has now come for us to return from our rather long historical
-survey to Virgil’s Apocalypse, and to listen to the words with which
-Anchises’ shade taught his eager son:</p>
-
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
-<span class="i0">“Know first that heaven and earth and ocean’s plain,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">The moon’s bright orb, and stars of Titan birth<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Are nourished by one Life; one primal Mind,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Immingled with the vast and general frame,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Fills every part and stirs the mighty whole.<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Thence man and beast, thence creatures of the air,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">And all the swarming monsters that be found<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Beneath the level of the marbled sea;<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">A fiery virtue, a celestial power,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Their native seeds retain; but bodies vile,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">With limbs of clay and members born to die,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Encumber and o’ercloud; whence also spring<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Terrors and passions, suffering and joy;<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_29" id="page_29"></a>{29}</span><br /></span>
-<span class="i1">For from deep darkness and captivity<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">All gaze but blindly on the radiant world.<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Nor when to life’s last beam they bid farewell<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">May sufferers cease from pain, nor quite be freed<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">From all their fleshly plagues; but by fixed law,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">The strange, inveterate taint works deeply in.<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">For this, the chastisement of evils past<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Is suffered here, and full requital paid.<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Some hang on high, outstretched to viewless winds;<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">For some their sin’s contagion must be purged<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">In vast ablution of deep-rolling seas,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Or burned away in fire. Each man receives<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">His ghostly portion in the world of dark;<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">But thence to realms Elysian we go free,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Where for a few these seats of bliss abide,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Till time’s long lapse a perfect orb fulfills,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">And takes all taint away, restoring so<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">The pure, ethereal soul’s first virgin fire.<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">At last, when the millennial aeon strikes,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">God calls them forth to yon Lethaean stream,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">In numerous host, that thence, oblivious all,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">They may behold once more the vaulted sky,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">And willingly to shapes of flesh return.”<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_22" id="anc_22"></a><a href="#note_22">[22]</a></span><br /></span>
-</div></div>
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_30" id="page_30"></a>{30}</span></p>
-
-<p class="nind">These words express the commingled beliefs of Orphic, Pythagorean,
-Platonist, and Stoic. How extensively such beliefs were held by Virgil’s
-contemporaries we cannot say with accuracy, but certain it is that this
-book and this passage would never have made the religious appeal which
-they made in antiquity, if they had not corresponded to widespread
-convictions.</p>
-
-<p>But Virgil’s sixth book contains much more than the eschatological views
-of philosophic schools; it reflects to an extraordinary degree popular
-ideas and practices. I have already referred to the fact that it
-represents a mystic initiation of Virgil’s hero as preparation for his
-holy task. Now we know that at all times the convictions of the majority
-of men are founded not on the arguments which thinkers can supply, but
-on hopes, intuitions, and emotional experiences. Such were the grounds
-on which the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_31" id="page_31"></a>{31}</span> Orphic built his hope of the purified soul’s ultimate
-happiness. More popular than Orphism were the Greek mysteries, of which
-the most important were those celebrated annually at Eleusis in Attica.
-There the story of the rape of Proserpina, of Demeter’s search for her
-daughter, and of the daughter’s recovery, formed the center of a mystic
-ceremonial. Originally these mysteries were no doubt agricultural rites
-intended to call to life the dead grain in the spring. But before the
-seventh century, <small>B.C.</small>, the festival had been transformed; the miracle of
-the reviving vegetation, of the grain which dies and lives again, here,
-as so many times elsewhere, had become the symbol and assurance of human
-immortality.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_23" id="anc_23"></a><a href="#note_23">[23]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Before admission to the annual celebration the would-be initiate was
-duly purified. During the celebration the initiated, by their own acts,
-recalled Demeter<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_32" id="page_32"></a>{32}</span>’s hunt for her daughter, roaming the shore with
-lighted torches; like the goddess, they fasted and then broke their fast
-by drinking a holy potion of meal and water; in the great hall of
-initiation they witnessed a mystic drama, perhaps saw holy objects
-exhibited and explained. In any case they underwent an emotional
-experience which so confirmed their intuitional belief in immortality,
-that they were confident of peace and happiness in this life and of
-blessedness in the life to come, where they would join in the sacred
