ussed
by hundreds of philosophers, physicians, and poets, from Vyasa to
Des Cartes, from Galen to Ennemoser, from Orpheus to Henry More,
from Aristotle to Frohschammer. German literature during the last
hundred years has teemed with works treating of this question from
various points of view. The present chapter will present a sketch
of these various speculations concerning the commencement and
fortunes of man ere his appearance on the stage of this world.

The first theory to account for the origin of souls is that of
emanation. This is the analogical theory, constructed from the
results of sensible observation. There is, it says, one infinite
Being, and all finite spirits are portions of his substance,
existing a while as separate individuals, and then reassimilated
into the general soul. This form of faith, asserting the efflux of
all subordinate existence out of one Supreme Being, seems
sometimes to rest on an intuitive idea. It is spontaneously
suggested whenever man confronts the phenomena of creation with
reflective observation, and ponders the eternal round of birth and
death. Accordingly, we find traces of this belief all over the
world; from the ancient Hindu metaphysics whose fundamental
postulate is that the necessary life of God is one constant
process of radiation and resorption, "letting out and drawing in,"
to that modern English poetry which apostrophizes the glad and
winsome child as

"A silver stream
Breaking with laughter from the lake Divine
Whence all things flow."

The conception that souls are emanations from God is the most
obvious way of accounting for the prominent facts that salute our
inquiries. It plausibly answers some natural questions, and boldly
eludes others. For instance, to the early student demanding the
cause of the mysterious distinctions between mind and body, it
says, the one belongs to the system of passive matter, the other
comes from the living Fashioner of the Universe. Again: this
theory relieves us from the burden that perplexes the finite mind
when it seeks to understand how the course of nature, the
succession of lives, can be absolutely eternal without involving
an alternating or circular movement. The doctrine of emanation
has, moreover, been supported by the supposed analytic similarity
of the soul to God. Its freedom, consciousness, intelligence,
love, correspond with what we regard as the attributes and essence
of Deity. The inference, however unsound, is imm