stated as the result of a patient
investigation and balancing of all that he says on the subject,
and of the circumstances under which he says it. To cite and
criticize the passages here would occupy too much space to too
little profit.

At the siege of Jerusalem, Titus made a speech to his soldiers, in
the course of it saying to them, "Those souls which are severed
from their fleshly bodies by the sword in battle, are received by
the pure ether and joined to that company which are placed among
the stars."50 The beautiful story of Cupid and Psyche, that
loveliest of all the myths concerning the immortality of the soul,
was a creation by no means foreign to the prevalent ideas and
feelings of the time when it was written. The "Dissertations" of
Maximus Tyrius abound with sentences like the following. "This
very thing which the multitude call death is the birth of a new
life, and the beginning of immortality."51 "When Pherecydes lay
sick, conscious of spiritual energy, he cared not for bodily
disease, his soul standing erect and looking for release from its
cumbersome vestment. So a man in chains, seeing the walls of his
prison crumbling, waits for deliverance, that from the darkness in
which he has been buried he may soar to the ethereal regions and
be filled with glorious light."52

The conception of man as a member of the cosmic family of gods and
genii was known to all the classic philosophers, and was cherished
by the larger portion of them. Pindar affirms one origin for gods
and men. Plato makes wise souls accompany the gods in their
excursions about the sky. Cicero argues that heaven, and not
Hades, is the destination of the soul at death, because the soul,
being lighter than the earthly elements surrounding it here, would
rise aloft through the natural force of gravitation.53 Plutarch
says, "Demons are the spies and scouts of the gods, wandering and
circuiting around on their commands." Disembodied souls

48 Cyropadia, lib. viii. cap. 7.

49 Epigram XXIV.

50 Josephus, De Bell. lib. vi. cap. 1.

51 Diss. XXV.

52 Diss. XLI.

53 Tusc. Quest. lib i. cap. 17.

and demons were the same. The prevalence of such ideas as these
produced in the Greek and Roman imagination a profound sense of
invisible beings, a sense which was further intensified by the
popular personifications of all natural forces, as in fountains
and trees, full of lapsing naiads and rustling dryads. An
illustrative fact is furnished by