The Immortality of the Soul—History of the Doctrine

THE greatest name that appears in the history of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is that of PLATO. He was a Greek, was born B. C. 428, and was one of the greatest philosophers of antiquity. "The influence of this sublime autocrat," says Alger, "in the realms of intellect, has transcended calculation. However coldly his thoughts may have been regarded by his contemporary countrymen, they soon obtained cosmopolitan audience, and, surviving the ravages of time and ignorance, overleaping the bars of rival schools and sects, appreciated and diffused by the loftiest spirits of succeeding ages, closely blended with their own speculations by many Christian theologians, have held an almost unparalleled dominion over the minds of millions of men for more than fifty generations." (Doctrine of a Future Life, p. 185.)

Those who believe the soul immortal, now quote his views on that subject with great satisfaction. So much did he do for that doctrine that he is often called the father of it. Mr. Anthon expresses the sentiment which has led so many Christians to put Plato almost on a level with the Bible when he says: "Whoever studies Plato is treading on holy ground. So heathens always felt it; so even Christians confessed." (Classical Dict., art. Plato.)

The reason why Plato is thus honored by Christians is revealed in the following statement of another author: "Plato is also celebrated as the first of the ancient philosophers who distinctly taught the doctrine of the immortality of the soul." That it was not very plainly taught before, we have already seen. It needed the genius of a Plato to invent arguments to prove the soul immortal; and Christians, in their defense of this doctrine, have only been able to take up and repeat his arguments. This fact Dr. Knapp thus honestly confesses: "In the varied web of proof [of the immortality of the soul] in our modern philosophical schools, the chief threads, and, as it were, the entire material, are of Grecian origin." "The followers of Socrates, however, did the most for this doctrine, and especially Plato." (Chris. Theol., pp. 521, 522.) Enfield says, "Even to the present day Plato has many followers; his writings still give a tincture to the speculations and language of philosophy and theology." (Hist. of Phil., p. 115.)

This is true; hence we shall be interested to learn about Plato and his doctrine of the soul. At the age of twenty Plato became the disciple of Socrates. At the end of eight years, Socrates dying, he left Greece in search of wisdom. "He first visited that part of Italy called Magna Graecia, where a celebrated school of philosophy had been established by Pythagoras, and was instructed in all the mysteries of the Pythagorean system, the subtilties of which he afterward too freely blended with the simple doctrine of Socrates." (Ibid., p. 116.)

Thus at an early period we find Plato a disciple of the Pythagoreans, and freely receiving their doctrines, the chief of which was the immortality of the soul. Then he traveled into Egypt. Of this event Enfield says, "Wherever he came he obtained information from the Egyptian priests." (Hist. of Phil., p. 116.) "Whilst studious youth were crowding to Athens from every quarter in search of Plato for their master, that philosopher was wandering along the banks of the Nile, or the plains of a barbarous country, himself a disciple of the old men of Egypt." (Valerius Maximus, book viii. chap. vii.)

Returning to Greece, laden with all the theories of Socrates, Pythagoras, and the Egyptian priests concerning the nature of the soul, he proceeded to remodel and refine their doctrine according to his own fancy, and he brought it much nearer the present view on that subject than it had before been. Of this fact the historian says, "Plato himself, whilst he enriched his system with stores from the magazine of Pythagoras, accommodated the Pythagorean doctrines, as he also did those of his master, Socrates, to his own system." (Enfield's Hist. of Phil., p. 221.) Mosheim says, "Plato falsely attributed to Socrates what he had either learned from the Pythagoreans, or had himself feigned, in order to obtain for it greater currency." (Cudworth's Intel. Sys., vol. i. p. 264, note.) What Plato represents Socrates as saying in the Phaedo about the immortality of the soul, is only Plato's own words and ideas put into the mouth of Socrates; hence these sayings afford no proof that Socrates ever held or taught that doctrine.

On this subject Enfield says: "Socrates left behind him nothing in writing; but his illustrious pupils, Xenophon and Plato, have in some measure supplied this defect. The memoirs of Socrates, written by Xenophon, afford, however, a much more accurate idea of the opinions of Socrates, and of his manner of teaching, than the dialogues of Plato, who everywhere mixes his own conceptions and diction, and, as we shall afterwards see, those of other philosophers, with the ideas and language of his master. It is related, that when Socrates heard Plato recite his Lysis, he said, 'How much does this young man make me say which I never conceived.' Xenophon denies that Socrates ever taught natural philosophy or any mathematical science, and charges with misrepresentation and falsehood those who had ascribed to him dissertations of this kind; probably referring to Plato, in whose works Socrates is introduced as discoursing upon these subjects." (Hist. of Phil., p. 100.)

"When he [Plato] was twenty years old he became a stated disciple of Socrates, and remained with him in that relation eight years. During this period he frequently displeased the followers of Socrates, and sometimes gave Socrates himself occasion of complaint, by mixing foreign tenets with those of his master, and grafting upon the Socratic system opinions which were taken from some other stock." (Ibid., p. 116.)

"It is remarkable," says Leland, "that though there were several sects of philosophers which professed to derive their origin from Socrates, scarcely any of them taught the immortality of the soul as the doctrine of their schools, except Plato and his disciples, and many even of these treated it as absolutely uncertain." (Necessity of Revelation, vol. ii. p. 139.)

PLATO'S DOCTRINE.

Having found the fountain whence Plato drew his doctrines, we will now briefly examine his theory of the soul. We find him agreeing with his master, Pythagoras, in the following particulars: 1. The pre-existence of the soul; 2. That it was an emanation from God; 3. That it was immortal; 4. That it transmigrated through different bodies; 5. That it would finally be absorbed into the Deity. We shall also find that he further improved and spiritualized this doctrine.

