the Bhagvat Geeta, and then pass at once to the doctrine of creation. "The great Brahm (says Kreeshna) is my womb. In it I place my fœtus, and and from it is the production of all nature. I am generation and dissolution; the place where all things are reposited, and the inexhaustible seed of all nature. I am sunshine, and I am rain. I now draw in, and I now let out. I am death and immortality. I am entity and non-entity. . . The ignorant, being unacquainted with my supreme nature, which is superior to all things, and exempt from decay, believe me, who am invisible, to exist in the visible form under which they see me. I am the creation and the dissolution of the whole universe. There is not anything greater than I; and all things hang on me, even as precious gems on a string. I am moisture in the water, light in the sun and moon, invocation in the Vedas, sound in the firmament, human nature in mankind. In all things I am life, and I am zeal in the zealous; and know, O Arjoon, that I am the eternal seed of all naI will now tell thee what is ture. Gnea, or the object of wisdom, from which understanding thou wilt enjoy immortality. This is that which has no beginning and is separate, even Brahm, who can neither be called sat (eus) nor asat (non eus). Unattached, it containeth all things, and without quality, it partaketh of every quality. It is undivided, yet in all things it standeth divided. It is wisdom, that which is the object of wisdom, and that which is to be obtained by wisdom." III. Some of the heretical sects supposed the abyss, the invisible or potential world, to be the supreme God. It is evident, that the Bhagvat Geeta, from which the foregoing extracts are made, is not exempt from the influence of this error. But the abyss cannot be God; for God is alive, while the abyss is unquestionably dead. The abyss has only a nugatory and potential existence, itself being the mere potentiality of the universe, while God, on the other hand, exists always in act. But, perhaps, it may be said that the abyss is alive, and that, in truth, it is itself the only life, that it passes always, by virtue of inhering necessity, into act, imparting life by that passage to all vital agents in the visible universe. This would be a statement of the fatal pantheism which has always reigned in the East, a pantheism somewhat similar to that of the Hegelians, and almost identical with that of a portion of our New England Transcen dentalists. We will endeavor to render this matter a little more clear. We read in the writings of Dupuis, the materialist, "amid the shadows of a dark night, when the heavens are covered with a thick cloud, when all bodies have disappeared from our eyes, and we seem to dwell alone with ourselves and with the black shadows which surround us, what is then the measure of our existence; How much does it differ from an entire annihilation, especially when memory and thought do not surround us with the images of objects which the day had revealed to us. All is dead to us, and we ourselves are, in a certain manner, dead to nature. What can give us life, and draw our souls from this mortal weakness which chains down its activity in the shadows of chaos? A single ray of light can restore us to ourselves, and to nature, which seemed so far removed from us. Behold the principle of our true existence, without which our life would be but the sentiment of a prolonged ennui. It is this need of light, it is its creative energy, which has been felt by all men, for they have seen nothing more frightful than its absence. Behold their first Divinity, whose brilliant splendor, sparkling forth from the bosom of chaos, caused to proceed thence man and the universe, according to the theological principles of Orpheus and of Moses." The thought here expressed is simple, but its power is inexhaustible, infinite! We will not dwell on the view of the nature of Life which is so clearly and beautifully expressed, nor upon the misapprehension of the theology of Moses, so manifested in the concluding line. But we would ask Dupuis, is there nothing but light which can expel this obscure gloom? is there nothing but light which can deliver man from this migratory abyss of potential existence? How much is involved in the expression, "especially when memory and thought do not surround us with the image of objects which the day had revealed to us?" A single ray of light would indeed restore us to reality, to communion with nature, but would not the remembrance of a single object seen through the day, awaken the soul to a real and intense life, though not to an immediate communion with nature? while we are in this state of darkness and of silence, this state of dreaming without dreams, the whole expanse, if we may so speak, of memory, is spread before the inner eye, but with out form, and, as it were, void. No distinct image is present to the mind, and all our conceptions lie in the memory and imagination, (which is another form, or rather a modification of memory,) in the mere potentiality of existence as actual conceptions. If we begin to act mentally, if we begin to form to ourselves a picture or conception, the facts of memory rise up before us, and, taking the isolated parts, we bring them together, perhaps in new forms, by the exercise of imagination, perhaps in the reproduction of some well known collocation, by the exercise of simple memory. This vast, and apparently empty, (as in the case supposed by Dupuis,) expanse of memory, which stretches out before the inward eye when we seem to cease from all thought, is as the invisible or potential world, as the abyss. This empty expanse, containing the germ of all our conceptions, is a similitude, a correspondency, with the invisible world of the Orientals. But the invisible world is the seed of all nature, while the vacant expanse, or world, of memory and imagination, is finite, and the seed of the conceptions of the individual man only. As the whole universe