Adventures in the Moon, and Other Worlds

by Earl John Russell Russell

Whether it was Minos who presided at this ceremony I could not learn; but it seemed to me that the office required no great sagacity or justice, for the sieve was really the judge, and I greatly admired the equity with which it detained or dismissed the actions submitted to it. I heard it said that this sieve was Minos himself, who had been transformed into that instrument at his death for the duty I am relating.

I saw the trial of a well known orator, who took the sieve with great confidence as a benefactor to his country. His harangues were placed in it, and a few of them passed through, as having enjoined what was useful; but the chief part, notwithstanding their eloquence, could obtain no passage, and some of them, as soon as they were kindled, seemed to give him great torment. I also saw three celebrated poets receive judgment. They were Anacreon, Archilochus, and Sappho. Their poems lay in the heap amongst the other actions of their lives, and were subjected to the consideration of the sieve. Those strains which had caused virtue immediately fell through, and the lays that had encouraged vice were detained to become firebrands. Many were the dissolute odes which Anacreon shook without success, though he tried every part of the sieve, as if he had imagined that some of its holes would be more indulgent than others. His debaucheries, too, were obstructed in the same manner as his poetry; and as he had lived to a great age, and continued his poetry and his enjoyments to the last, he made a large conflagration. Sappho having lived and and written as voluptuously as Anacreon, was as unsuccessful in her agitation of the sieve. Archilochus, also, had many licentious poems to burn him; and many others were stopped in the sieve on account of their malevolent and unjust satire.

I shall not enumerate all the trials that I saw before I came to judgment myself. I was fully satisfied of the justice of all that I had seen, and was therefore in great terror, for I believed many of my actions to be quite disqualified for passing so rigorous a sieve. And so they proved; for though I shook them with great vigour, a considerable heap remained after the deduction of faults equal in number to the good actions. With great reluctance and horror of mind I rolled myself in them as I was commanded, and rose covered with my crimes, which burst into a blaze as soon as the torch was applied. The pain was dreadful, and I wonder that by any means I could have been made to forget it. The conducting fury drove me away to a large plain, where all the criminals were collected. There was here no light except from the flame of our own crimes, and we all wandered about in restless agony. Some rolled upon the ground in hope of extinguishing their fires, but not a crime could be smothered till it had been burned out in the manner ordained. The whole place was filled with screams and lamentations.

After some years of these dreary pains our fires evidently began to abate. At the end of twenty years three of my errors had gone out, and others were burning faintly. When fifty years had passed the flames had disappeared from all of us.

As soon as we were extinguished, several furies appeared with whips, and drove us to a distant part of hell, where we had to make choice of bodies in which to pass another life in the world. But first we underwent a singular examination. The plain where we had been burning was surrounded by a wall, and in leaving it we all passed through a gate, at which sat a minister of the place, whose name I know not. He seized every spectre that passed, and closely examined him; some he dismissed, but upon others he performed a strange operation. For when he had found one that required this remedy, he fixed his nails into the head, and tore him downwards into two parts, as a man may tear a piece of cloth. Every spectre so divided uttered a loud scream as if the separation were very painful. It was remarkable, that each part was still an entire spectre, and appeared as large as when the two were united. The operator then examined the two halves, and sometimes tore them again, each still retaining its size. Thus, in some instances, he made six or seven spectres out of one. The reason of this I afterwards discovered, and must explain to you. When this ceremony is ended, the spectres are turned into an enclosed place, where they find a crowd of bodies, being those which they had inhabited upon earth. Each has liberty to enter either his own body or any other that he can seize, a great strife, therefore, takes place; and in the contest for bodies it frequently happens that two or more souls obtain a lodgement in the same. These souls are compressed together, and pass through life as one person. This, therefore, is the cause why so many contradictory thoughts and inclinations are often found in the same man, for the two or more souls can never be united so as to make a single mind, but each preserves its own nature; and thus they are always contending together, sometimes one gaining the ascendant and sometimes another. When a man dies they go out of him as one spectre, having been pressed into each other by the body, so that they cannot separate themselves by their own efforts. They are then punished together, since their crimes have been committed in concert; but as they leave the place of punishment they are torn asunder as I have related. The executioner who divides them knows by examination whether each spectre consists of one soul or more, and never suffers a double one to pass. I was scrutinised with the rest, and being found single escaped the laceration of which I was much in dread.

I observed that when a soul had been divided, each single part was very different in appearance and character from the compound soul before separation. Thus Sappho, after being examined, was torn into two parts, when one half of her appeared a soul of elevated and solemn genius, the other half had in a previous existence been a woman of lascivious and disorderly life, who having obtained entrance into the body chosen by the woman of genius had filled her disposition and her poetry with vice. As soon as they were separate, the sublime Sappho began with great indignation to reproach her late associate with the disgraceful pleasures in which she had involved her. The other was not at all disconcerted, but received the censure with a laugh.

I heard many other souls, after separation, inveighing against their confederates, and declaring what great things they could have done had they been single. Some of the souls thus reproved denied their guilt, and affirmed that they had first been misled by the accuser, so that there were many disputes amongst the cloven spectres. We were now turned into the place where the bodies we had last lived in awaited us, and amongst these we had each to choose a habitation for another life. The bodies here presented a very singular spectacle, having no minds to animate them, but standing upright without motion, and without thought or life in the countenance. Some strange adventures now ensued amongst the souls, in haste to take possession of the bodies that pleased them. A soul enters the body by opening the mouth and crawling in, being able by a little effort and struggling to compress itself so as to be admitted. On every side, therefore, bodies were seen in the act of swallowing their souls; and it frequently happened, that when a soul had only his legs projecting from the mouth another seized him by the feet, and dragged him back again, having a desire for the same body.

I immediately saw the frame which I had last inhabited, but had no wish to return into it, for it had neither strength nor beauty. Why I had chosen it before I know not, for the draught of the Egyptian had not restored things so remote to my memory. I resolved, therefore, to provide myself with a better figure, and wandered about in search of a body to my taste.

I found that when a spectre had taken possession of a body, he was not immediately united with it so as to form one being, nor could he command it, as we living men rule our bodies; he was at first a separate creature from the body, though not at liberty to leave it when once settled within. The uniting of mind and body takes place afterwards.