part is called the nous and the vulgar think it is within them^ as they

IRENiEUS AND ORIGEN ON MAN'S SOUL. 285
likewise imagine the image reflected from a glass to be in that glass. But the more intelligent, who know it to be without, call it a Daemon " (a god, a spirit).
" The soul, like to a dream, flies quick away, which it does not imme- diately, as soon as it is separated from the body, but afterward, when it is alone and divided from the understanding {nous) . . . The soul being moulded and formed by the understanding {nous), and itself moulding and forming the body, by embracing it on every side, receives from it an im- pression and form ; so that although it be separated both from the under- standing and the body, it nevertheless so retains still its figure and re- semblance for a long time, that it may, with good right, be called its image.
" And of these souls the moon is the element, because souls resolve into her, as the bodies of the deceased do into earth. Those, indeed, who have been virtuous and honest, living a quiet and philosophical life, with- out embroiling themselves in troublesome affairs, are quickly resolved ; because, being left by the nous, understanding, and no longer using the corporeal passions, they incontinently vanish away. "
We find even Irenaeus, that untiring and mortal enemy of eyery Grecian and " heathen " heresy, explain his belief in the trinity of man. The perfect man, according to his views, consists oi flesh, soul, and spirit "... came, anima, spiritu, altero quidem figurante, spiritu, altero quod formatur, came. Id vero quod inter haec est duo, est anima, quae aliquando subsequens spiritum elevatur ab eo, aliquando autem consen- tient carni in terrenas concupiscentias " {Irenaus v., i).
And Origen, in his Sixth Epistle to the Romans, says : " There is a threefold partition of man, the body or flesh, the lowest part of our nature, on which the old serpent by original sin inscribed the law of sin, and by which we are tempted to vile things, and as oft as we are over- come by temptations are joined fast to the Devil ; the spirit, in or by which we express the likeness of the divine nature in which the very Best Creator, from the archetype of his own mind, engraved with his finger (that is, his spirit), the eternal law of honesty ; by this we are joined (con- glutinated) to God and made one with God. In the third, the soul me- diates between these, which, as in a factious republic, cannot but join with one party or the other, is solicited this way and that and is at liberty to choose the side to which it will adhere. If, renouncing the flesh, it betakes itself to the party of the spirit it will itself become spiritual, but if it cast itself down to the cupidities of the flesh it will degenerate itself into body."
Plato (in Laws x.) defines soul as " the motion that is able to move itself. " " Soul is the most ancient of all things, and the commencement
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of motion.*' " Soul was generated prior to body, '*.nd body is posterior and secondary, as being, according to nature, ruled over by the ruling soul. '* " The soul which administers all things tha ^ are moved in every way, administers likewise the heavens."
" Soul then leads everything in heaven, and on e«irth, and in the sea, by its movements — the names of which are, to will, to consider, to take care of, to consult, to form opinions true and false, to be in a state of joy, sorrow, confidence, fear, hate, love, together with all such primary move- ments as are allied to these . . . being a goddess herself, she ever takes as an ally Nous, a god, and disciplines all things correctly and happily ; but when with Annoia — not nous — it works out everything the contrary. "
In this language, as in the Buddhist texts, the negative is treated as essential existence. Annihilation comes under a similar exegesis. The positive state, is essential being but no manifestation as such. When the spirit, in Buddhistic parlance, entered nirvana^ it lost objective existence but retained subjective. To objective minds this is becoming absolute nothing ; to subjective, NO-thing, nothing to be displayed to sense.
These rather lengthy quotations are necessary for our purpose. Better than anything else, they show the agreement between the oldest " Pagan " philosophies — not " assisted by the light of divine revelation," to use the curious expression of Laboulaye in relation to Buddha — and the early Christianity of some Fathers. Both Pagan philosophy and Christianity, however, owe their elevated ideas on the soul and spirit of man and the unknown Deity to Buddhism and the Hindu Manu. No won- der that the Manicheans maintained that Jesus was a permutation of Gautama ; that Buddha, Christ, and Mani were one and the same person,* for the teachings of the former two were identical. It was the doctrine of old India that Jesus held to when preaching the connq^lete renunciation of the world and its vanities in order to reach the kingdom of Heaven, Nirvana, where " men neither marry nor are given in marriage, but live like the angels."
