Part 19 (2/2)

Schopenhauer adopted the idea of Reincarnation which he had found in the _Upanishads_; regarding this portion of his teaching, his contemporaries and followers set up a kind of conspiracy of silence.

In _Parerga and Paralipomena_, vol. 2, chap. 15, _Essay on Religions_, he says:

”I have said that the combination of the _Old Testament_ with the _New_ gives rise to absurdities. As an example, I may cite the Christian doctrine of Predestination and Grace as formulated by Augustine and adopted from him by Luther, according to which one man is endowed with grace and another is not. Grace thus comes to be a privilege received at birth and brought ready into the world.... What is obnoxious and absurd in this doctrine may be traced to the idea contained in the _Old Testament_, that man is the creation of an external will which called him into existence out of nothing. It is quite true that genuine moral excellence is really innate; but the meaning of the Christian doctrine is expressed in another and more rational way by the theory of Metempsychosis, common to Brahmans and Buddhists. According to this theory, the qualities which distinguish one man from another are received at birth, _i.e._, are brought from another world and a former life; these qualities are not an external gift of grace, but are the fruits of the acts committed in that other world....

”What is absurd and revolting in this dogma is, in the main, as I said, the simple outcome of Jewish theism with its 'creation out of nothing,' and the really foolish and paradoxical denial of the doctrine of metempsychosis which is involved in that idea, a doctrine which is natural to a certain extent, self-evident, and, with the exception of the Jews, accepted by nearly the whole human race at all times.... Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life.”

In _The World as Will and Idea_, he also says:

”What sleep is for the individual, death is for the Will (character).

”It flings off memory and individuality, and this is Lethe; and through this sleep of death it reappears refreshed and fitted out with another intellect, as a new being.”

In _Parerga and Paralipomena_, vol. 2, chap. 10, he adds:

”Did we clearly understand the real nature of our inmost being, we should see how absurd it is to desire that individuality should exist eternally. This wish implies that we confuse real Being with one of its innumerable manifestations. The individuality disappears at death, but we lose nothing thereby, for it is only the manifestation of quite a different Being--a Being ignorant of time, and, consequently, knowing neither life nor death. The loss of intellect is the Lethe, but for which the Will would remember the various manifestations it has caused. When we die, we throw off our individuality, like a worn-out garment, and rejoice because we are about to receive a new and a better one.”

Edgar Allen Poe, speaking of the dim memories of bygone lives, says:

”We walk about, amid the destinies of our world-existence, encompa.s.sed by divine but ever present Memories of a Destiny more vast--very distant in the bygone time and infinitely awful.

”We live out a Youth peculiarly haunted by such dreams, yet never mistaking them for dreams. As Memories we _know_ them. During our _Youth_ the distinction is too clear to deceive us even for a moment.

”But now comes the period at which a conventional World-Reason awakens us from the truth of our dream ... a mis-shapen day or a misfortune that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life....” (_Eureka._)

Georges Sand, in _Consuelo_, sets forth the logic of Reincarnation; and G. Flammarion expounds this doctrine in most of his works: _Uranie_; _Les Mondes Imaginaires et les Mondes Reels_; _La Pluralite des Mondes Habites_, etc.

Professor William Knight wrote in the _Fortnightly Review_ for September, 1878:

”It seems surprising that in the discussions of contemporary philosophy on the origin and destiny of the soul there has been no explicit revival of the doctrines of Pre-existence and Metempsychosis.... They offer quite a remarkable solution of the mystery of Creation, Translation, and Extinction....

”Stripped of all extravagances and expressed in the modest terms of probability, the theory has immense speculative interest and great ethical value. It is much to have the puzzle of the origin of evil thrown back for an indefinite number of cycles of lives and to have a workable explanation of Nemesis....”

Professor W. A. Butler, in his _Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy_, says:

”There is internally no greater improbability that the present may be the result of a former state now almost wholly forgotten than that the present should be followed by a future form of existence in which, perhaps, or in some departments of which, the oblivion may be as complete.”

The Rev. William R. Alger, a Unitarian minister, adds:

”Our present lack of recollection of past lives is no disproof of their actuality.... The most striking fact about the doctrine of the repeated incarnations of the soul ... is the constant reappearance of that faith in all parts of the world and its permanent hold on certain great nations....

”The advocates of the resurrection should not confine their attention to the repellent or ludicrous aspects of metempsychosis, ... but do justice to its claim and charm.” (_A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life_.)

Professor Francis Bowen, of Harvard University, writes in the _Princetown Review_ for May, 1881, when dealing with the subject of _Christian Metempsychosis_:

”Our life upon earth is rightly held to be a discipline and a preparation for a higher and eternal life hereafter. But if limited to the duration of a single mortal body, it is so brief as to seem hardly sufficient for so great a purpose.... Why may not the probation of the soul be continued or repeated through a long series of successive generations, the same personality animating, one after another, an indefinite number of tenements of flesh, and carrying forward into each the training it has received, the character it has formed, the temper and dispositions it has indulged, in the stage of existence immediately preceding?...

”Every human being thus dwells successively in many bodies, even during one short life.[232] If every birth were an act of absolute creation, the introduction to life of an entirely new creature, we might reasonably ask why different souls are so variously const.i.tuted at the outset.... One child seems a perverse goblin, while another has the early promise of a Cowley or a Pascal.... The birthplace of one is in Central Africa, and of another in the heart of civilised and Christian Europe. Where lingers eternal justice then? How can such frightful inequalities be made to appear consistent with the infinite wisdom and goodness of G.o.d?...

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