INTRODUCTION. 9 



the belief in a future life, takes notice of the argument from 

 dreams as telling against him, and states, in opposition to it, 

 his doctrine that not dreams only, but even ordinary appear- 

 ances and imaginations, are caused by film-like images which 

 fly off from the surfaces of real objects, and come in contact 

 with our minds and senses, — 



" Touching these matters, let me now explain, 

 How there are so-called hnages of things 

 Which, like films torn from bodies' outmost face 

 Hither and thither flutter through the air. 

 These scare us, meeting us in waking hours, 

 And in our dreams, when oftentimes we see 

 Marvellous shapes, and phantoms of the dead 

 Which oft have roused us horror-struck from sleep. 

 Lest we should judge perchance that souls escape 

 Prom Acheron, shades flit 'mid living men. 

 Or aught of us can after death endure."' 



Never, perhaps, has the train of thought which the Epicurean 

 poet so ingeniously combats been more clearly drawn out than 

 in Madge Wildfire's rambling talk of her dead baby, " Whiles 

 I think my puir bairn's dead — ye ken very weel it's buried — 

 but that signifies naething. I have had it on my knee a hun- 

 dred times, and a hundred till that, since it was buried — and 

 how could that be were it dead, ye ken — it's merely impos- 

 sible." 



It appears then, from these considerations, that when we find 

 dim notions of a future state current in the remotest regions 

 of the world, we must not thence assume that they were all 



1 Lucret. :— ' De Eerum Natura,' iv. 29-39 :— 



" Nunc agere incipiam tibi, quod vementer ad has res 

 Attinet, esse ea quse rerum simulacra vocanius; 

 QusB, quasi membranae summo de corpore rerum 

 Dereptee, volitant ultroque citroque per auras, 

 Atque eadem nobis vigilantibus obvia mentes 

 Terrificant atque iu somnis, cum stepe flguras 

 Contuimur iniras simulacraque hice carentum, 

 Quae nos horriflce languentis sxpe sopore 

 Excierunt ; ne forte aniinas Acherunte reamur 

 Effugere aut umbras inter vivos volitare, 

 Neve aliquid nostri post mortem posse relinqui." 