1. Plato made the soul more ethereal than his predecessors had considered it, though he still held it to be material.

2. He made the soul the real man.

3. He made the body a prison, a real hindrance to the soul.

4. Death was simply the freeing of the soul from gross matter, that it might act with more freedom.

5. Plato made the transmigration of the soul a moral doctrine instead of one of necessity, as it had been held before.

Enfield thus describes Plato's doctrine of God and matter: "Plato supposes two eternal and independent causes of all things; one, that by which all things were made, which is God; the other, that from which all things are made, which is matter." (Hist. of Phil., p. 129.)

Plato held that God did not create matter, but simply molded it. He taught that baneful doctrine that matter is the source and origin of all evil.

Says a learned author: "It was also a doctrine of Plato that there is in matter a necessary, but blind and refractory force; and that hence arises a propensity in matter to disorder and deformity, which is the cause of all the imperfections which appear in the works of God, and the origin of evil." ( Ibid., p. 130.) This is the cause of the mixture of good and evil which is found in the material world. The effect of this doctrine is to degrade matter and exalt mind, or the soul.

Again, the above author continues: "Visible things were regarded by Plato as fleeting shades, and ideas, as the only permanent substances. These he conceived to be the proper objects of science, to a mind raised by divine contemplation above the perpetually varying scenes of the material world." (Ibid., p. 132.) Here the same effort is seen to decry matter and exalt pure mind, spirit, or soul.

"Still further he taught," says the historian, "that the body is a prison, from which the soul must be released before it can arrive at the knowledge of those things which are real and immutable." (Ibid., p. 136) In answer to the question how they should bury him, Plato makes Socrates say "Just as you please, if only you can catch me." And do not "say at my interment that Socrates is laid out, or is carried out, or is buried." (Phaedo, Bohn's Library, pp. 124, 125.) How many Christian funeral sermons have been modeled after this old heathen philosophizing!

One fact is worthy of special attention; viz., that Plato places his doctrine of the human soul at the head of his philosophy. Thus testifies Enfield: "Plato refers to the head of the philosophy of nature his doctrine concerning the human soul,—a doctrine which he treats obscurely on the ground of his assumed hypothesis concerning spiritual emanations from the divine nature. He appears to have taught that the soul of man is derived by emanation from God; but that this emanation was not immediate, but through the intervention of the soul of the world, which was itself debased by some material admixture, and, consequently, that the human soul, receding further from the first intelligence, is inferior in perfection to the soul of the world. . . . The relation which the human soul, in its original constitution, bears to matter, Plato appears to have considered as the source of moral evil. Since the soul of the world, by partaking of matter, has within itself the seeds of evil, he inferred that this must be the case still more with respect to the soul of man. . . .

"To account for the origin and present state of human souls, Plato supposes that when God formed the universe, he separated from the soul of the world inferior souls, equal in number to the stars, and assigned to each its proper celestial abode; but that these souls (by what means or for what reason does not appear) were sent down to the earth into human bodies, as into a sepulcher or prison. He ascribes to this cause the depravity and misery to which human nature is liable; and maintains that it is only by disengaging itself from all animal passions, and rising above sensible objects to the contemplation of the world of intelligence, that the soul of man can be prepared to return to its original habitation." (Hist. of Phil., p. 134.)

Thus we see that Plato held that the soul was a spiritual emanation from God; that the source of all evil is in matter; that the body is a prison for the soul; that by contemplation the soul may return to God, etc. "Lastly, Plato teaches, in express terms, the doctrine of the immortality of the rational soul; but he has rested the proof of this doctrine upon arguments drawn from the more fanciful parts of his system." (Ibid., p. 135.)

The learned Mr. Anthon thus relates Plato's arguments for the soul's immortality, as found in the Phaedo. Be it remembered that in this dialogue Socrates is only used as a mouth-piece through which Plato expresses his own ideas. "Socrates," writes Anthon, "undertakes to prove the immortality of the soul by its spirituality; and we have here the first traces of a demonstration which modern philosophy, under the guidance of Revelation, has carried on to so successful a result. The doctrine which Plato here puts into the mouth of Socrates is not entirely pure; it is amalgamated with the Pythagorean hypothesis of the metempsychosis, and with all sorts of fables borrowed from the Greek mythology." (Classical Dict., art. Plato.)

Here we have Plato proving the immortality of the soul by its spirituality, though by this he did not mean pure immortality, as is now taught. This was the first trace of that idea which modern Christian philosophy has carried on. This shows the origin of that doctrine. Plato was its legitimate father.

Plato taught that the transmigrations which any soul has to undergo are for its sins. When it is freed from sin, it will be freed from transmigrating, will no longer be connected with a natural body, but will return to God and be re-absorbed into his being. If a soul has sinned much, and is very vile, it will be born into the body of a degraded animal, as a pig or a dog. If it has been pretty good, it will occupy the body of a better animal, as a horse or a man, etc. Warburton and Knapp say this was a refinement of Plato's upon the original doctrine of transmigration. This was the only hell that Plato believed in. The vulgar notions of hell, hades, tartarus, and the torments there, he rejected as fables, though he often speaks of them in an accommodation to the popular notion. So say Leland and others.

Plato held that the soul was a part of God. Thus writes Bishop Warburton: "Plato, without any softening, frequently calls the soul God, and a part of God." (Divine Lega., vol. ii. p. 220.) This is one of his strongest proofs of the soul's immortality. As a part of God, it will be re-absorbed into him either at death or as soon as it is sufficiently purified by transmigration. With Plato, the soul was immortal only as a part of God, into whom it would finally be re-absorbed; and lose all personal existence.