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Updated: May 25, 2025
To which Socrates replies, that if their former admissions are joined to his last argument, the immortality, as well as the pre-existence, of the soul has been sufficiently proved. For if it is true that any thing living is produced from that which is dead, then the soul must exist after death, otherwise it could not be produced again.
Hence the soul is independent of the body, and when the physical powers cease entirely in death, the intellect is at its height. The question of the soul's pre-existence before coming in contact with the body, Aaron ben Elijah answers in the affirmative, though his arguments in favor of the opposite view are stronger.
M. Renan here expresses the very general opinion as to the existence of a collection of "logia," having a different origin from the text in which they are embedded, in Matthew. The text of the so-called Matthew supposes the pre-existence of that of Mark, and does little more than complete it.
From the Platonic system it therefore followed that science is impossible to man, and possible only to God; that, however, recollecting our origin, we ought not to despair, but elevate our intellectual aim as high as we may; that all knowledge is not attributable to our present senses; for, if that were the case, all men would be equally wise, their senses being equal in acuteness; but a very large portion, and by far the surest portion, is derived from reminiscence of our former states; that each individual soul is an idea; and that, of ideas generally, the lower are held together by the higher, and hence, finally by one which is supreme; that God is the sum of ideas, and is therefore eternal and unchangeable, the sensuous conditions of time and space having no relation to him, and being inapplicable in any conception of his attributes; that he is the measure of all things, and not man, as Protagoras supposed; that the universe is a type of him; that matter itself is an absolute negation, and is the same as space; that the forms presented by our senses are unsubstantial shadows, and no reality; that, so far from there being an infinity of worlds, there is but one, which, as the work of God, is neither subject to age nor decay, and that it consists of a body and a soul; in another respect it may be said to be composed of fire and earth, which can only be made to cohere through the intermedium of air and water, and hence the necessity of the existence of the four elements; that of geometrical forms, the pyramid corresponds to fire, the cube to earth, the octahedron to air, these forms being produced from triangles connected by certain numerical ratios; that the entire sum of vitality is divided by God into seven parts, answering to the divisions of the musical octave, or to the seven planets; that the world is an animal having within it a soul; for man is warm, and so is the world; man is made of various elements, and so is the world; and, as the body of man has a soul, so too must the world have one; that there is a race of created, generated, and visible gods, who must be distinguished from the eternal, their bodies being composed for the most part of fire, their shape spherical; that the earth is the oldest and first of the starry bodies, its place being in the centre of the universe, or in the axis thereof, where it remains, balanced by its own equilibrium; that perhaps it is an ensouled being and a generated god; that the mortal races are three, answering to Earth, Air, and Water; that the male man was the first made of mortals, and that from him the female, and beasts, and birds, and fishes issued forth; that the superiority of man depends upon his being a religious animal; that each mortal consists of two portions, a soul and a body their separation constitutes death; that of the soul there are two primitive component parts, a mortal and an immortal, the one being made by the created gods, and the other by the Supreme; that, for the purpose of uniting these parts together, it is necessary that there should be an intermedium, and that this is the dæmonic portion or spirit; that our mental struggles arise from this triple constitution of Appetite, Spirit, and Reason; that Reason alone is immortal, and the others die; that the number of souls in the universe is invariable or constant; that the sentiment of pre-existence proves the soul to have existed before the body; that, since the soul is the cause of motion, it can neither be produced nor decay, else all motion must eventually cease; that, as to the condition of departed souls, they hover as shades around the graves, pining for restoration to their lifeless bodies, or migrating through various human or brute shapes, but that an unembodied life in God is reserved for the virtuous philosopher; that valour is nothing but knowledge, and virtue a knowledge of good; that the soul, on entering the body, is irrational or in a trance, and that the god, the star who formed its created part, influences its career, and hence its fortunes may be predicted by astrological computations; that there are future rewards and punishments, a residence being appointed for the righteous in his kindred star; for those whose lives have been less pure there is a second birth under the form of a woman, and, if evil courses are still persisted in, successive transmigrations through various brutes are in reserve the frivolous passing into birds, the unphilosophical into beasts, the ignorant into fishes; that the world undergoes periodical revolutions by fire and water, its destructions and reproductions depending upon the coincidences of the stars.
Now, at last was it the end of a million years of pre-existence waiting for this thing? Now, at last, Wayland realized that the quiet fellowship, the common interests, the satisfaction of her presence, the aptitude their minds had of always rushing to meet halfway on the same subject, had somehow massed to a something within himself that set his blood coursing with jubilant swiftness.
Or, rather, he was himself at a stage he had known once far, far away in a remote pre-existence. He watched himself from dim summits of a Past, of which no further details were as yet recoverable. Pencil and sketching-block lay ready to his hand. The moon rose higher, tucking the shadows ever more closely against the precipices.
But we cannot leave M. Flourens without calling our readers' attention to his wonderful tenth chapter, "De la Préexistence des Germes et de l'Epigénèse," which opens thus: "Spontaneous generation is only a chimæra. This point established, two hypotheses remain: that of pre-existence and that of epigenesis. The one of these hypotheses has as little foundation as the other."
"Well, then, Mr. Beaton, I should hope it would scratch, and bite, too. I think you've no business to go about studying people, as you do. It's abominable." "Go on," said the young man. "That Puritan conscience of yours! It appeals to the old Covenanter strain in me like a voice of pre-existence. Go on " "Oh, if I went on I should merely say it was not only abominable, but contemptible."
The author of the "Clementine Homilies" advances a step farther, and clearly assumes the pre-existence of Jesus, who, in his opinion, was the pure, primitive man, successively incarnate in Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and finally in the Messiah or Christ.
By God, though weariness should weaken me, and hunger should destroy me, though my couch should be made of the hard rock and my associates of the beasts of the desert, I will not blench, but will be patient, as the resolute and determined are patient, in the strength of God, the King of Pre-existence, the Creator of the nations; and under all circumstances I give thanks unto God.
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