exist. And that this dogma was fervently accepted and thoroughly believed in as a genuine "gospel," the early literature of Buddhism amply proves. The Jews, a most religious people, had no settled hope of immortality provided by their creed, though the account of the creation of Adam shows how clearly they distinguished mind from matter. Warburton indeed infers the authenticity of the Hebrew Revelation from the very fact of the absence of the doctrine of immortality; for no author of a popular religion, except God himself, could have afforded to dispense with so important an article. The more defective Judaism was, the more clearly it was divine. Nor were the classical nations of Greece and Rome at all more certain. With them also opinions differed—some, like Plato and his followers, asserting the immortality of the soul; others, like Epicurus and his school, denying it. Cicero discusses it as an open question, though himself holding to the belief in future existence. His two possible alternatives are continued life in a condition of happiness, or utter cessation of life; either of which he accepts with equal calmness. The fear of hell did not torment him: "post mortem quidem sensus aut optandus aut nullus est" (Cato Major, xx. 74). Even if we are not to be immortal, as he hopes, nevertheless it is a happy thing for man to be extinguished at the fitting season (Ibid., xxiii. 86). Less philosophical people, however, were troubled, like Christians, with the notion of a future world of punishment; and Lucretius addresses himself with all the ardor of a man proclaiming a beneficent gospel to the dissipation of this popular delusion:—
"Nil igitur mors est, ad nos neque pertinet hilum,
Quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur."[1]
Like other thinkers of his time, he distinguishes between the animus and anima—spirit and soul, and this three-fold division of the nature of man subsisted for a time in the language and ideas of Christians. But the essential point is that, whatever further subdivisions may have been made, all schools, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, agreed in the fundamental distinction between the spiritual principle and the material instruments; between mind and matter, or soul and body.
- ↑ De Rerum Nat., iii. 830.
