constitution was an immaterial element which was confined in the grave and continued to desire the necessities of life, like food and drink. The head of the family had the duty to provide for it and thus to insure the peace and happiness of the departed ones. There was no banquet, no festivity in a Roman house, where the first fruits, the first offerings, were not laid upon the altar consecrated to the manes or ancestral souls. It was regarded as a calamity if a family became extinct, and in such cases a male child had to be adopted so that the ancestral souls would not be deprived of the offerings which were necessary for the continuation of their life beyond. A similar custom still prevails in China. Another peculiar custom was the belief of the Romans that the souls of the ancestors abided in the statuary with which they ornamented their houses; in consequence, they carried those statues with them when they had to emigrate, and they also took unto them the statues of the gods of the people they had conquerd.

At a later stage of Roman civilization we find higher ideas about immortality, as for instance, in Cicero's "Dream of Scipio," where he says: "Know that it is not thou, but thy body alone which is mortal. The individual in his entirety resides in the soul, and not in the outward form. Learn then, that thou art a god; thou art the immortal intelligence which gives movement to a perishable body, just as the eternal God animates an incorruptible body."

However, it is a fact that the Romans as a nation never cared much for the life beyond, and their philosophers even tried to stifle that innate feeling of immortality which we can never entirely get rid of. Thus Epicurus, Lucretius and others did all they could in order to rid the Romans of the superstition which favored the belief in a higher being and in immortality. Lucretius says in De Rerum Natura: "The fear of eternal life should be banished from the universe; it troubles the peace of mankind, for it prevents the enjoyment of any security or pleasure.'

But Virgil, who was not only his disciple but also his ardent admirer, cannot help giving expression to his belief

in survival and more, in reincarnation. In the Aeneid he says, "After death the souls come to the Elysian fields or to Tartarus, and there meet with the reward or punishment of their deeds during life. Later, after drinking the waters of Lethe, which takes away all memory of the past, they return to earth."

And Ovid, who lived a little later (16 A. D.) writes in his most celebrated work, the Metamorphoses: "Nothing perishes; everything changes here upon the earth; the souls come and go unendingly in visible forms; the animals which have acquired goodness will take upon them human form."

Thus we see that the fight between the believers in immortality and those who do not care to listen to the still, small voice in ourselves, which affirms it, is very old. For not only in Rome do we find materialistic philosophers, but in every country of the world, even in India itself. That does not diminish the importance of the fact that all ancient civilizations show the same persistent affirmation of immortality, at least as long as those civilizations are not yet on the road to decay and disintegration, caused by misuses of power and by materialism.

There is another race the cult of which gives much food for thought in regard to the question which we are here considering, namely, the Celts and Gauls. Although we cannot say at what time the Celts immigrated to Europe, yet we know from the remnants of their language and more still, from their religious views, that they belong to the Indo-German family which settled in Greece, Bohemia, Germany, Spain, and principally in France and Iceland, during the migration of nations. They came probably from some part of Asia and brought with them the most important and valuable bequests of India; the firm belief in immortality and in reincarnation. Many Roman writers speak admiringly of their philosophy, and it is said that in the temple of Delphi a place was reserved for Bel, the god of the Celts. Herodotus (484 B. C.) speaks of them on several occasions and refers to the high value of their philosophical doctrines.

That the Druids, the priests of the Celts and Gauls, must have been highly educated is confirmed on all sides; they are even said to have been connected with the Pythagorean school, and the similarity of their doctrines with those of the great teacher, makes this very probable. Accordingly we find that they believed the immaterial part of man to be an emanation of Divinity, which, before animating the human body, had to dwell in plants and animals. It has to incarnate many times in inferior worlds, like our earth, and also in higher worlds, the moon forming a welcome resting place for the incarnating souls which by this process gain higher and greater perfection until they arrive in gwynfid, the world of felicity. It is remarkable that the Gauls recognized the essential difference between animal and human souls and consequently never fell into the error of metempsychosis, that is, the belief held by the later Greeks, that human souls could return into the body of animals.

