the dissolution of the body the soul immediately enters some other animal, and that, after using as

nature are at a loss to understand how she can think or act without the agency of the organs of sense.-Gibbon.

The Platonic doctrine esteemed the body a kind of prison with respect to the soul. Somewhat similar to this was the opinion of the Marcionites, who called the death of the body the resurrection of the soul.-T.

The soul, by reason of its anxiety and impotence, being unable to stand by itself, wanders up and down to seek out consolations, hopes, and foundations, to which she adheres and fixes. But 'tis wonderful to observe how short the most constant and obstinate maintainers of this just and clear persuasion of the immortality of the soul do fall, and how weak their arguments are when they go about to prove it by human reason.—Montaigne.

To enumerate the various opinions which have prevailed concerning the soul of man, would be an undertaking alike arduous and unprofitable. Some of the ancients considered it as part of the substance of God; the doctrine of the propagation of souls prevailed, according to Bayle, or rather subsisted, to a very late period of the Christian æra: Averhoes affirmed its mortality, and most of the pagan philosophers believed it to be material; but the arguments for its immortality, which are afforded us in the word of God, at the same time animate our piety and satisfy our reason.— -T.

What Gibbon says about Mahomet is as artful as it is absurd. He wants his readers to believe that Mahomet was the ingenious author of a regular and well-contrived system: whereas the truth is, that Mahomet had no contrivance or invention whatever; he borrowed every thing, and invented nothing; nor can he at all pretend to any original ideas on the immortality of the soul, the belief of which had been received and established many centuries before him.

Bruce observes that the scarabæus was not considered by the Egyptians as an emblem of the immortality of the soul,

vehicles every species of terrestrial, aquatic, and winged creatures, it finally enters a second time into a human body. They affirm that it undergoes all these changes in the space of three thouThis opinion some amongst the have at different periods of time

sand years. Greeks 212

or its resurrection, "neither of which were at that time in contemplation."

Larcher, who is somewhat too eager on all occasions to censure Bruce, observes on this passage, that it would be easy to prove that the Ægyptians always entertained a belief of the soul's immortality.

Bruce's expression is not quite perspicuous; and it may be doubted whether Larcher's translation of it conveys the meaning which the author intended. Larcher renders it, L'Immortalité n'etoit point encore l'objet des reflexions des hommes."

It is Larcher's opinion, that the doctrine of the soul's immortality degenerated by degrees into that of the transmigration of souls; that the Indians caught this latter opinion; but that Osiris, and Sesostris, who subdued the Indians, brought it back again into Egypt. The learned Frenchman remarks, that the immortality of the soul was from a very early period known to the Greeks, and that the compositions of Homer evidently presume this. According to Cicero, Pherecydes of Syros was the first who supported this doctrine.

Pherecydes Syrius primus dixit animos esse hominum sem→ piternes.

212 Some amongst the Greeks.]—He doubtless means to speak of Pherecydes of Syros, and Pythagoras.-Larcher.

Pherecydes was the disciple of Pittacus, and the master of Pythagoras, and also of Thales the Milesian. He lived in the time of Servius Tullius, and, as Cicero tells us, primum dixit animos hominum esse sempiternos, first taught that the souls of men were immortal. His life is given at some length by Diogenes Laertius.-T.

adopted as their own; but I shall not, though I am able, specify their names.

