Page:The Pamphleteer (Volume 8).djvu/51

Rh body, only restores it to a condition perfectly correspondent to its former inclinations and habits, lamentations and woes. But if we examine this affair more profoundly, we shall find that these three characters are justly placed in the same situation, because the reason of punishment is in each equally obscure. For is it not a just matter of doubt, why the souls of infants should be punished? And is it not equally dubious and wonderful why those who have been unjustly condemned to death in one period of existence should be punished in another? And as to suicides, Plato in his Phædo says, that the prohibition of this crime in the is a profound doctrine, and not easy to be understood. Indeed the true cause why the two first of these characters are in Hades, can only be obtained from regarding a prior state of existence, in surveying which, the latent justice of punishment will be manifestly revealed; the apparent inconsistencies in the administration of providence fully reconciled; and the doubts concerning the wisdom of its proceedings entirely dissolved. And as to the last of these or suicides, since the reason of their punishment, and why an action of this kind is in general highly atrocious, is extremely mystical and obscure, the following solution of this difficulty will, no doubt, be gratefully received by the Platonic reader, as the whole of it is no where else to be found but in manuscript. Olympiodorus, then, a most learned and excellent commentator on Plato, in his commentary on that part of the Phædo where Plato speaks of the prohibition of suicide in the, observes as follows: "The argument," says he, "which Plato employs in this place against suicide is derived from the Orphic mythology, in which four kingdoms are celebrated: the first of Heaven, whom Saturn assaulted, cutting off the genitals of his father. But after Saturn, Jupiter succeeded to the government of the world, having hurled his father into Tartarus. And after Jupiter, Bacchus rose to light, who, according to report, was, through the stratagems of Juno, torn in pieces by the Titans, by whom he was surrounded, and who afterwards tasted his flesh: but Jupiter enraged at the deed, hurled his thunder at the guilty offenders and consumed them to ashes. Hence a certain matter being formed from the vapour of the smoke ascending from their burning bodies, out of this mankind were produced. It is unlawful therefore to destroy ourselves, not as the words of Plato seem to import,