Caesar claims that the Druids possessed great astronomical knowledge. The Welsh Bardic tale of Taliesin confirms this. They certainly knew that the earth moves, for the ancient bard asks, What it is that upholds the earth, so that it cannot fall while gliding unrestingly on its wonderful path? Yes, a great journeyer is the world, Taliesin says. The Druids seem to have been occupied much with the study of the moon, which was sacred to them. Their belief that she was the dwelling place of discarnated souls gives rise to the supposition that they must have known about the lunar pitris, or at least Pythagoras' teaching, according to which the moon was the place from which the souls redescended to earth. We will probably never know in full how great the science of the Celtic priests was, for their menhirs and dolmens tells us little, and the Greek and Roman writers did not understand more of the secret teachings and of the peculiar rites of the Druids than what we find in their astonished appreciation of Druidic learning. But one thing is certain: the Gaulish and Celtic belief in immortality and reincarnation was stronger than that of any other then living nation, as Valerius Maximus (42 B. C.) says,

"they do not hesitate to lend sums to be repaid in the next life."

In concluding I want to mention one other people who has the peculiar reputation of being the only civilized people which does not believe in the survival of the soul, the Hebrews. Let us see if they are really the only ones who do not partake in what I have called an innate idea. It is true that immortality is not mentioned in the Mosaic Law, which nowhere appeals to the idea of an after life, in order to impress the necessity of moral living, on the chosen people. Why Moses, the initiate, kept this teaching secret, we will probably never know and it is useless to speculate about this fact, since we know nothing certain about the great lawgiver and least of all about the authorship of the Toro or five books Moses called Pentateuch, which is not any more credited to Moses himself. As Dr. Davidson says in his introduction to the Old Testament, "There is little external evidence for the Mosaic authorship and what little there is does not stand the test of criticism The objections derived from the internal structure are conclusive against the Mosaic authorship."

But there are other ancient Hebrew writings from which we may get information regarding their belief in immortality, for instance, the Book of Wisdom attributed to Solomon, the Vision of Ezekiel," the Book of Job, of Daniel,' of the Maccabees, and they all express not only a belief in survival but also in resurrection, like the following:

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"For I know that my redeemer liveth and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth and I shall be clothed again with my skin and in my flesh shall I see my God."

Now it is true that the sayings of a few prophets do not prove much for the belief of an entire people, and it is probable that the Hebrews only began to pay attention to the idea of immortality after they came in contact with other highly civilized people. But there are two other points which

Tusc. Disp. I, Chap. 12. XIX, 25-27. 'Daniel XII, 2.

'Wisdom II, 22, 23. Ezekiel XXXVII, 3-7. Job 'Maccabees VII, 22, 23, 36.

deserve our attention. The first one is the difference in the translation which Hebrew scholars employ and which sometimes reveals an entirely different sense, as for instance the passage in Genesis II, 7: And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul," which has been newly translated as follows: "The Lord God joined to the material organs of man the intelligent soul (nichoma) bearing the breath of life, rouach (that which follows it in all lives), and the bond of this union of the soul with the gross body was a breath of life, nephesh."

Much debate has arisen in regard to the correct interpretation of these Hebrew words, but it is certain that they are simultaneously used in the Old Testament and probably mean to say that man consists of body, soul and spirit.

The other point I want to call attention to is, that the ancient Hebrews practiced a kind of ancestor worship in that they took great care to accord their dead ones a consecrated burial, in order to avoid all suffering which otherwise would befall the souls of the dead. If this is not proof for the belief in survival, then I point to the practice of necromancy, an example of which is given by Samuel conjuring up the witch of Endor. This practice was later forbidden by penalty of death.

But if the belief in immortality is veiled in the Old Testament, it is certainly brought to absolute clearness in the Zohar and Kabala. It is true that both these works are of a later date, the Zohar having been written A. D. 121. The teaching given therein is similar to that which we find in the Secret Doctrine. "Man in quitting this earth strips himself little by little of his covering of vices. His soul returns to the substance whence it came, after having by a series of transmigrations, recovered consciousness of itself and after having thus developed all its latent powers."

This is enough to show that the Hebrews, like all the ancient and modern people we know, have that innate idea of the immortality of the soul, which is the inextinguishable