M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire observes in his Premier Mémoire sur le Sankhyâ p. 416, Paris, 1852.
“Voilà donc la transmigration dans les plus grands dialogues de Platon — le Timée, la République, le Phèdre, le Phédon. On peut en retrouver la trace manifeste dans d’autres dialogues moins considérables, le Menon et le Politique, par exemple. La transmigration est même positivement indiquée dans le dixième Livre des Lois, où Platon traite avec tant de force et de solennité de la providence et de la justice divines.
“En présence de témoignages si sérieux, et de tant de persistance à revenir sur des opinions qui ne varient pas, je crois que tout esprit sensé ne peut que partager l’avis de M. Cousin. Il est impossible que Platon ne se fasse de l’exposition de ces opinions qu’un pur badinage. Il les a répetées, sans les modifier en rien, au milieu des discussions les plus graves et les plus étendues. Ajoutez que ces doctrines tiennent intimément à toutes celles qui sont le fond même du platonisme, et qu’elles s’y entrelacent si étroitement, que les en détacher, c’est le mutiler et l’amoindrir. Le système des Idées ne se comprend pas tout entier sans la réminiscence: et la réminiscence elle même implique necessairement l’existence antérieure de l’âme.”
Dr. Henry More, in his ‘Treatise on the Immortality of the Soul,’ argues at considerable length in defence of pre-existence of each soul, as a part of the doctrine. He considers himself to have clearly proved — “That the pre-existence of the soul is an opinion both in itself the most rational that can be maintained, and has had the suffrage of the most renowned philosophers in all ages of the world”. Of these last-mentioned philosophers he gives a list, as follows — Moses, on the authority of the Jewish Cabbala — Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Epicharmus, Empedocles, Cebês, Euripides, Plato, Euclid, Philo, Virgil, Marcus Cicero, Plotinus, Jamblichus, Proclus, Boethius, &c. See chapters xii. and xiii. pages 116, 117, 121 of his Treatise. Compare also what he says in Sect. 18 of his Preface General, page xx.-xxiv.
Plato’s demonstration of the immortality of the soul did not appear satisfactory to subsequent philosophers. The question remained debated and problematical.
We are told that one vehement admirer of Plato — the Ambrakiot Kleombrotus — was so profoundly affected and convinced by reading the Phædon, that he immediately terminated his existence by leaping from a high wall; though in other respects well satisfied with life. But the number of persons who derived from it such settled conviction, was certainly not considerable. Neither the doctrine nor the reasonings of Plato were adopted even by the immediate successors in his school: still less by Aristotle and the Peripatetics — or by the Stoics — or by the Epikureans. The Epikureans denied altogether the survivorship of soul over body: Aristotle gives a definition of the soul which involves this same negation, though he admits as credible the separate existence of the rational soul, without individuality or personality. The Stoics, while affirming the soul to be material as well as the body, considered it as a detached fragment of the all-pervading cosmical or mundane soul, which was re-absorbed after the death of the individual into the great whole to which it belonged. None of these philosophers were persuaded by the arguments of Plato. The popular orthodoxy, which he often censures harshly, recognised some sort of posthumous existence as a part of its creed; and the uninquiring multitude continued in the teaching and traditions of their youth. But literary and philosophical men, who sought to form some opinion for themselves without altogether rejecting (as the Epikureans rejected) the basis of the current traditions — were in no better condition for deciding the question with the assistance of Plato, than they would have been without him. While the knowledge of the bodily organism, and of mind or soul as embodied therein, received important additions, from Aristotle down to Galen — no new facts either were known or could become known, respecting soul per se, considered as pre-existent or post-existent to body. Galen expressly records his dissatisfaction with Plato on this point, though generally among his warmest admirers. Questions of this kind remained always problematical, standing themes for rhetoric or dialectic.[114] Every man could do, though not with the same exuberant eloquence, what Plato had done — and no man could do more. Every man could coin his own hopes and fears, his own æsthetical preferences and repugnances, his own ethical aspiration to distribute rewards and punishments among the characters around him — into affirmative prophecies respecting an unknowable future, where neither verification nor Elenchus were accessible. The state of this discussion throughout the Pagan world bears out the following remark of Lord Macaulay, with which I conclude the present chapter:—
“There are branches of knowledge with respect to which the law of the human mind is progress.… But with theology, the case is very different. As respects natural religion — revelation being for the present altogether left out of the question — it is not easy to see that a philosopher of the present day is more favourably situated than Thales or Simonides.… As to the other great question — the question, what becomes of man after death — we do not see that a highly educated European, left to his unassisted reason, is more likely to be in the right than a Blackfoot Indian. Not a single one of the many sciences in which we surpass the Blackfoot Indians, throws the smallest light on the state of the soul after the animal life is extinct. In truth, all the philosophers, ancient and modern, who have attempted, without the help of revelation, to prove the immortality of man — from Plato down to Franklin — appear to us to have failed deplorably. Then again, all the great enigmas which perplex the natural theologian are the same in all ages. The ingenuity of a people just emerging from barbarism, is quite sufficient to propound them. The genius of Locke or Clarke is quite unable to solve them.… Natural Theology, then, is not a progressive science.”[115]
[114] Seneca says, Epist. 88. “Innumerabiles sunt quæstiones de animo: unde sit, qualis sit, quando esse incipiat, quamdiu sit; an aliunde aliò transeat, et domicilium mutet, ad alias animalium formas aliasque conjectus, an non amplius quam semel serviat, et emissus evagetur in toto; utrum corpus sit, an non sit: quid sit facturus, quum per nos aliquid facere desierit: quomodo libertate usurus, cum ex hâc exierit caveâ: an obliviscatur priorum et illic nosse incipiat, postquam de corpore abductus in sublime secessit.” Compare Lucretius, i. 113.
[115] Macaulay, Ranke’s History of the Popes (Crit. and Hist. Essays, vol. iii. p. 210). Sir Wm. Hamilton observes (Lectures on Logic, Lect. 26, p. 55): “Thus Plato, in the Phædon, demonstrates the immortality of the soul from its simplicity: in the Republic, he demonstrates its simplicity from its immortality.”