of post mortem existence, which he conceived, and Immortality—as the brightest intellects of the present age understand it—are two very dissimilar states or modes of being, and widely different in principle, value, nature, and results.
It may be well to present an abstract and brief chronicle of the Platonic idea, in order to clearly indicate the divergences.
To say nothing concerning Plato's doctrine of the Metempsychosis, or the Transmigration of soul from body to body—(which doctrine contains some truth, as doth nearly every notion man entertains, and which took its rise in the plains of Chaldea, was there found and adopted by the great Zerdusht, or Zoroaster, from whom Plato borrowed it)—we will merely glance at certain others of his recorded opinions. According to Plato, the soul is double—that is to say, both material and spiritual; all souls pre-existed; originally, they were inhabitants of Heaven, a place somewhere in the sky, whence they emigrated to the earth; their sole mission is to become "developed," which process is effected in this wise: Each soul must animate successively a prodigious number of bodies, every stage of their career occupying not less than a "period," which may be set down as one hundred years, and must be repeated an incalculable number of times; they then return whence they came—to Heaven; are permitted by the gods to remain there for an allotted term, after the expiration of which, they are again compelled to go forth and occupy successive bodies, as before. Consequently, all human souls are, according to the Platonic theory, destined to nearly an everlasting repetition of the same general processes, are fated to an almost endless round