-dance, while the uninitiated would be wretched. Many are the expressions
-of this ecclesiastical confidence. The Homeric hymn of Demeter promised:
-“Blessed is he among mortal men who has seen these rites.”<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_24" id="anc_24"></a><a href="#note_24">[24]</a></span> Pindar,
-early in the fifth century, wrote: “Happy he who has seen these things
-and then goes beneath the earth, for he knows the end of life and its
-Zeus-given beginning.”<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_25" id="anc_25"></a><a href="#note_25">[25]</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_33" id="page_33"></a>{33}</span> Sophocles said: “Thrice blessed are they who
-have seen these rites, and then go to the house of Hades, for they alone
-have life there, but all others have only woe.”<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_26" id="anc_26"></a><a href="#note_26">[26]</a></span> At the close of the
-fifth century Aristophanes made his chorus of mystae sing: “For we alone
-have a sun and a holy light, we who have been initiated, and who live
-honorably toward friends and strangers, reverencing the gods.”<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_27" id="anc_27"></a><a href="#note_27">[27]</a></span> In
-the third century of the Christian era, an official of the mysteries set
-up an inscription which declares: “Verily glorious is that mystery
-vouchsafed by the blessed gods, for death is no ill for mortals, but
-rather a good.”<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_28" id="anc_28"></a><a href="#note_28">[28]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>It is difficult for us now to appreciate the widespread influence of
-these Eleusinian mysteries. They had many branches; at Eleusis they
-continued to be celebrated until 396 <small>A.D.</small>, when Alaric the Goth
-destroyed Demeter’s ancient shrine. Other Greek mysteries also<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_34" id="page_34"></a>{34}</span>
-flourished in the Mediterranean world: those of Samothrace; the
-mysteries of Bacchus, whose excesses brought down the displeasure of the
-Roman Senate in 186 <small>B.C.</small>; and in later times the mysteries of Hecate or
-Diana. All had this in common, that they gave the initiate assurance of
-a happy immortality.</p>
-
-<p>Under the Roman Empire the longing for religious satisfaction through
-mystic rites and revelations found new and exotic sources of
-gratification. Slaves, traders, and finally soldiers from Hellenized
-Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, carried their gods throughout the
-Mediterranean world, and even beyond, to the Atlantic Ocean, to
-Hadrian’s Wall in Britain, to the Rhine and Danube, and to the borders
-of the African desert. The invasion of the West by these oriental gods
-began in 204 <small>B.C.</small>, when, in answer to the Roman Senate’s invitation, the
-Asiatic Great Mother of the Gods took up her<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_35" id="page_35"></a>{35}</span> residence in Rome. Many
-other divinities came during the succeeding centuries; but three
-remained most prominent: the Great Mother of the Gods, whom I have just
-mentioned, with her attendant Attis; Egyptian Isis and her associate
-divinities, who were worshipped in Rome as early as Cicero’s day; and
-the Persian Mithras, whose cult became influential in the West toward
-the close of the first century of our era.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_29" id="anc_29"></a><a href="#note_29">[29]</a></span> These religions added to
-their exotic charm that spell which great age casts over men’s
-imaginations. Osiris, the husband of Isis, had been lord of the dead in
-Egypt for more than two thousand years; Attis and the Great Mother
-belonged to an immemorial antiquity; while Mithras had his origin in the
-remoter East, at a period to which neither Greek nor Roman knowledge
-ran. Moreover, Attis and Osiris, like Dionysus and Persephone among the
-Greeks, or the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_36" id="page_36"></a>{36}</span> Semitic Adonis and Tammuz, were gods who died and lived
-again, and who therefore became warrants of man’s immortality. Mithras
-belonged to another class of divinities. He was held to be the
-benefactor and constant supporter of mankind. According to the sacred
-legend, he had himself wrestled with the powers of darkness and had
-established civilization on earth, before he ascended to heaven, whence
-he was believed to aid his faithful followers in their constant struggle
-against the servants of Ahriman, the lord of wickedness.</p>
-
-<p>The devotees of these gods formed sacred communities, admission to which
-was obtained by secret initiation; the rituals were mysteries in which
-the devotee had pictured to him, or himself acted out, the sacred drama,
-whereby he received assurance of divine protection here and of a happy
-immortality hereafter. The initiate, moreover, was<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_37" id="page_37"></a>{37}</span> believed to
-experience a new birth and to enter into union with his god, so that he
-became Osiris-Serapis, or Attis, or Mithras, even as the Dionysiac
-devotee became a Bacchus.</p>
-
-<p>To the question how the comforting assurance of present safety and of
-future immortality was given the initiate, we can return no more
-satisfactory answer than we can make in the case of the Greek mysteries;
-yet we may get some hint from the words which the Latin writer,
-Apuleius, puts into the mouth of his hero, Lucius, who was initiated
-into the rites of Isis. This is all that he might tell: “I approached
-the bounds of death. I trod the threshold of Proserpina. I was carried
-through all the elements and returned again to the upper air. At dead of
-night I saw the sun glowing with a brilliant light. The gods of heaven
-and of hell I approached in very person and worshipped face to<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_38" id="page_38"></a>{38}</span>
-face.”<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_30" id="anc_30"></a><a href="#note_30">[30]</a></span> Obscure as these words are, much is plain. In some way the
-devotee was made to believe that he, like Virgil’s hero, had passed
-through the world of the dead and had been born again into a new life;
-he had touched the elements&mdash;earth, air, water, and fire, the very
-foundations of the visible cosmos; he had seen the sun which ever shines
-on the consecrated; and he had been granted the beatific vision.
