Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/100

 82 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAT, of the grave; they were unwilHng to confound them- ^^' selves with the beasts of the field, or to suppose, that a being, for whose dignity they entertained the most sincere admiration, could be limited to a spot of earth, and to a few years of duration. With this favourable prepossession, they summoned to their aid the science, or rather the language, of metaphysics. They soon discovered, that as none of the properties of matter will apply to the operations of the mind, the human soul must consequently be a substance distinct from the body, pure, simple, and spiritual, incapable of dis- solution, and susceptible of a much higher degree of virtue and happiness after the release from its corpo- real prison. From these specious and noble principles, the philosophers who trod in the footsteps of Plato, deduced a very unjustifiable conclusion; since they as- serted, not only the future immortality, but the past eternity, of the human soul, which they were too apt to consider as a portion of the infinite and self-existing spirit which pervades and sustains the universe ^ A doctrine thus removed beyond the senses and the ex- perience of mankind, might serve to amuse the leisure of a philosophic mind ; or, in the silence of solitude, it might sometimes impart a ray of comfort to desponding virtue ; but the faint impression which had been re- ceived in the schools, was soon obliterated by the com- merce and business of active life. We are sufficiently acquainted with the eminent persons who flourished in the age of Cicero and of the first Cassars, with their actions, their characters, and their motives, to be as- sured that their conduct in this life was never regulated by any serious conviction of the rewards or punish- ments of a future state. At the bar and in the senate of Rome, the ablest orators were not apprehensive of giving offence to their hearers, by exposing that doc- trine as an idle and extravagant opinion, which was f The preexistence of human souls, so far at least as that doctrine is compatible with religion, was adopted by many of the Greek and Latin fa- thers. See Beausobre, Hist, du INIanicheisme, 1. vi. c. 4.