THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 201 



materialism of the purest type. It teaches that the 

 material body shall rise, and dwell in a material 

 heaven." To prove this one has only to read impar- 

 tially some of the sermons and ornate discourses in 

 which the glory of the future life is extolled as the 

 highest good of the Christian, and belief in it is laid 

 down to be the foundation of morality. According to 

 them, all the joys of the most advanced modern 

 civilisation await the pious believer in Paradise, while 

 the " All-loving Father " reserves his eternal fires for 

 the godless materialist. 



In opposition to the materialist athanatism, which 

 is dominant in the Christian and Mohammedan 

 Churches, we have, apparently, a purer and higher 

 form of faith in metaphysical athanatism, as taught by 

 most of our dualist and spiritualist philosophers. 

 Plato must be considered its chief creator : in the 

 fourth century before Christ he taught that complete 

 dualism of body and soul which afterwards became 

 one of the most important, theoretically, and one of 

 the most influential, practically, of the Christian 

 articles of faith. The body is mortal, material, physical ; 

 the soul is immortal, immaterial, metaphysical. They 

 are only temporarily associated, for the course of the 

 individual life. As Plato postulated an eternal life 

 before as well as after this temporary association, he 

 must be classed as an adherent of " metempsychosis," 

 or transmigration of souls ; the soul existed as such, 

 or as an " eternal idea," before it entered into a 

 human body. When it quits one body, it seeks such 

 other as is most suited to its character for its habita- 

 tion. The souls of bloody tyrants pass into the 

 bodies of wolves and vultures, those of virtuous 

 toilers migrate into the bodies of bees and ants, and 



