IMAN, IMAMODE, IMAM IMMORTALITY. 



45 



From the twofold action of (he imagination, we may 

 distinguish two spheres, within which it moves the 

 prosaic and the poetical. In the former, it presents 

 subjects on which the understanding operates for the 

 common purposes of life. Here it is restricted by 

 the definite object for which we put it in action. In 

 the latter, it gives life to the soul, by a free, yet 

 regulated action, elevates the mind by ideal crea- 

 tions, and representations above common realities, 

 and thus ennobles existence. Imagination operates 

 in all classes, all ages, all situations, all climates, in 

 the most exalted hero, the profound thinker, the 

 passionate lover, in joy and grief, in hope and fear, 

 nd makes man truly man. 



IMAN, IMAMODE, IMAM; a class of Turkish 

 priests. It is necessary that they should have 

 studied in Turkish schools, but their acquisitions are 

 generally limited to the power of reading the Koran, 

 and an enthusiastic gesticulation. They attend in 

 the dschamis and mosques, call the people to prayer 

 from the minarets, perform circumcision, &c. They 

 are chosen by the people, and confirmed by the 

 secular authority, under whose jurisdiction they also 

 are in criminal and civil affairs. In ecclesiastical 

 affairs, they are independent, and are not subject to 

 the mufti, though he is the supreme priest. They may 

 quit their office and re-enter the lay order. They 

 are distinguished by a wider turban, of a different 

 form from the common ones, and by their sleeves. 

 They enjoy some privileges, anrt^cannot be put to 

 death, without being stripped of their ecclesiastical 

 dignity. A Turk loses his hand, and a Christian his 

 life, if he beats an iman. The sultan, as chief of all 

 ecclesiastical affairs, has the title of iman. 



IMARETHI, in Turkey; houses where boys at 

 schools, and students of the colleges, and the poor, 

 receive their dinner. The Mohammedan govern- 

 ment have spent large sums for the establishment of 

 the imarethis. In Constantinople, 30,000 people are 

 said to dine in them daily. 



IMAUS; the ancient name of the Himalaya moun- 

 tains, (q. v.) 



IMBERT, BARTHOLOMEW, an ingenious French 

 writer, was born in 1747, at Nismes. He was the 

 author of several compositions of merit, both in prose 

 and verse, which obtained a high degree of popu- 

 larity. Of these the one most favourably received 

 was a poem which has for its subject the judgment 

 of Paris. His fables, written in the manner of Fon- 

 taine, are less esteemed. He was also the author of 

 some successful dramatic pieces, and of a novel en- 

 titled Les Egaremens de I'jlmour. He died of an 

 attack of fever, in 1790. 



IMMERSION. See Occultation. 



IMMORTALITY; the condition of that which is 

 not subject to death. Immortality has a beginning, 

 and thus differs from eternity, which has neither 

 beginning nor end. Eternity is an attribute of 

 God ; immortality of some of his creatures, as, for 

 instance, of the soul. The dogma of the immor- 

 tality of the soul is very ancient. It is connected 

 with almost all religions, though under an infinite 

 variety of conceptions. By the immortality of the 

 soul, we understand the endless continuation of our 

 personality, our consciousness and will. Philo- 

 sophers have endeavoured, in different ways, to 

 prove the immortality of the soul the anchor of 

 man's hope amid the storms of life in modern times, 

 particularly, from the immateriality of the soul. But 

 this immateriality is not susceptible of rigorous proof, 

 and, if it were, it would only follow that the soul need 

 not perish with the death of the body. It might still 

 pass into a state of unconsciousness, as in a deep 

 sleep and a swoon, a state little better than annihila- 

 tion ; yet the idea, that the dissolution of the body 



involves the annihilation of existence, is so cheerless, 

 so saddening, that the wisest and best of men, of all 

 ages, have rejected it, and all civilized nations have 

 adopted the belief of its continuation after death, as 

 one of the main points of their religious faith. There 

 are so many reasons to render it probable, which are 

 as convincing to most men as any strict proof could be, 

 that, with most nations, the belief in the immortality 

 of the sdul is as clear and firm as the belief in a God; 

 in fact, the two dogmas are intimately connected in 

 the minds of most men. The hope of immortality 

 must be considered a religious conviction. Reason 

 commands man to strive for continued perfection. 

 This duty man cannot relinquish, without abandoning, 

 at the same time, his whole dignity as a reasonable 

 being and a free agent. He must, therefore, expect 

 that a continuation of his better part, as the necessary 

 condition for his progress in perfection, will not be 

 denied to him. Hence the belief in immortality be- 

 comes intimately connected with our belief in the 

 existence and goodness of God. The perfection at 

 which man aspires, depends on the continuance of 

 his individuality; and, therefore, he is hardly more 

 startled by the doctrine of the materialist, who denies 

 all difference between the mind and the body, than by 

 the opinion which maintains that after death the soul 

 of man loses its individuality, and is absorbed in the 

 universal spirit. The noblest feelings are called into 

 exercise by objects which affect man as an individual. 

 Love cannot exist without individual objects of af- 

 fection; and man trembles at the idea, that the purest 

 enjoyments of which he can conceive, shall perish 

 by the extinction of his individual nature. The 

 proofs of immortality which the Scriptures afford, are 

 familiar to our readers. 



The views of man, in regard to the nature of his 

 future existence, are chiefly influenced by his ideas of 

 the relation of the body to the soul. As soon as man 

 begins to observe the peculiar operation of the soul, 

 the idea of its existence after death arises, and is 

 supported by the emotions of hope and fear, by many 

 inexplicable phenomena of nature, and even by illu- 

 sions. At first, this continuation of its existence is 

 conceived of in connexion with that of the body, and 

 with a state of being not essentially different from the 

 present, in which the hunter shall renew his chase, 

 and his corporeal senses shall have their accustomed 

 gratifications. This perhaps is the reason of the 

 careful preservation of dead bodies at an early 

 period. Subsequently, a new and more finely orga- 

 nized body is conceived of, or the soul is represented 

 as of a more aerial substance (hence the name of 

 spirit, air, or breath, is commonly used, in the more 

 ancient languages, to denote the soul) ; or as a 

 shadow, which, being separated from the body by 

 death, continues its existence by itself. In this 

 case, the life after death is also considered as a 

 shadow of the present, as in the Greek mythology. 

 Whilst the life of the soul was conceived of as con- 

 nected with the earthly body, or with a new and 

 ethereal body, it became necessary to assign a dis- 

 tinct place, different from that in which we live, for 

 its habitation. The invisible world is conceived of 

 by most nations, at first, as subterranean. In a 

 more advanced stage of the progress of mankind, the 

 imagination attributes changes of condition to the 

 future life, and the doctrine of the metempsychosis, 

 or the progress of the mind, in different stages, is 

 now formed. See Transmigration of Souls. 



The belief in apparitions, in conjurations of the 

 dead, and the influence of the dead upon the living, 

 is intimately connected with the belief in immor- 

 tality. The conception of the state of the departed 

 depended, of course, upon the state of civilization, 

 and what was considered as perfection here, was be 