-Therefore he knew that his salvation was secure forever.</p>
-
-<p>Furthermore in these mystery religions preparation for the emotional
-experiences of initiation was made by means of lustral baths, fasting,
-abstinence, and penance; once consecrated, the devotee supported his
-religious life by following a prescribed regimen and by participating in
-frequent holy offices; degrees of initiation and grades of office marked
-his advance in faithful proficiency; while<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_39" id="page_39"></a>{39}</span> magic words and formulae,
-committed to memory, assured him a safe passage from this world to the
-next.</p>
-
-<p>The oriental mysteries enjoyed a widespread popularity, except in
-Greece, under the Roman Empire down to the latter half of the third
-century. Then they began to lose their hold in the Roman provinces
-before the growing power of Christianity; yet in the city of Rome they
-stubbornly held their ground until the end of the fourth century. The
-first St. Peter’s was built hard beside a shrine of the Great Mother of
-the Gods; there for three-quarters of a century the old and the new
-mysteries strove in conscious rivalry, until at last Cybele was forced
-to yield to Christ.</p>
-
-<p>The last centuries before the birth of Jesus and the opening centuries
-of our era were marked by an increasing religious longing and unrest,
-first among the Greeks and then among the Romans.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_40" id="page_40"></a>{40}</span> There was a weariness
-and a dissatisfaction with the inherited forms of religious expression;
-and many felt a sense of separation from God, of a gulf between the
-human and the divine, which they hoped might be bridged by a direct
-revelation, by a vision, which would grant immediate knowledge of God.
-These eager desires led in part to an increase in superstition and
-credulity, over which we need not now pause; in part to the resort to
-the oriental mysteries of which I have just spoken; and in part to a
-revival of Pythagorean mysticism and of mystic Platonism among the
-intellectuals, who no longer felt that the reason and the will gave them
-the assurance which they required.</p>
-
-<p>The later mystic philosophies laid much stress on an ascetic discipline
-in this life, to secure the soul’s purification, and all taught that the
-great end of man was to attain to the knowledge of God,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_41" id="page_41"></a>{41}</span> wherein lay
-man’s supreme happiness. Such knowledge, it was thought, could come only
-through a revelation. Here these philosophies agreed with the teaching
-of the oriental mysteries, and indeed with popular belief as well. On
-the question of the immortality of the soul, however, the later mystics
-brought forward no new arguments. Plotinus, the greatest of the
-Neoplatonists, virtually repeats the proofs adduced by the founder of
-the Academy.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_31" id="anc_31"></a><a href="#note_31">[31]</a></span> Undoubtedly during the opening centuries of the
-Christian era there was a growing belief in the soul’s immortality, or
-at least an increasing hope of a future life, but such hopes and
-beliefs, outside Christianity, were not based on new arguments. Plato
-had once for all in antiquity, supplied the philosophic grounds for
-confidence. Only in modern times have new arguments of any weight been
-adduced.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_42" id="page_42"></a>{42}</span></p>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p>Let us now pause to summarize the results of the considerations which
-have thus far occupied us. We may fairly say that, in spite of popular
-doubt, intellectual scepticism, and philosophic denial, beliefs in some
-kind of existence beyond the grave were widespread in the Greco-Roman
-world at the beginning of our era. For many, probably for most, belief
-did not advance beyond inherited intuitions, fears, or hopes, which were
-fostered by tendance of the dead, prescribed by immemorial custom. Many,
-both the simple and the learned, found their assurance in diverse forms
-of Greek mysteries; others, again, strengthened to endure the buffetings
-of this life by the resolute doctrines of Stoicism, were satisfied with
-the extended, though limited, future existence vouchsafed the virtuous;
-while the later Platonists, returning to the mystic Orphic-Pythagorean
-elements which had influenced the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_43" id="page_43"></a>{43}</span> founder of their school, offered
-their disciples arguments in favor of a genuine immortality. Under the
-Empire the supports of faith became more numerous and appealing. At the
-lowest end of the scale were charlatans, as there had been since Plato’s
-day,<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_32" id="anc_32"></a><a href="#note_32">[32]</a></span> who imposed on the fears and hopes of their victims for their
-own mercenary ends. Higher were those inspiring Eastern mysteries which
-were carried to the remotest provinces, binding their devotees by
-initiation, ritual service, and a prescribed regimen, more constantly to
-a religious life than Greek mysteries had ever done; and the great end
-of all was the assurance that the souls of the faithful should not die,
-but should mount to the upper heavens to be at one with God.</p>
-
-<p>The last vital philosophy of antiquity was Neoplatonism, on which we
-have just touched; the chief aim of the Neoplatonist also was to secure
-union with<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_44" id="page_44"></a>{44}</span> the Divine, and his greatest article of faith was the soul’s
-immortality. If this theosophic philosophy seem to any of poor account,
-I would remind him that by Origen and Augustine Neoplatonism was brought
-into Christian thought, where it has been operative ever since.</p>
-
-<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
-
-<p>In view of the facts with which we have been occupied we shall not make
