5
The opinions of the Ancients relative to the Soul.
The Ancients considered the Sun as the brain of the Universe, and that it is from analogy that the human skull is round like that planet, the seat of intelligence. They always took the word "Soul" in a general sense, the same as Jupiter, or the primitive combinations that composed the Universe.—The proper name of Jupiter is Youpiter—Existence,—the Soul or heart of the World,—the Sun. Plutarch says, the Egyptians call the east the face, the north the right-side, and the south the left-side of the world, because there the heart is placed. The Ancients therefore considered the world, with all the animated beings, &c. thereon as God, eternally at work, composing and decomposing, causing a perpetual resurrection. They divided the great Whole into two principles—a good and a bad; the one always undoing what the other had done.
"The sacred seer, with scientific truth,
In Grecian temples taught the attentive youth,
With ceaseless change how restless atoms pass
From life to life, a transmigrating mass;
Whence drew the enlighten’d sage the moral plan,
That man should ever be the friend of man,
Should eye with tenderness all living forms,
His brother emmets, and his sister worms!"
