The following observations tend not only to throw light on the doctrine of the Indians, the earliest philosophers of whom we have any genuine records, but they also shew that their doctrine is identically the same as that of certain individuals of the Western philosophers, who, recorded traditions inform us, actually travelled in very remote ages to the country of the Brahmins to learn it.
“Pythagoras, returning from his Eastern travels to Greece, taught the doctrine of the Metempsychosis, and the existence of a Supreme Being, by whom the universe was created, and by whose providence it is preserved; that the souls of mankind are emanations of that Being. Socrates, the wisest of the ancient philosophers, seems to have believed that the soul existed before the body; and that death relieves it from those seeming contrarieties to which it is subject, by its union with our material part. Plato (in conformity to the opinions of the learned Hindoos) asserted, that God infused into matter a portion of his divine spirit, which animates and moves it: that mankind have two souls of separate and different natures—the one corruptible, the other immortal: that the latter is a portion of the Divine Spirit: that the mortal soul ceases to exist with the life of the body; but the divine soul, no longer clogged by its union with matter, continues its existence, either in a state of happiness or punishment: that the souls of the virtuous return, after death, into the source whence they flowed; while the souls of the wicked, after being for a certain time confined to a place destined for their reception, are sent back to earth to animate other bodies. Aristotle supposed the souls of mankind to be portions or emanations of the divine spirit; which at death quit the body, and, like a drop of water falling into the ocean, are absorbed into the divinity. Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect, taught that throughout nature there are two eternal qualities; the one active, the other passive: that the former is a pure and subtle æther, the divine spirit; and that the latter is in itself entirely inert, until united with the active principle. That the divine spirit, acting upon matter, produced fire, air, water, earth: that the divine spirit is the efficient principle, and that all nature is moved and conducted by it. He believed also that the soul of man, being a portion of the universal soul, returns after death to its first source. The opinion of the soul being an emanation of the divinity, which is believed by the Hindoos, and was professed by Greeks, seems likewise to have been adopted by the early Christians. Macrobius observes, Animarum originem emanare de cœlo, inter recte philosophantes indubitatæ constant esse fidei. Saint Justin says, the soul is incorruptible, because it emanates from God; and his disciple Tatianus, the Assyrian, observes, that man having received a portion of the divinity, is immortal as God is. Such was the system of the ancient philosophers, Pythagoreans, Brachmans, and some sects of the Christians.”[1]
Thus from trains of reasoning similar to what I have briefly described, and from natural causes, I think arose all the ancient doctrines and mythologies.
12. The oldest philosophy or mythology of which we have any certain history, is that of the Buddha of the Eastern nations, in which are to be found the various doctrines to which I have just alluded. From the Metempsychosis arose the repugnance among the Buddhists to the slaughter of animals,—a necessary consequence of this doctrine uncorrupted and sincerely believed. From this circumstance in the first book of Genesis, or book of Wisdom, which is probably a work of the Buddhists, the slaughter of animals is prohibited or not allowed. After a time the mild doctrines of Buddha came to be changed or corrupted and superseded by those of Crishna. Hence in the second book of Genesis, or the book of the Generations, or Re-generations[2] of the planetary
