THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 197 



belief in immortality is only found at a late stage of 

 history : it is the ripe fruit of profound reflection on 

 life and death, the outcome of bold and independent 

 philosophical speculation. We first meet it in some 

 of the Ionic philosophers of the sixth century b.c, 

 then in the founders of the old materialistic philo- 

 sophy, Democritus and Empedocles, and also in 

 Simonides and Epicurus, Seneca and Plinius, and in 

 an elaborate form in Lucretius Car us. With the spread 

 of Christianity at the decay of classical antiquity, 

 athanatism, one of its chief articles of faith, dominated 

 the world, and so, amid other forms of superstition, 

 the myth of personal immortality came to be invested 

 with a high importance. 



Naturally, through the long night of the Dark Ages 

 it was rarely that a brave free-thinker ventured to 

 express an opinion to the contrary : the examples of 

 Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and other independent 

 philosophers, effectually destroyed all freedom of 

 utterance. Heresy only became possible when the 

 Reformation and the Renaissance had broken the 

 power of the papacy. The history of modern philo- 

 sophy tells of the manifold methods by which the 

 matured mind of man sought to rid itself of the super- 

 stition of immortality. Still, the intimate connection 

 of the belief with the Christian dogma invested it with 

 such power, even in the more emancipated sphere of 

 Protestantism, that the majority of convinced free- 

 thinkers kept their sentiments to themselves. From 

 time to time some distinguished scholar ventured to 

 make a frank declaration of his belief in the impossi- 

 bility of the continued life of the soul after death. 

 This was done in France in the second half of the 

 eighteenth century by Danton, Mirabeau, and others, 