is contained, in potentia, in the abyss, so, in this field of memory, are contained potentially all those elements which go to make up the conceptions formed by the mind when it entered into operation. It will be well, for the reader to look again at the passages relating to the invisible world, already quoted from the Bhagvat Geeta making those changes which a reference of the texts to the finite instead of the infinite abyss, will render necessary. But to proceed. God is a self-existent (that is, a self-living) being. We shall endeavor, in some future article, to make it evident that God is not only Essence, but also Existence; for the present, we content ourselves with a simple assertion of the fact, being confident that our readers perceive the absurdity of denying it. But to obviate all objection, we will give a simple demonstration. If God be pure essence, without existence, it would be absolutely impossible that there should be any visible world, as there would be no reason why any thing should be drawn forth from the abyss into actual existence; but there is a visible world, therefore, &c. God is self-living, therefore having power to create. Man, by virtue of his energy as a living essence, has the power of originating new conceptions, the power of creating in a finite manner; but God, possessing an infinite life, has an infinite creative power. By virtue of this creative power, the universe is evidently, from all eternity, possible; that is, the universe must have existed, from all eternity, in potentia. This possibility is, therefore, itself uncreated; for God, being self-living, cannot, by any possibility, exist without the power to create. For when we say that a thing exists in possibility, or is possible, we mean that some active agent has the power to bring it to pass. The words possible and power, come from the same root. The abyss, the invisible or potential world, exists, therefore, from eternity; it is uncreated, dependent not upon the will, but upon the being of the self-living God. But, perhaps, this explanation, as it now stands, is not altogether satisfactory. We say then that the abyss, the potential world, the original possibility of things, is uncreated. Why? For this reasonif God created the original possibility, that creation of the original possibility, was itself possible with God; here a new possibility rises up behind the possibility first considered, and this new possibility is a prior condition requisite to the very being of the possibility first considered. If we treat this new possibility, (which we have formed on the hypothesis that the original possibility was created, to be prior to that original possibility itself), if we treat this new possibility as we did the other, still another possibility will rise up behind this new possibility, and so on to infinity. If, therefore, the original possibility was created, that possibility was by no means original, for it must have been preceded by another possibility, and this last by another; all which is evidently absurd. The possibility of a particular act of creation is a condition logically prior to the creative act itself; for if the particular creation be impossible, it will evidently never take place. The possibility is not made to be by the very fact of creation, for the particular creation would have remained possible, although the actual creation had never taken place. The greater portion of the abyss, the greater part of the possibilities of things, have indeed not yet been realized, and, in all probability, they never will be. The possibility of an act of creation is therefore a condition logically prior to, and independent of, that act itself; and this reasoning applies as well to the first act of creation as to any other. The possibility of crea tion, the universe in potentia, the abyss, therefore, existed before the very first act of creation and is, therefore, itself uncreated -the proposition that was to be proved. We are now able to see the bearing of a profound expression recorded in the Vedas. 66 Waters [fluids in most of the ancient systems represented the abyss,] waters alone there were; this world originally was water. In it the Lord of creation moved, having become air: he saw this earth, and upheld it, assuming the form of Varacha. The Lord of creation meditated profoundly upon the earth, and created the Gods, the Vasas, the Rudras, and the Adityas: these gods addressed the Lord of creation, saying, How can we form creatures? He replied, as I created you by profound contemplation, so do you seek in devotion the means of multiplying creatures." Thus, according to the Vedas, this visible universe was created out of the abyss of essence, but non-existence, by the profound contemplation of the Lord of creation, that is, by a method analogous to that of the production of concep tions and images in human thought. As the facts in the memory of man are distinct from, though dependent upon, him, so the invisible world, or the abyss, (which is, as it were, the vacant expanse of the infinite memory,) is distinct from God, though dependent upon him; and as it requires a living and personal man to create a poem, or other work of memory and imagination, so it requires a living and personal God, to create this transcendent poem which we call nature and man, or the visible universe. So this world is the thought of God, but that thought rendered firm and stable, in its manifold relations, by the simple volition of the Divine mind; for the worlds were created by the will of God. But here, a confusion of thought, leading to pantheism, must be noticed; and this more especially as the Oriental philosopher invariably became bewildered, and identified God with the Abyss. We wish the reader to bear in mind that in this assertion of the self-existence of God, superior to the Abyss, we separate our selves from the Oriental systems. The writers of the Vedas undoubtedly believed in the personality of