Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas;
Scilicet huc reddi deinde ac resoluta referri
Omnia.”[39]
Strikingly similar to Lao-tzŭ’s words are those of the Preacher—“For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast; for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.”[40] In later times Coleridge has said—“Life is the one universal soul, which by virtue of the enlivening Breath, and the informing word, all organised bodies have in common, each after its kind. This, therefore, all animals possess, and man as an animal.”[41] More closely resembling Lao-tzŭ’s statements on this subject, however, are the words of Dr. Büchner—“D’un autre côté n’oublions pas non plus, que nous ne sommes qu’une partie imperceptible, quoique nécessaire, du grand tout qui constitue le monde et que nous devons tôt ou tard perdu notu personalité pour rentrer dans la masse commune. La Matière dans son ensemble est la mère d’ou tout provient et ou tout retourne.”[42]
As we proceed we will find other doctrines of our author resembling those of writers and thinkers far removed from him in time and space. The illustrations given and referred to above will suffice to show that, in speculations about Nature and the great mystery of existence, we are little, if anything, superior to “the ancients.” The course of speculative philosophy seems to be circular—the same truths and errors appearing again and again, so that as Coleridge has said, “For many, very many centuries it has been difficult to advance a new truth, or even a new error, in the philosophy of the intellect or morals,”[43] or, he might have added, of theoretical physics. Is it true, after all, that the spirit of the long-deceased philosopher returns from the Elysian fields, forgetting by its Lethean draught all the truths and realities of the eternal, ever-the-same world, to inform again a human body? We know that Malebranche’s character was like that of Plato. Schelling, even in external appearance, resembled Socrates; Hegel is called the modern Proclus; and the soul of Lao-tzŭ may have transmigrated into Emerson. This last has been chained to “a weight of nerves,” and located in circumstances altogether unlike those of its former earthly existence, a fact which would account for many points of unlikeness. The informing spirit, however, has known no change in “its own deep self:”
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness