248 History of Nature. [ BOOK VI I . 



dition they were before they were born, in the same they 

 remain when they are dead. For neither Body nor Soul 

 hath any more Sense after Death than they had before the 

 Day of Birth. But the Vanity of Men extendeth itself even 

 into the future, and in the very Time of Death fiattereth 

 itself with a Life after this. For some attribute Immortality 

 to the Soul ; others devise a Transfiguration ; some again 



they were born, in the same they remain after they are dead," may be 

 understood as referring to the Pythagorean doctrine of Transmigration ; 

 which was the most plausible account .of the disposition of the intelligent 

 principle that the Heathens could reach to, before Light and Immor- 

 tality were revealed in the Gospel; but by the almost contemptuous 

 silence with which he passes it over in his argument, it appears that he 

 did not feel disposed to credit it. With regard to the station of the 

 manes, Plato supposes that impure spirits wander about among sepulchres 

 and monuments. Homer represents Elpenor as prevented from rest 

 until the funeral rites were paid ; and a commonly received doctrine was, 

 that there were days sacred to Dis and Proserpine, on which the whole of 

 the secret and deep places of the world were thrown open, and the disem- 

 bodied spirits were permitted to revisit the light. Varro supposes that 

 this occurs three times in the year : on the feast of Vulcanalia, tenth of 

 the Calends of September, or 23d of August ; on the 3d of the Nones of 

 October, the Fontinalia, October 13 ; and the 6th of the Ides of November, 

 or 8th of that month. 



According to the doctrine of the Jewish Rabbis, derived, no doubt, 

 from ancient Oriental sources, " during the first twelve months after 

 death the souls of righteous men descend and ascend again " (Talmud, tr. 

 Sabbath) : which Rabbi Joseph Albo, in the " Book of Principles," c. xxxi., 

 explains by saying, that the soul does not directly and at once become 

 divested of those corporeal attachments to which it is accustomed, but 

 lingers about them until by habit it becomes weaned from them, and 

 assimilated to the new condition on which it has entered. 



The gloomy views which even the more virtuous of the ancient Hea- 

 thens took of an invisible world is shewn by Homer's representations in 

 the " Odyssey," b. xi. ; and by so much of Etrurian learning as, from 

 their paintings and other representations, have descended to us. With so 

 much distaste of a wearisome life on the one hand (in which even Homer 

 joins, b. xvii.), and on the other the dim prospect of the dreary regions 

 below, we can scarcely wonder if even the virtuous Pliny should choose 

 rather to lie down in ashes without the prospect of living again. The 

 greater portion of his argument, however, is founded on his ignorance : 

 his questions, then so doubtful, are such as now even a child may answer. 

 Wern. Club. 



