The Destiny of the Soul | Page 5

us! We
see the vast procession of existence flitting across the landscape, from
the shrouded ocean of birth, over the illuminated continent of
experience, to the shrouded ocean of death. Who can linger there and

listen, unmoved, to the sublime lament of things that die? Although the
great exhibition below endures, yet it is made up of changes, and the
spectators shift as often. Each rank of the host, as it advances from the
mists of its commencing career, wears a smile caught from the morning
light of hope, but, as it draws near to the fatal bourne, takes on a
mournful cast from the shadows of the unknown realm. The places we
occupy were not vacant before we came, and will not be deserted when
we go, but are forever filling and emptying afresh.
"Still to every draught of vital breath Renew'd throughout the bounds of
earth and ocean, The melancholy gates of death Respond with
sympathetic motion."
We appear, there is a short flutter of joys and pains, a bright glimmer of
smiles and tears, and we are gone. But whence did we come? And
whither do we go? Can human thought divine the answer?
It adds no little solemnity and pathos to these reflections to remember
that every considerate person in the unnumbered successions that have
preceded us, has, in his turn, confronted the same facts, engaged in the
same inquiry, and been swept from his attempts at a theoretic solution
of the problem into the real solution itself, while the constant refrain in
the song of existence sounded behind him, "One generation passeth
away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever."
The evanescent phenomena, the tragic plot and scenery of human birth,
action, and death, conceived on the scale of reality, clothed in
"The sober coloring taken from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's
mortality,"
and viewed in a susceptible spirit, are, indeed, overwhelmingly
impressive. They invoke the intellect to its most piercing thoughts.
They swell the heart to its utmost capacity of emotion. They bring us
upon the bended knees of wonder and prayer.
"Between two worlds life hovers, like a star' Twixt night and morn
upon the horizon's verge. How little do we know that which we are!
How less what we may be! The eternal surge Of time and tide rolls on,

and bears afar Our bubbles: as the old burst, new emerge, Lash'd from
the foam of ages: while the graves Of empires heave but like some
passing waves."
Widely regarding the history of human life from the beginning, what a
visionary spectacle it is! How miraculously permanent in the whole!
how sorrowfully ephemeral in the parts! What pathetic sentiments it
awakens! Amidst what awful mysteries it hangs! The subject of the
derivation of the soul has been copiously discussed by hundreds of
philosophers, physicians, and poets, from Vyasa to Des Cartes, from
Galen to Ennemoser, from Orpheus to Henry More, from Aristotle to
Frohschammer. German literature during the last hundred years has
teemed with works treating of this question from various points of view.
The present chapter will present a sketch of these various speculations
concerning the commencement and fortunes of man ere his appearance
on the stage of this world.
The first theory to account for the origin of souls is that of emanation.
This is the analogical theory, constructed from the results of sensible
observation. There is, it says, one infinite Being, and all finite spirits
are portions of his substance, existing a while as separate individuals,
and then reassimilated into the general soul. This form of faith,
asserting the efflux of all subordinate existence out of one Supreme
Being, seems sometimes to rest on an intuitive idea. It is spontaneously
suggested whenever man confronts the phenomena of creation with
reflective observation, and ponders the eternal round of birth and death.
Accordingly, we find traces of this belief all over the world; from the
ancient Hindu metaphysics whose fundamental postulate is that the
necessary life of God is one constant process of radiation and
resorption, "letting out and drawing in," to that modern English poetry
which apostrophizes the glad and winsome child as
"A silver stream Breaking with laughter from the lake Divine Whence
all things flow."
The conception that souls are emanations from God is the most obvious
way of accounting for the prominent facts that salute our inquiries. It
plausibly answers some natural questions, and boldly eludes others. For

instance, to the early student demanding the cause of the mysterious
distinctions between mind and body, it says, the one belongs to the
system of passive matter, the other comes from the living Fashioner of
the Universe. Again: this theory relieves us from the burden that
perplexes the finite mind when it seeks to understand how the