-the error of thinking that Christianity brought the hope of immortality
-among men, for, as we have seen, hope&mdash;nay, sure confidence, in the
-soul’s survival was widespread throughout the ancient world when Jesus
-began his ministry. What can we say of early Christian teaching, and how
-was it related to its pagan environment?</p>
-
-<p>Christianity grew out of Judaism. Now it is a striking fact that the
-Jews were later than most of the peoples about<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_45" id="page_45"></a>{45}</span> them in conceiving of
-individual immortality.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_33" id="anc_33"></a><a href="#note_33">[33]</a></span> Clinging to monotheism and absorbed in the
-life of their nation, they had cut themselves off from some of the ideas
-developed by their neighbors. To follow out the intricate and uncertain
-history of eschatological ideas among the Jews would be too difficult
-here. We may simply say that when Jesus began his ministry a
-considerable part of the Jews had abandoned the expectation of a
-material kingdom of God and looked forward to a spiritual kingdom on a
-transformed earth or in heaven. In this kingdom those would share, who
-through God’s grace and their own righteousness had won a place therein;
-but the wicked were either to be punished forever or to be utterly
-destroyed. To these ideas Jesus’ teaching was closely related, although
-he gave a nobler meaning to Jewish doctrine, and he did not limit the
-hope of a future existence so narrowly as<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_46" id="page_46"></a>{46}</span> some would do. Moreover, he
-adopted from the law the teaching which made salvation and future
-happiness depend on a love for God and for one’s fellow-men, which would
-result in an unselfish life of righteousness. Salvation, he taught, was
-a present experience, open to every man who conformed to the
-requirement.</p>
-
-<p>After the crucifixion of Jesus, the Apostles and their successors
-naturally made his person, death, and resurrection the great means
-through which his followers secured salvation. Paul, moreover, taught
-that through faith&mdash;using the word in a somewhat unusual sense&mdash;the
-believer secured the actual presence of Christ within him, entered into
-a mystic union with the divine Saviour, by which the man was freed from
-sin and reborn into a new spiritual life; this new life was confirmed by
-the indwelling Holy Spirit which completed the man’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_47" id="page_47"></a>{47}</span> moral
-regeneration. In the Fourth Gospel we find a similar doctrine of a
-mystic union with Christ, secured by belief in Him as the incarnate
-Word&mdash;a belief which brought about a spiritual rebirth and therewith
-gave a present warrant of eternal life.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_34" id="anc_34"></a><a href="#note_34">[34]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>It is unnecessary for our present purpose to examine the beliefs of the
-earliest Christians as to the resurrection or the second coming of
-Christ, which they expected to take place within their own time&mdash;these
-beliefs and many others the Apostolic Church derived naturally from
-their Jewish tradition and from the teachings of Jesus. I shall ask you
-rather to focus your thought on the fundamental ideas of this early
-Christianity: that is to say, on the revelation of God, the punishment
-of sin by suffering or annihilation, the mystic union with the Divine,
-and a happy immortality as a reward for faith and righteousness. Were
-these<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_48" id="page_48"></a>{48}</span> ideas foreign to the peoples of the Mediterranean area? No, our
-survey has reminded us that on the contrary they were familiar over wide
-stretches of the Greco-Roman world.</p>
-
-<p>Do not misunderstand me here. Of course I am not making the elementary
-blunder of saying that because certain beliefs of the Christians and the
-Pagans were similar, they therefore were identical, or that they were
-derived from one another, or that the many factors of which they were
-composed were the same. No one with any knowledge of the history of
-religious thought could maintain that. But the point which I do wish to
-emphasize is this, viz.: that the eschatological ideas widely current in
-the Mediterranean world were such that Christianity found a favorable
-environment when it began its proselyting work. This seems to me one of
-the most significant facts in the relation of early<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_49" id="page_49"></a>{49}</span> Christianity to
-paganism. The Christian teachings as to the means by which the assurance
-of a happy immortality was to be secured could hardly seem very strange
-at first hearing to any one who was familiar with mystery religions or
-with much of the religious philosophy current in the pagan world during
-the early Christian centuries. Closer examination would reveal
-fundamental differences between Christian belief and the pagan hope. But
-it is not insignificant that Christianity spread most rapidly at first
-in Syria and Asia Minor, countries long familiar with those mystic
-religions, which had promised what the nobler faith supplied.</p>
-
-<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
-
-<p>Although we now have examined the conditions which, to my mind, are the
-most significant in the relation of pagan ideas of immortality to those
-of early Christianity, there yet remain matters<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_50" id="page_50"></a>{50}</span> which, if less
-important, are still of more than merely curious interest. We shall now
-look at some of these questions.</p>
-
-<p>What notions of heaven and of hell did the Greeks and Romans have? This
-inquiry is often made. The reply is easily given. Man has always painted
-hell and paradise after his own conception of suffering and of
-happiness, just as truly as he has made God after his own image.
