did not, as is well known, receive them from his degenerate
countrymen, but, on the contrary, imbibed them from private
sources among the orientals, where fragments of their remarkable
learning were still extant. He said that religion consists in
knowing the truth and doing good, and his ideas show the grandeur
and beauty of the earlier conception of a Deity. He declared
that there is only one God who is not, "as some are apt to
imagine, seated above the world, beyond the orb of the universe,"
but that this great power is diffused throughout Nature. It is
"the reason, the life, and the motion of all things."
Plato believed that human beings are possessed of two souls, the
one mortal, which perishes with the body, the other immortal,
which continues to exist either in a state of happiness or
misery; that the righteous soul, freed from the limitations of
matter, returns at death to the source whence it came, and that
the wicked, after having been detained for a while in a place
prepared for their reception, are sent back to earth to reanimate
other bodies.
Aristotle held the opinion that the souls of human beings are
sparks from the divine flame, while Zeno, the founder of the
Stoic philosophy, taught that spirit acting upon matter produced
the elements and the earth. There is plenty of evidence going to
show that the early Fathers in the Christian church believed in
the doctrines of reincarnation and the renewal of worlds.
Neither is there any doubt but that this philosophy came from the
East, where it originated. It is thought that the ancient
philosophers who elaborated these doctrines were unable to
account for the existence of evil without a belief in the
immortality of the soul. Spirit was eternal, as was also matter.
A soul, upon leaving the body, in course of time found its way
back to earth, surrounded by conditions suited to its stage of
growth. Here it must reap all the consequences of its former
life. It must also during its stay on earth make the conditions
for its next appearance upon an earthly plane. So soon as
through a succession of births and deaths it had perfected
itself, it entered into a state of Nirvana. It was absorbed into
the great Universal Soul. Nothing is ever lost.
"Many a house of life
Hath held me--seeking ever Him who wrought
