Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/543

 and the abode in which they dwell, the paradise of flowers and fruits and sweet odours, is an abode to gladden men of flesh and blood. But a people whose ideal of future bliss lay in bodily enjoyments cannot surely have looked forward to the annihilation of the body and the survival of the soul alone; the joys which they anticipated hereafter presupposed the continuance of some kind of bodily existence.

Such a notion moreover cannot but seem more in harmony with the whole spirit of the Greek world than the Homeric doctrine of the survival of the soul only. A nation so conspicuous for their love of human beauty and their delight in the human form could not have viewed the extinction thereof with any feeling other than the most poignant regret—a feeling which, as we know, the Homeric doctrine did actually inspire in those who accepted it. The more thoughtful and hopeful religion of the Pelasgians, unless it had anticipated the philosophy of Plato in decrying the body and exalting the soul—an idea of which there is no trace—was bound to give promise that body as well as soul should survive death and dissolution.

Again it may fairly be claimed that in any religion of a profounder character than the Achaean, in any religion which contains some positive ideas of the future life and does not view it merely as the negation of the present life, that which men hope to become in the future state is something more similar to the deity or deities in whom they believe. Their conception of godhead and their conception of their own condition after death are of necessity founded upon the same ideal of happiness—a happiness which the gods already enjoy and which men hope to share. The Buddhist looks forward to the day when he shall become like his deity—even one with his deity—clean from the grossness of matter, free from bodily desires and necessities, spirit unalloyed. The Christian believes in a God who became man and survived the death of man not in the form of a spirit only but with flesh and bones, and he himself looks forward to the resurrection of the body. Socrates held that wisdom and goodness were one and pertained to the soul only, and the God into whose presence his soul would pass after death was 'the good and wise God,' rightly called Hades, that is, the invisible and spiritual, with whom the soul has kinship. But