-Consequently the ancient’s ideas of the future life ranged all the way
-from the grossest materialistic concepts to highly spiritualized
-beliefs. Plato in the Republic makes Adeimantus say that some seem to
-think that an immortality of drunkenness is virtue’s highest meed.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_35" id="anc_35"></a><a href="#note_35">[35]</a></span>
-But Socrates conceived the future state to be something very different;
-a place in which he could hold high discourse with the great ones of the
-past.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_36" id="anc_36"></a><a href="#note_36">[36]</a></span> In general, however, punishment and rewards were of a material
-sort, for such<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_51" id="page_51"></a>{51}</span> are most easily imagined and understood. Has it been
-otherwise with Christians? The answer is to be found in Christian
-apocalypses, medieval monuments, renaissance art, and in our own minds.
-Of course there developed in Greek thought what we might call an
-orthodox geography and scheme for the other world, of which Virgil gives
-us a just picture. Interesting as it might prove to examine the details
-of this picture, we will rather turn to other matters.</p>
-
-<p>When Christianity spread among the Gentiles, it at once came under
-influences which inevitably left their marks in its thought and
-practice. Let me offer two illustrations.</p>
-
-<p>Early in the hour I spoke of Aeneas’ journey through the lower world as
-an initiation by which he was enlightened and strengthened for the great
-task that lay before him; and we have now seen that in all the
-mysteries, both Greek and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_52" id="page_52"></a>{52}</span> oriental, there were initiatory rites, in
-which the novice symbolically died to the old life and was born again
-into a new existence. Moreover, through his emotional experience he
-received assurance that his salvation was secure forever. The idea of
-the new birth belongs to Christianity also from the first. Paul held
-that it was brought about by faith; the author of the Fourth Gospel
-taught that it was secured by love and belief. Baptism in primitive
-Christianity was at first symbolical&mdash;an act of ritual purification,
-which was believed to indicate the remission of sins and the bestowal of
-the Holy Spirit.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_37" id="anc_37"></a><a href="#note_37">[37]</a></span> But by the second century Christianity had become a
-mystery in the Greek sense, into which the novice, after a period of
-preparation, was duly initiated by baptism; and indeed the act was
-believed to have a magic power to secure immortality, closely parallel
-to that of the pagan initiation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_53" id="page_53"></a>{53}</span><span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_38" id="anc_38"></a><a href="#note_38">[38]</a></span> We all know that the
-ecclesiastical confidence which such belief inspires is far from unknown
-today.</p>
-
-<p>Again you will recall that when Anchises’ shade was instructing Aeneas
-in the meaning of life and death, he said:</p>
-
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
-<span class="i0">“Nor when to life’s last beam they bid farewell<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">May sufferers cease from pain, nor quite be freed<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">From all their fleshly plagues; but by fixed law,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">The strange, inveterate taint works deeply in.<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">For this, the chastisement of evils past<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Is suffered here, and full requital paid.<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Some hang on high, outstretched to viewless winds;<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">For some their sin’s contagion must be purged<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">In vast ablution of deep-rolling seas,<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">Or burned away in fire. Each man receives<br /></span>
-<span class="i1">His ghostly portion in the world of dark.”<br /></span>
-</div></div>
-</div>
-
-<p class="nind">Thus the sojourn of the soul in the world below for the thousand years
-which must elapse before it could be born again, was a period of
-cleansing from ancient sin. This idea of purification we have already<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_54" id="page_54"></a>{54}</span>
-seen to be as old as the Orphics; it was made an important element by
-Plato; and indeed all who held to the doctrine of rebirths regarded the
-periods between earthly existences as times of moral punishment and
-cleansing. There were certain analogies in Mithraism. Orthodox
-Christianity could not adopt the doctrine of metempsychosis, although
-some Gnostics found this possible, by rejecting the resurrection of the
-body. But beyond question the Greek doctrine of post-mortem purgation
-from sin, combining with ideas inherited from the Old Testament, has
-been influential in the development of a Christian belief in
-purification, especially by fire, in an intermediate state between death
-and paradise. The doctrine of purgatory, in somewhat different forms,
-has been held by both the Eastern and the Western Churches. Although
-this doctrine did not become a definite part of the theology<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_55" id="page_55"></a>{55}</span> of the
-Western Church until the time of Gregory the Great (590-604),
-nevertheless traces of it can be found in the earlier Church writers.