CXXIV. I was also informed by the same priests, that, till the reign of Rhampsinitus, Ægypt was not only remarkable for its abundance, but for its excellent laws. Cheops, who succeeded this prince, degenerated into the extremest profligacy of conduct. He barred the avenues to

as

213 Profligacy of conduct.]—It is not easy to see what could induce M. de Pauw to attempt the vindication of this prince, and to reject as fabulous what Herodotus relates of his despotism, as if this were not the infirmity of these princes, and if they did not all endeavour to establish it within their dominions. Ægypt enjoyed good laws at the first, they were observed during some ages, and the people were consequently happy; but their princes endeavoured to free themselves from the restraints imposed upon them, and by degrees they succeeded. M. de Voltaire was justified in considering the construction of the pyramids as a proof of the slavery of the Ægyptians; and it is with much justice he remarks, that it would not be possible to compel the English to erect similar masses, who are far more powerful than the Ægyptians at that time were. This is perfectly true, and M. de Pauw, in attacking Voltaire, has wandered from the question. He ought to have proved, that the kings of England were really able to compel their subjects to raise similar monuments, as Herodotus positively asserts of the princes of Egypt. He ought, I say, to have proved this, and not to have advanced that the cultivation of their lands cost the English nine times more labour than it does in Ægypt; and that their marine in one year occasions the destruction of more people than the construction of all the pyramids would have done in a long series of ages. M. de Pauw would not see that a spirit of ambition,

every temple, and forbad the Ægyptians to offer sacrifices; he proceeded next to make them labour servilely for himself. Some he compelled to hew stones in the quarries of the Arabian mountains, and drag them to the banks of the Nile*; others were appointed to receive them in vessels, and

a desire of wealth, &c, induce the English eagerly to undertake the most laborious enterprizes; that they are not obliged to do this; and in one word, that it is optional with them; on the contrary, the Ægyptians were compelled by their sovereigns to labours the most painful, humiliating, and servile.-Larcher.

* Dr. Shaw does not believe that the stones employed in the pyramids were brought from Arabia. Notwithstanding, says he, the great extravagance and surprizing undertakings of the Egyptian kings, it doth not seem probable that they would have been at the vast labour and expence of bringing materials from so great a distance, when they might have been supplied from the very places where they were to employ them. Now the stone, which makes the bulk and outside of all these pyramids, is of the same nature and contexture, hath the like accidents and appearances of spars, fossil shells, cerulean substances, &c. as are common to the mountains of Libya. In like manner Joseph's Well, the quarries of Irouel near Cairo, the catacombs of Sakara, the Sphinx, and the Chambers that are cut out of the natural rock on the East and West side of these pyramids, do all of them discover the specific marks and characteristics of the pyramidal stones, and, as far as I could perceive, were not to be distinguished from them. The pyramidal stones, therefore, were in all probability taken from this neighbourhood; nay, perhaps they were those very stones that had been dug away to give the Sphinx and the chambers their proper views and elevations.-Shaw, p. 416.

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transport them to a mountain of Libya. For this service an hundred thousand men were ployed, who were relieved every three months. Ten years were consumed in the hard labour of forming the road, through which these stones were to be drawn; a work, in my estimation, of no less fatigue and difficulty than the pyramid itself. This causeway 215 is five stadia in length,

214 The pyramid itself.]-For the satisfaction of the English reader, I shall in few words enumerate the different uses for which the learned have supposed the pyramids to have been erected. Some have imagined that, by the hieroglyphics inscribed on their external surface, the Egyptians wished to convey to the remotest posterity their national history, as well as their improvements in science and the arts. This, however ingenious, seems but little probable; for the ingenuity which was equal to contrive, and the industry which persevered to execute, structures like the pyramids, could not but foresee that, however the buildings themselves might, from their solidity and form, defy the effects of time, the outward surface, in such a situation and climate, could not be proportionably permanent; add to this, that the hieroglyphics were a sacred language, and, obscure in themselves, and revealed but to a select number, might to posterity afford opportunity of ingenious conjecture, but were a very inadequate vehicle of historical facts.

Others have believed the pyramids intended merely as observatories to extend philosophic and astronomical knowledge; but in defence of this opinion little can be said: the adjacent country is a flat and even surface; buildings, therefore, of such a height, were both absurd and unnecessary; besides that, for such a purpose, it would have been very preposterous to have constructed such a number of costly and massy piles, differing so little in altitude.

[215 For this note, see page 43.]

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