Note 113 — Chapter XXV · PHÆDON.

Compare the closing paragraph of the Platonic Timæus: Virgil, Æneid vi. 713, Herodot. ii. 123, Pausanias, iv. 32, 4, Sextus Empiric. adv. Math. ix. 127, with the citation from Empedokles:—

“Tum pater Anchises: ‘Animæ quibus altera fato Corpora debentur, Lethæi ad fluminis undam Securos latices et longa oblivia potant’.”

The general doctrine, upon which the Metempsychosis rests, is set forth by Virgil in the fine lines which follow, 723-751; compare Georgic iv. 218. The souls of men, beasts, birds, and fishes, are all of them detached fragments or portions from the universal soul, mind, or life, ætherial or igneous, which pervades the whole Kosmos. The soul of each individual thus detached to be conjoined with a distinct body, becomes tainted by such communion; after death it is purified by penalties, measured according to the greater or less taint, and becomes then fit to be attached to a new body, yet not until it has drunk the water of Lêthê (Plato, Philêbus, p. 30 A; Timæus, p. 30 B).

The statement of Nemesius is remarkable, that all Greeks who believed the immortality of the soul, believed also in the metempsychosis — Κοινῇ μὲν οὖν πάντες Ἔλληνες, οἱ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀθάνατον ἀποφῃνάμενοι, τὴν μετενσωμάτωσιν δογματίζουσιν (De Naturâ Hominis, cap. ii. p. 50, ed. 1565). Plato accepted the Egyptian and Pythagorean doctrine, continued in the Orphic mysteries (Arnob. adv. Gentes, ii. 16), making no essential distinction between the souls of men and those of animals, and recognising reciprocal interchange from the one to the other. The Platonists adhered to this doctrine fully, down to the third century A.D., including Plotinus, Numenius, and others. But Porphyry, followed by Jamblichus, introduced a modification of this creed, denying the possibility of transition of a human soul into the body of another animal, or of the soul of any other animal into the body of a man, — yet still recognising the transition from one human body to another, and from one animal body to another. (See Alkinous, Introd. in Platon. c. 25.) This subject is well handled in a learned work published in 1712 by a Jesuit of Toulouse, Michel Mourgues. He shows (in opposition to Dacier and others, who interpreted the doctrine in a sense merely spiritual and figurative) that the metempsychosis was a literal belief of the Platonists down to the time of Proklus. “Les quatre Platoniciens qui ont tenu la Transmigration bornée” (i.e. from one human body into another human body) “n’ont pas laissé d’admettre la pluralité d’animations ou de vies d’une même âme: et cela sans figure et sans métaphore. Cet article, qui est l’essentiel, n’a jamais trouvé un seul contradicteur dans les sectes qui ont cru l’âme immortelle: ni Porphyre, ni Hiérocle, ni Procle, ni Salluste, n’ont jamais touché à ce point que pour l’approuver. D’où il suit que la réalité de la Métempsychose est indubitable; c’est à dire, qu’il est indubitable que tous les sectateurs de Pythagore et de Platon l’ont soutenue dans un sens très réel quant à la pluralité des vies et d’animations” (Tom. i. p. 525: also Tom. ii. p. 432) M. Cousin and M. Barthélemy St Hilaire are of the same opinion.

M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire observes in his Premier Mémoire sur le Sankhyâ p. 416, Paris, 1852.

“Voilà donc la transmigration dans les plus grands dialogues de Platon — le Timée, la République, le Phèdre, le Phédon. On peut en retrouver la trace manifeste dans d’autres dialogues moins considérables, le Menon et le Politique, par exemple. La transmigration est même positivement indiquée dans le dixième Livre des Lois, où Platon traite avec tant de force et de solennité de la providence et de la justice divines.

“En présence de témoignages si sérieux, et de tant de persistance à revenir sur des opinions qui ne varient pas, je crois que tout esprit sensé ne peut que partager l’avis de M. Cousin. Il est impossible que Platon ne se fasse de l’exposition de ces opinions qu’un pur badinage. Il les a répetées, sans les modifier en rien, au milieu des discussions les plus graves et les plus étendues. Ajoutez que ces doctrines tiennent intimément à toutes celles qui sont le fond même du platonisme, et qu’elles s’y entrelacent si étroitement, que les en détacher, c’est le mutiler et l’amoindrir. Le système des Idées ne se comprend pas tout entier sans la réminiscence: et la réminiscence elle même implique necessairement l’existence antérieure de l’âme.”

Dr. Henry More, in his ‘Treatise on the Immortality of the Soul,’ argues at considerable length in defence of pre-existence of each soul, as a part of the doctrine. He considers himself to have clearly proved — “That the pre-existence of the soul is an opinion both in itself the most rational that can be maintained, and has had the suffrage of the most renowned philosophers in all ages of the world”. Of these last-mentioned philosophers he gives a list, as follows — Moses, on the authority of the Jewish Cabbala — Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Epicharmus, Empedocles, Cebês, Euripides, Plato, Euclid, Philo, Virgil, Marcus Cicero, Plotinus, Jamblichus, Proclus, Boethius, &c. See chapters xii. and xiii. pages 116, 117, 121 of his Treatise. Compare also what he says in Sect. 18 of his Preface General, page xx.-xxiv.