-Origen held that even the perfect must pass through fire after
-death;<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_39" id="anc_39"></a><a href="#note_39">[39]</a></span> St. Augustine was less confident, but he thought it not past
-belief that imperfect souls might be saved by cleansing flames.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_40" id="anc_40"></a><a href="#note_40">[40]</a></span> The
-Western Church, from St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth to Bellarmino
-in the sixteenth century held the doctrine that the cleansing fire was
-as material as that of any Stoic; but today that view has in large part
-been abandoned.<span class="ntanc"><a name="anc_41" id="anc_41"></a><a href="#note_41">[41]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>These two illustrations must suffice to suggest the ways in which
-Christian thought was influenced by its pagan environment.</p>
-
-<p>Finally we will consider an example of parallelism between pagan and
-Christian ideas. It is evident that the Greeks, who made such large use
-of successive<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_56" id="page_56"></a>{56}</span> rebirths, following periods of punishment and
-purification below, thought of these repeated lives and deaths as
-forming a moral series, so that moral progress, or degeneracy, at one
-stage was inseparably connected with both the preceding and the
-following stages. To them life here and life in the other world were
-indissolubly bound together. This was also as true of Stoicism with its
-limited reward for uprightness, as it was of Platonism. The Greek
-mysteries, which did not concern themselves with metempsychosis, by the
-fifth century before our era likewise made future happiness depend in
-part at least on righteousness in this life; the oriental mysteries too
-made this existence the condition of the next. In short, we may say that
-wherever men believed in any kind of a future existence, they almost
-universally held to the common belief that future happiness was to be
-the reward of a virtuous life on<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_57" id="page_57"></a>{57}</span> earth. But this is one of the
-fundamental principles of Christianity. Paganism, therefore, was in
-accord on this point with its enemy, and thereby favored the propagation
-of the new religion; moreover, the superior ethical demands of
-Christianity and its humanitarian principles no doubt found a ready
-response, especially in enlightened circles.</p>
-
-<p>So we have returned to that which seems to me most important in the
-relations of paganism and of early Christianity. In many ways paganism
-provided an environment favorable for the spread of the religion which
-Jesus founded. The two were at many points irreconcilable, and the
-former has not always benefited the latter by its influence; but it is a
-grave historical error not to recognize the areas in which the thought
-of the two ran parallel. Is the nobler faith the poorer because its
-paths were made broad by the pagan in his search after Immortality?</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_58" id="page_58"></a>{58}</span>&nbsp; </p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_59" id="page_59"></a>{59}</span>&nbsp; </p>
-
-<h2><a name="NOTES" id="NOTES"></a>NOTES</h2>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_60" id="page_60"></a>{60}</span>&nbsp; </p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_61" id="page_61"></a>{61}</span>&nbsp; </p>
-
-<p><a name="note_1" id="note_1"></a><a href="#anc_1">1.</a> Eduard Norden, <i>Aeneis</i>, <i>Buch VI</i>, Leipzig, 1903, is most useful for
-its commentary, especially on religious and philosophic matters.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_2" id="note_2"></a><a href="#anc_2">2.</a> W. Warde Fowler, <i>The Religious Experience of the Roman People</i>,
-Macmillan Co., 1911, pp. 419 ff.</p>
-
-<p>So Dante’s journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise secured his
-conversion and salvation, bringing him finally to freedom and to
-knowledge. <i>Paradiso</i>, XXXI, 85-87 and XXXIII entire.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_3" id="note_3"></a><a href="#anc_3">3.</a> Metempsychosis was the subject of the Ingersoll lecture by Professor
-George Foot Moore in 1914. Therefore that theme is not discussed here.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_4" id="note_4"></a><a href="#anc_4">4.</a> Cf. Friedländer, <i>Roman Life and Manners</i>, Routledge, London, 1910,
-iii, chap. II.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_5" id="note_5"></a><a href="#anc_5">5.</a> On the pre-Hellenic periods, see Schuchhardt, <i>Schliemann’s
-Excavations</i>, New York, 1891, passim; Lagrange, <i>La Crète Ancienne</i>,
-Paris, 1908, chap. II; Baikie, <i>The Sea-Kings of Crete</i>, London, 1910,
-chap. XI.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_6" id="note_6"></a><a href="#anc_6">6.</a> Cf. Fairbanks, <i>Greek Religion</i>, New York, 1910, pp. 168-188;
-Stengel, <i>Griechische Kultusaltertümer</i>, 2d ed., Munich, 1898, § 80;
-Wissowa, <i>Religion und Kultus der Römer</i>, 2d ed., Munich, 1912, § 36; W.
