334 



ON THE NATURE AND 



metaphysics from the gymnosophists of India ; and hence, like the latter, 

 while for the most part they contended for the immortal and incorruptible 

 nature of the soul, they in like manner overlooked or reprobated the doctrine 

 of a resurrection of the body. On which account, when St. Paul, with an 

 equal degree of address and eloquence, introduced this subject into his dis- 

 course in the Agora or great square of Athens, the philosophers that listened 

 to it carried him to Areopagus, and inquired what the new doctrine was of 

 which he had been speaking to the people. 



The earliest Greek schools, therefore, having derived this tenet from an 

 Indian source, believed it, for the most part, after the Indian manner. And 

 hence, though they admitted the immortality of the soul, they had very con- 

 fused ideas of its mode of existence ; and the greater number of them believed 

 it, like the Hindoos, to be resorbed, after the present life, into the great soul 

 of the world, or the creative spirit, and consequently to have no individual 

 being whatsoever. 



Such, more especially, was the doctrine of Orpheus and of the Stoics ; and 

 such, in its ultimate tendency, that of the Pythagoreans, who, though they 

 conceived that the soul had, for a certain period, an individual being, some- 

 times involved in a cloudy vehicle, and sleeping in the regions of the dead, 

 and sometimes sent back to inhabit some other body, either brutal or human, 

 conceived also that at length it would return to the eternal source from which 

 it had issued, and for ever lose all personal existence in its essential fruition; 

 a doctrine, under every variety, derived from the colleges of the East. 



I have said that this principle was imported by the Pythagorists, and the 

 Greek schools in general, from the philosophy of India. The slightest dip 

 into the Vedas will be a sufficient proof of this. Let us take the following 

 splendid verse as an example, upon which the Vedantis peculiarly pride 

 themselves, and which they have, not without reason, denominated the 

 Gayatri, or most holy verse. 



" Let us adore the supremacy of that divine sun the Bhargas, or godhead, 

 who illuminates all, who recreates all, from whom all have proceeded, to 

 WHOM ALL MUST RETURN, whom wc iuvoke to dircct our understandings aright 

 in our progress towards his holy seat."* 



The doctrine of the later Platonists was precisely of the same kind, and it 

 was very extensively imbibed, with the general principles of the Platonic 

 theory, by the poets and philosophers who flourished at the period of the 

 revival of literature. Lorenzo de Medici is well known to have been warmly 

 attached to this sublime mysticism ; yet he has made it a foundation for some 

 of the sweetest and most elevated devotional poetry that the world possesses. 

 His magnificent address to the Supreme Being has seldom been equalled. I 

 cannot quote it before a popular audience in its original, but I will beg your 

 acceptance of the following imperfect translation of two of its stanzas, that 

 you may have some glance into its merit : 



Father Supreme! O let me climb 

 That sacred seat, and mark sublime 



Th' essential fount of life and love i 

 Fount, whence eacii good, each pleasure flows, 

 O, to Miy view thyself disclose! 

 The radiant heaven thy presence throws ! 



O, lose me in the light above ! 



Flee, flee, ye mists ! let earth depart: 

 Raise me, and show ine what thou art, 



Great sum and centre of the soul ! 

 To thee each thought, in silence, tends; 

 To thee the saint, in prayer, ascends ; 



Thou art the source, the guide, the goal ; 



The whole is thine, and thou the whole-t 



* Sir Wm. Jones, vi. p. 417. 



t Concedi, O Padre ! 1' alta e sacra sede 

 Monti la mente, e vegga el vivo fonte, 

 Fonte ver bene, onde ogni ben procede. 

 Mostra la luce vera alia mia fronte, 

 E poich^ conosciuto e '1 tuo bel sole, 

 Deir alma ferma in lui luci pronte. 



