6. Polynesians. — The natives of Polynesia " imagine that the sky descends at the horizon and incloses the earth. Hence they call foreigners ' palangi' or ' heav- en-bursters,' as having broken in from another world outside. According to their views, we live upon the ground floor of a great house, with upper stories rising one over another above us, and cellars down below. There are holes in the ceiling to let the rain through, and as men are supposed to visit the dwellers above, the dwellers from below are believed to come sometimes up to the surface, and likewise to receive visits from men in retiu-n."
7. Neiv Hollanders. — The native tribes of Australia believe that all who are good men, and have been prop- erly buried, enter heaven after death. " Heaven, w hich is the abode of the two good divinities, is represented as a delightful place, where there is abmidance of game and food, never any excess of heat or cold, rain or drought, no malign spirits, no sickness or death, but plenty of rioting, singing, and dancing for evermore. They also believe in an evil spirit who dwells in the nethermost regions, and, strange to say, they represent him with horns and a tail, though one would think that, prior to the introduction of cattle into New Holland, the natives could not have been aware of the existence of homed beasts" (Oldfield).
8. Greenlanders. — "The Greenlander believes that when a man dies his soul travels to Tonigarsuk, the land where reigns perpetual summer, all sunshine, and no night; where there is good water, and birds, fish, seals, and reindeer without end, that are to be caught without trouljlc, or are found cooking alive in a huge kettle. But the journey to this land is ditlicidt; the souls have to slide five days or more down a precipice, all stained with the blood of those who have gone down before. And it is especially grievous for the poor souls when the journey must be made in winter or in tempest, for then a sovd may come to harm, or suffer the other death, as they call it, when it perishes utterly, and nothing is left. The bridge Es-Sirat, which stretclies over the midst of the jMoslem hill, finer than a hair, and sharper than the edge of a sword, conveys a similar conception." Tyler, on whose works we mainly rely for the informa- tion here conveyed on rude nations, traces the idea of a bridge in Java, in North America, in South America, and he also shows how in Polynesia the bridge is re- placed by canoes, in which the dead were to pass the great gulf. It is noteworthy that the Jews, also, when they first established a firm belief in immortality, im- agined a bridge of hell, which all unbelievers were to pass.
II. Ideas of more cultivated Nations. — ^Wherever pa- gan thought and pagan morality reach the highest per- fection, we find their ideas of the immortahty of the soul gradually approaching the Christian views. The first trace of a belief in a future existence we find in Homer's //tcff? (xxiii, 103 sq.), where he represents that Achilles first became convinced that souls and shadowy forms have a real existence in the kingdom of the shades (Hades) by the appearance to him of the dead Patroclus in a dream. These visions were often regard- ed as divine by the Greeks (comp. II. i, G3, and the case of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke xri, 27). Com- pare also the article Hades. But, while in the early Greek paganism the idea of the future is everywhere melancholic, Hades, or the realms of the dead, being to their imagination the emblem of gloom, as may be seen from the following : " Achilles, the ideal hero, declares that he would rather tUl the ground than live in pale Elysium," we find that, with the progress of Hellenic thought, a higher id^a of the future is foimd to charac- teiS^.e both the poetry and philosophy of Greece, till, in the Platonic Socrates, the conception of immortality shines forth with a clearness and jirccision truly impres- sive. " For we must remember, O men," said Socrates, , in his last speech, before he drained the poison cup, " that it depends upon the immortality of the soul
BIMORTALITY
515
IlilMORTALITY
whether we have to live to it and to care for it or not. For tiie clanger seems fearfully great of not caring for it. [Compare Locke's statement: If the best that can happen to the unbeliever be that he be right, and the worst tliat can liappen to the believer be that he be wrong, who in his madness would dare to run the ven- ture V] Yea, were deatli to be the end of all, it woidd be truly a fortunate thing for the wicked to get rid of their body, and, at the same time, of their wickedness. But novv, since the soul shows itself to us immortal, there can be for it no refuge from evil, and no other salvation than to become as good and intelligible as possible." More clearly are his views set forth in the Apolof/ij and the PJimlo, in language at once rich in faith and in beauty. " The soul, the immaterial part, being of a na- ture so superior to the body, can it," he asks in the Pkcedo, " as soon as it is separated from the body, be dispersed into nothing, and perish ? Oh, far otlicrwise. Rather will this be the result. If it take its departure in a state of purity, not carrying with it any clinging impurities of the body, impurities which during life it never willingly shared in, but always avoided, gather- ing itself into itself, and making the separation from the body its aim and study — that is, devoting itself to true philosophy, and studying how to die calmly; for this is true philosophy, is it not ? — well, then, so pre- pared, the soul departs into that invisible region which is of its own natiu-e, the region of the divine, the im- mortal, the wise, and then its lot is to be happy in a state in which it is freed from fears and wild desires, and the other evils of humanity, and spends the rest of its existence with the gods." This view, or better doc- trine of the immortality of the soul, held by Socrates and his disciple Plato, implied a double immortality, the past eternity as well as that to come. They cer- tainly offer a very striking contrast to the popidar su- perstitions and philosophy of their day, which in many . respects recall the views held by the Hindus. The peo- ple, especially those who held the most enlarged views up to this time, had " entertained -what might be term- ed a doctrine of semi-immortality. They looked for a continuance of the soul in an endless futurity, but gave themselves no concern about the eternity which is past. But Plato considered the soid as having already eter- nally existed, the present life being only a moment in our career ; he looked forsvard with an undoubting faith to the changes through which we must hereafter go" (\irA])ir, Intell. Development of Europe, p. 118; compare below. Philosophical Argument).