-Warde Fowler, <i>Religious Experience of the Roman People</i>, London, 1911,
-passim; and especially Lecture XVII, “Mysticism&mdash;Ideas<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_62" id="page_62"></a>{62}</span> of the Future
-Life;” C. Pascal, <i>Le Credenze d’Oltretomba</i>, 2 vols., 1912.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_7" id="note_7"></a><a href="#anc_7">7.</a> B. I. Wheeler, <i>Dionysos and Immortality</i>, Ingersoll Lecture for
-1898-99. The classic work on Orphism is Rohde, <i>Psyche: Seelencult und
-Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen</i>, 3d ed., Tübingen, 1903, vol. ii.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_8" id="note_8"></a><a href="#anc_8">8.</a> <i>Frg.</i> 154 Abel.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_9" id="note_9"></a><a href="#anc_9">9.</a> Apparently Orphism was already established at Croton in southern
-Italy when Pythagoras arrived there about 530 <small>B.C.</small>; but the matter is
-very uncertain. It is clear that Orphism and Pythagoreanism soon
-coalesced, even if they were originally distinct.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_10" id="note_10"></a><a href="#anc_10">10.</a> <i>Rep.</i>, vi, 508 f. It should be said that the identity of Plato’s
-supreme idea with God is denied by some Platonists; but cf. <i>Phil.</i> 22<span class="smcap">C</span>;
-<i>Tim.</i> 28<span class="smcap">A</span>-29<span class="smcap">E</span>, 57<span class="smcap">A</span>, 92<span class="smcap">C</span>.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_11" id="note_11"></a><a href="#anc_11">11.</a> The doctrine of ideas is developed in the <i>Phaedo</i>, <i>Phaedrus</i>,
-<i>Meno</i>, <i>Symposium</i>, and especially in the <i>Republic</i>. In the <i>Sophist</i>
-and the <i>Parmenides</i>, Plato criticizes his own views acutely.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_12" id="note_12"></a><a href="#anc_12">12.</a> <i>Metaphys.</i>, i, 9; vi, 8; xii, 10; xiii, 3.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_13" id="note_13"></a><a href="#anc_13">13.</a> <i>Phaedrus</i>, 245 (cf. <i>Laws</i>, x, 894<span class="smcap">B</span> ff., xii, 966<span class="smcap">E</span>); <i>Phaedo</i>, 72
-ff., 86, 105; <i>Meno</i>, 81 ff.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_14" id="note_14"></a><a href="#anc_14">14.</a> <i>Diss.</i>, i, 14, 6; ii, 8, 11.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_15" id="note_15"></a><a href="#anc_15">15.</a> Cf. E. V. Arnold, <i>Roman Stoicism</i>, University Press, Cambridge
-(Eng.), 1911, chap. XI.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_16" id="note_16"></a><a href="#anc_16">16.</a> Rohde, <i>Psyche</i>, ii^3, 379 ff.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_17" id="note_17"></a><a href="#anc_17">17.</a> <i>CIL.</i>, ii, 1434; cf. 1877, 2262.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_18" id="note_18"></a><a href="#anc_18">18.</a> <i>CIL.</i>, v, 1939.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_19" id="note_19"></a><a href="#anc_19">19.</a> <i>CIL.</i>, vi, 14672 = <i>Ins. Graec.</i>, xiv, 1746.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_63" id="page_63"></a>{63}</span></p>
-
-<p><a name="note_20" id="note_20"></a><a href="#anc_20">20.</a> Call., <i>Epig.</i>, 13, 3 ff.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_21" id="note_21"></a><a href="#anc_21">21.</a> <i>CIL.</i>, iii, 5825; vi, 9280, 10848; x, 6706; etc.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_22" id="note_22"></a><a href="#anc_22">22.</a> <i>Aen.</i>, vi, 723-751. Translation by Theodore C. Williams, Houghton
-Mifflin Company, Boston, 1908.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_23" id="note_23"></a><a href="#anc_23">23.</a> On these mysteries, see Rohde, <i>Psyche</i>, i^3, pp. 278 ff.; Farnell,
-<i>Cults of the Greek States</i>, iii, 126-213; A. Mommsen, <i>Feste der Stadt
