“O per fortuna, o per ingano,
Il vencer sempre e laudabil cosa.”
THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL.[[171]]
I am about to invite your attention to one of the many curious results of comparative mythology. This science, which is still in its infancy, may be regarded by some of you, as it is by the world at large, as one of little practical importance, and quite remote from the interests of daily life and thought. But some of the results it attains are so startling, and throw such a singular light on various familiar customs and popular beliefs, that the time is not far off when it will be recognized as one of the most potent solvents in the crucible of intelligence.
The point to which I shall address myself to-night is the opinion entertained by three ancient nations, very wide apart in space, time and blood, concerning the journey of the soul when it leaves the body.
These nations are the ancient Egyptians, the ancient Aryans, and the Aztecs or Nahua of Central Mexico.
All these people believed, with equal faith, in the existence of a soul or spirit in man, and in its continuing life after the death of the body. How they came by this belief does not concern my present thesis; that they held it in unquestioning faith none can deny who has studied even superficially their surviving monuments. They supposed this assumed after-life was continued under varying conditions in some other locality than this present world, and that it required a journey of some length for the disembodied spirit to reach its destined abode. It is the events which were supposed to take place on this journey, and the goals to which it led, that I am about to narrate. It will be seen that there are several curious similarities in the opinions of these widely diverse peoples, which can only be explained by the supposition that they based their theories of the soul’s journey and goal on some analogy familiar to them all.
I begin with the Egyptian theory. It appears in its most complete form in the sepulchral records of the New Kingdom, after the long period of anarchy of the Shepherd Kings had passed, and when under the 18th, 19th and 20th dynasties, Egypt may be said to have risen to the very pinnacle of her greatness.
The collection of the sacred funerary texts into the famous ritual known as “The Book of the Dead,” dates from this time. Many of its chapters are, indeed, very much older; but Egyptian religion, which was not stationary, but constantly progressive toward higher intellectual forms and purer ethical standards, can best be judged as it was in this period, that of the Theban dynasties of the New Kingdom. To assign a date, we may say in round numbers, two thousand years before the Christian era.
From that invaluable document, therefore, the “Book of the Dead,” we learn what this ancient people expected to happen to the soul when it left the body. Of the millions of mummies which were zealously prepared in those ages, none was complete unless it had folded with it one or a number of chapters of this holy book, the formulas in which were safeguards and passwords to the spirit on its perilous journey.