Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/127

80 transmigration to other bodies. Herodotus says, the Egyptians first taught the doctrine. But who knows? Pausanias is nearer the truth when he refers it to India, where it was taught before the birth of Philosophy in the West. It begins with the beginning of the nations.

In Greece we find it in a rude form in Homer; connected with Metempsychosis in Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Pherecydes; assuming a new form in Sophocles and Pindar, and becoming a doctrine fixed and settled with Socrates, Plato, and his school in general. In Homer the future state is a joyless existence. Achilles would rather be king of earthly men for a day, than of spirits for ever. Like the future state of the Jews, it offers no motive, and presents no terror. The shades of the weary came together from all lands into their dim sojourn. Enemies forgot their strife; but friends were joined. The present life is obscurely renewed in the next world. But the more especial friends or foes of the Gods are raised to honour, or condemned to shame. The transmigration of souls is perhaps derived from the wondrous mutation in the vegetable and animal world, where an acorn unswathed becomes an oak, and an egg discloses an eagle.

In Hesiod, the condition of the dead is improved with the advance of the nation. The good have a place in the Isles of the Blest. In the latter poets, the doctrine rises still higher, while the form is not always definite. Pindar