God, but when they came to write, they found the thought too powerful for them, and sought to shelter their weakness in the pantheistic hypothesis. Nearly all the writers who gathered their systems from the sacred books, adopted this hypothe. sis, but abandoned the element of truth which was more vaguely expressed. We are far from endeavoring to vindicate the Oriental systems, yet we think the writers of the Vedas ought to have the credit of half seeing the truth we have been endeavoring to explain. But to proceed :when we form a conception, we gather the detached portions together in the memory, and the complete conception starts up, as it were, before us. But we can bring no element into our conception which we have not previously acquired by experience, which we do not retain as a fact of memory; all things must exist in the memory before they can enter and become a part of the conception. When, however, the conception is formed, we recognize that it is distinct from us, that it is not ourselves, but an image, a mental picture, dependent upon us for its continuance in existence. If we withdraw our attention it vanishes. It depends upon us for our existence, but our existence does not depend upon it. We do not flow into the conception, it does not partake of our essence, yet we sustain it, and, if we withdraw our sustaining energy, it returns again into the potential state in the vacant expanse of memory; it will no longer be a picture actually existing before our minds. We would here remark, by the way, that no picture, no representation, can exist in the mind; for the mind is simple, and therefore without any capacity of including space, and, where there is no space, the use of the word within is absurd. The picture is present to the mind, not in the visible world, but in the invisible world of memory and imagination, where indeed there is space, but of another order from the space of the visible world. A further investigation of this matter would require psychological developments wholly incompatible with the na. ture of this article; we are concerned at this moment, not with psychology, but with ontology. The early Hindoo philosophers knew very well that God was self-living, and superior to the Abyss, but they always became entangled in their speculations, till they confounded the Abyss with the Divine Nature itself. Sometimes they say the Abyss is God, which is atheism, for the Abyss is evidently dead, and to say that God is dead, is but another way of saying that there is no God. This is not the doctrine of the Orthodox sects, but of the heretics, the Buddhists for ex ample. Sometimes, however, the most Orthodox writers affirm, in the same passage, the self-living, personal, existence of God, and the divinity of the Abyss; the assertion of contradictory things produces inextricable confusion. An example may be found in the beginning of the Laws of Menû : "This universe existed only in the first Divine idea, yet unexpanded, as if involved in darkness, imperceptible, undefinable. undiscoverable by reason, and undiscovered by revelation, as if it were wholly immersed in sleep. "He, having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance, first with a thought created the waters, and placed in them a productive seed. "The seed became an egg, bright as gold, blazing like the luminary with a thousand beams; and in that egg he was born himself, in the form of BRAHMA, the great forefather of all spirits. "The waters were called nara, because they were the production of NARA, or the Spirit of God; and since they were his first ayana, or place of motion, he thence is named NARAYANA, or moving on the waters. "From THAT WHICH IS, the first cause, not the object of sense, existing every where in substance, not existing to our perception, without beginning or end, was produced the divine male, famed in all worlds under the appellation of BRAHMA. "He whose powers are incomprehensible, having thus created both me and this universe, was again absorbed in the Supreme Spirit, changing the time of energy for the time of repose. "When that Power awakes, (for though slumber be not predicable of the sole eternal Mind, infinitely wise, and infinitely benevolent, yet it is predicated of BRAHMA, figuratively, as a general property of life,) then has this world its full expansion; but when he slumbers with a tranquil spirit, then the whole system fades away: "For while he reposes, as it were, in calm sleep, embodied spirits, endued with principles of action, depart from their several acts, and the mind itself becomes inert. "And when they are once absorbed in that supreme essence, then the divine soul of all beings withdraws his energy, and placidly slumbers. "Then, too, this vital soul of created bodies, with all the organs of sense and of action, remains long immersed in the first idea, or in darkness, and performs not its natural functions, but migrates from its corporeal frame. "Thus the immutable Power, by waking and reposing alternately, revivifies and destroys, in eternal succession, this whole assemblage of locomotive and immovable creatures." The Orientals held, as a very general thing, the Abyss to be God. The visible universe is nothing other than the Abyss itself, proceeding from the potential state into actual relations-proceeding from invisibility to visibility. Hence the invisible world, if it have a substantial existence, (which it must have, if it be identical with God,) is the substance of the visible, so that there would be but one substance or being in the universe; for the Abyss, as has been already shown, is one. The universe, therefore, while in the potential state, would be God, but after it has proceeded forth from invisibility to visibility, it is the actual world. Thus God is supposed to be the substance of the visible world. While things are in their actual relations, they are not God, but when they return into their primordial source, they are God; for each thing according to its potential existence is of the Abyss, and it is the whole Abyss, for the very being of the Abyss consists in this, that all which distinguishes one thing from another is swallowed up, destroyed. It is probably, for these or similar reasons, that some of our subjective Idealists (Transcendentalists) affirm that they are God when they are out of the body, but not God when in the body." In fact, our Transcendentalists believe, as we have already seen, "that this visible universe is a procession from some unknown centre in the Transcendentalist himself." Is it not evident, therefore, that when the universe enters its primordial source, it will enter the Transcendentalist himself, since it is from him that all things originally proceed? This is the genesis of Transcendentalism. The thinker identifies the Abyss with himself, calling the Abyss God, and then says that he creates and destroys the universe, by alternating seasons of energy and repose. He uses the words of Kreeshna, saying, "There is not anything greater than I; and all things hang on me, even as precious gems on a string. I am entity and nonentity; I am death and immortality. I now draw in, and I now let out." And evidently, if the Transcendentalist enters the potential state, he is the whole Abyss; for he can enter that state only by destroying every quality which distinguishes him from the rest of the universe. But by what right does he affirm himself to be the whole actual universe, even though grant that he is the whole universe in potentia? If a man enter the potential state, as is very evident from the preceding considerations, he dies, and does by no means become greater than he was. A Transcendentalist ought not, therefore, to affirm himself to be all things, but rather, on the contrary, to affirm himself to be dead. The following lines, quoted from the Dial, will show that our Transcendental friends have not always manifested this wisdom: "Nothing is if thou art not. And toss their branches free. Thou art Atlas, thou art Jove!" We will make another quotation from the Bhagvat Geeta, and then pass to the next general head: "This whole world was spread abroad by me in my invisible form. All things depend on me, and I am not dependent upon them. Behold my divine connection. My creative spirit is the keeper of all things, not the dependent. Understand that all things rest in me as the mighty air, which passeth everywhere, resteth in the etherial space. At the end of the formation, at the end of the day of Brahma, all things, O son of Koontas, return into my primordial source, and, at the beginning of another formation, I create them all again. I plant myself in my own virtue, and create, again and again, this assemblage of beings, this whole, from the power of nature without power. Those works confirm not me, because I am like one that sitteth aloof, uninterested in those works. By my supervision, nature produceth both the movable and the immovable. It is from this source, O Arjoon, that the universe resolveth." How different is this doctrine from that of the Vedas! The text of the sacred books is intermixed with errors, but still they assert the existence of a creative God; while here, in the Bhagvat Geeta, the Deity is identified with the Abyssthat is, his being is denied. 66 As the spider spins, and gathers back its thread (say the Vedas); as plants sprout out of the earth; as hairs grow on a living person; so is this universe produced from imperishable nature. By contemplation the Vast One germinates." In the first sentence we have indeed the procession of all things from the Abyss, the visible resting its substantial being upon the invisible; but in the second, we find the assertion of a living and personal God; for, it is by contemplation that the Vast One germinates, that is, the Vast One is a contemplative agent, a living person. But the Vast One is identified with the Abyss, the Abyss is made to be alive, and from this admixture of incongruous thoughts flows forth, as usual, an inextricable confusion. IV. After these somewhat extended preliminary observations, we are able to examine the question of the soul's immortality. First, then, what is death, or the transition from this life to that which is to come? Death is not the contrary of being or of existence, for the contrary to being is nonentity, and the contrary to existence is non-existence; death is contrary to life, and hardly that. Death is the passage of a vital agent from one state of existence to another. A man when he leaves this present state for the future world is said to die, though it is not to be supposed that his soul ceases for a moment to live. Is the death of the soul conceivable ? Endeavor to conceive of yourself as dead-make the attempt. Do you not still find yourself as a living agent, contemplating some imaginary picture, which you have conjured up before your mind, and which represents yourself as dead. Make the attempt again. Evidently it is fruitless; no man can conceive of himself as dead. We may indeed conceive of ourselves as dead to this present state, as having departed from the present body, but not as totally dead. A man may die as to this present body, but he is immediately born into a new, a higher state; for the soul, speaking without reference to the particular state of existence, does not cease to live. To die, therefore, is not to cease from all life, but to cease from this present form of life which we enjoy in the body. The soul, absolutely speaking, never dies, it merely dies relatively, it merely dies in relation to that form of life which it lived in the body. The philosophical arguments, however, which are generally adduced in favor of the immortality of the soul, are good for nothing, Perhaps it will be well to examine a few of them. The first is derived from the simplicity of the soul; this is the metaphysical argument. The soul is simple, that is, not made up of parts, therefore indecomposable, there |