As the horrid doctrine of witchcraft under the light of advancing knowledge has had to retire into the background of oblivion; as the Puritan doctrine of infant damnation has been relegated to the limbo of forgetfulness; as hell’s fire has burned to ashes and the ashes become cold, so too, is the doctrine of a personal Devil retreating from the minds of all sensible people.
SOUL FARRAGO.
What is, and Where is the Soul?
Until the Greek philosophy taught the world how to use and abuse abstract notions, immaterialism was not an attainable phase of thought. (Prof. Bain, “Mind and Body,” p. 143.)
Thought necessarily supposes conditions. To think is to condition, and conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of thought. For, as the greyhound cannot outstrip his shadow, nor (by a more appropriate simile) the eagle out-soar the atmosphere in which he floats, and by which alone he may be supported; so the mind cannot transcend the sphere of limitation, within and through which exclusively the possibility of thought is realized. (Sir William Hamilton, “Philosophy” p. 456.)
In this paper an attempt is made to answer two very important questions, namely: What is, and where is the soul? in such fashion that everybody will be satisfied that he has a soul, and the exact spot it occupies in his mundane tabernacle. Here are a number of opinions on this subject, by the most learned men the world has ever produced. In a multitude of counsel there is wisdom. The first witness I shall put upon the stand is:
Pythagoras: (6th c. B. C.) The soul is number and a harmony. Taught the doctrine of metempsychosis. His disciples held the soul to be an aggregate of particles of great subtilty pervading the air in constant agitation.
Heraclitus: (6th c. B. C.) The soul is a spark of the stellar essence: “Scintilla stellaris essentia.”
Pherecides: (6th c. B. C.) Souls existed from all eternity.