-Athen</i>, pp. 204-277, 405-421.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_24" id="note_24"></a><a href="#anc_24">24.</a> 480 f.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_25" id="note_25"></a><a href="#anc_25">25.</a> <i>Frg.</i> 137.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_26" id="note_26"></a><a href="#anc_26">26.</a> <i>Frg.</i> 753.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_27" id="note_27"></a><a href="#anc_27">27.</a> 454 ff.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_28" id="note_28"></a><a href="#anc_28">28.</a> <i>Eph. Arch.</i>, iii (1883), p. 81, 8.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_29" id="note_29"></a><a href="#anc_29">29.</a> On these and other oriental gods, see F. Cumont, <i>The Oriental
-Religions in Roman Paganism</i>, Chicago, 1911; also G. Showerman, <i>The
-Great Mother of the Gods</i>, 1901; Hepding, <i>Attis</i>, 1903; W. Budge,
-<i>Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection</i>, 2 vols., 1911; G. A. Reisner,
-<i>The Egyptian Conception of Immortality</i>, Ingersoll Lecture for 1911; F.
-Cumont, <i>Textes et Monuments relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra</i>, 2 vols.,
-1894-1900; Id., <i>Les Mystères de Mithra</i>, 2 ed., 1902; English
-translation, 1910.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_30" id="note_30"></a><a href="#anc_30">30.</a> Apuleius, <i>Metamorphoses</i>, xi, 23.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_31" id="note_31"></a><a href="#anc_31">31.</a> <i>Enn.</i>, iv, 7.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_32" id="note_32"></a><a href="#anc_32">32.</a> Cf. Plato, <i>Rep.</i>, 364 <span class="smcap">B</span> ff.; <i>Demosth.</i>, xviii, 259; Apul., <i>Met.</i>,
-viii, 24 ff.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_33" id="note_33"></a><a href="#anc_33">33.</a> R. H. Charles, <i>A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life
-in Israel, in Judaism, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_64" id="page_64"></a>{64}</span> in Christianity</i>, London, 1899, is a
-convenient book, but one which must be used with caution.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_34" id="note_34"></a><a href="#anc_34">34.</a> A. Harnack, <i>Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte</i>, i, 4th ed., 1909;
-English translation from the third German edition, 1901; G. B. Stevens,
-<i>The Theology of the New Testament</i>, 1903; H. Holtzmann, <i>Lehrbuch der
-neutestamentlichen Theologie</i>, 2 vols., 2d ed., 1911.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_35" id="note_35"></a><a href="#anc_35">35.</a> <i>Rep.</i>, ii, 363 D.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_36" id="note_36"></a><a href="#anc_36">36.</a> <i>Apol.</i>, 41.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_37" id="note_37"></a><a href="#anc_37">37.</a> It should be said that even in the earliest period Christian baptism
-had certain magical notions attached to it; not, however, the belief
-that it secured immortality.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_38" id="note_38"></a><a href="#anc_38">38.</a> Cf. Hatch, <i>The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages on the Christian
-Church</i>, <span class="smcap">X</span>, <span class="smcap">B</span>; Anrich, <i>Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf
-das Christentum</i>, 1894, pp. 168 ff., especially 179 ff.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_39" id="note_39"></a><a href="#anc_39">39.</a> <i>Hom. in Num.</i>, xxv; <i>in Ps.</i> xxxvi, 3.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_40" id="note_40"></a><a href="#anc_40">40.</a> <i>C. D.</i>, xx, 25; xxi, 13 (where Virgil’s verses given above are
-quoted), 26; <i>de octo Dulcitii Quaest.</i>, <i>Qu.</i> i, 13; <i>Enchiridion</i>,
-lxix.</p>
-
-<p><a name="note_41" id="note_41"></a><a href="#anc_41">41.</a> St. Thomas, <i>Opera</i> (Venice, 1759), xii, p. 575, <i>Distinctio</i> xxi,
-<i>Quaes.</i> 1, <i>Sol.</i> 3; xiii, p. 347 ff., <i>Distinctio</i> xliv, <i>Quaes.</i> 3,
-<i>Art.</i> 4, <i>Quaestiunc.</i> 3; Bellarmino, <i>de Purgatorio</i>, II, x-xii.</p>
-
-<hr class="full" />
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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