It is the philosophy of Siddhartha-Buddha again that Pythagoras expounded, when asserting that the ego (vors) was eternal with God, and that the soul only passed through various stages (Hindu Rupa-locas) to arrive at the divine excellence ; meanwhile the thumos returned to the earth, and even the phren was eliminated. Thus the metempsychosis was only a succession of disciplines through refuge-heavens (called by the Buddhists Zion), f to work off the exterior mind, to rid the nous of the phren, or soul,
* Neander : " History of the Church," vol. L, p. 817.
f It is from the highest Zton that Maitree-Buddha, the Saviour to come, will descend on earth ; and it is also from Zion that comes the Christian Deliverer (see Romans xL 26).
ST. hilaire's definition of dhyana. 287
the Buddhist " Winyanaskandaya," that principle that lives from Karma and the Skandhas (groups). It is the latter, the metaphysical persona- tions of the ** deeds" of man, whether good or bad, which, after the death of his body, incarnate themselves, so to say, and form their many invisible but never-dying compounds into a new body, or rather into an ethereal being, the double of what man was morally. It is the astral body of the kabalist and the ** incarnated deeds" which form the new sentient self as his Ahancara (the ego, self-consciousness), given to him by the sovereign Master (the breath of God) can never perish, for it is immortal per se as a spirit ; hence the sufferings of the newly-born self till he rids himself of every earthly thought, desire, and passion.
We now see that the " four mysteries " of the Buddhist doctrine have been as little understood and appreciated as the " wisdom " hinted at by Paul, and spoken ** among them that are perfect " (initiated), the " mys- tery-wisdom " which " none of the Archons of this world knew." ♦ The fourth degree of the Buddhist Dhyana, the fruit of Sam&dhi, which leads to the utmost perfection, to Viconddham a term correctly rendered by Burnouf in the verb ^^ perfected " \ is wholly misunderstood by others, as well as in himself. Defining the condition of Dhy&na, St. Hilaire argues thus :
" Finally, having attained the fourth degree, the ascetic possesses no more this feeling of beatitude, however obscure it may be ... he has also lost all memory ... he has reached impassibility, as near a neighbor of Nirvana as can be. . . . However, this absolute impassibility does not hinder the ascetic from acquiring, at this very moment, omniscience and the magical power ; a flagrant contradiction^ about which the Buddhists no more disturb themselves than about so many others." J
And why should they, when these contradictions are, in fact, no con- tradictions at all ? It ill behooves us to speak of contradictions in other peoples' religions, when those of our own have bred, besides the three great conflicting bodies of Romanism, Protestantism, and the Eastern Church, a thousand and one most curious smaller sects. However it may be, we have here a term applied to one and the same thing by the Buddhist holy " mendicants " and Paul, the Apostle. When the latter says : ** If so be that I might attain the resurrection from among the dead [the Nirvana], not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect^' (initiated), § he uses an expression common among the initiated Buddhists. When a Buddhist ascetic has reached the " fourth degree," he IS considered a rahat. He produces every kind of phenomena by the
* I Corinth, ii. 6, 7, 8. t " Lotus de la Bonne Loi," p. 806.
\ " Da Bouddhisme/* 95. g Philippians iil 11-14.
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sole power of his freed spirit. A rahai, say the Buddhists, is one who has acquired the power of flying in the air, becoming invisible, commanding the elements, and working all manner of wonders, commonly, and as erro- neously, called meipo (miracles). He is a perfect man, a demi-god. A god he will become when he reaches Nirvana ; for, like the initiates of both Testaments, the worshippers of Buddha know that they ** are gods."
'* Genuine Buddhism, overleaping the barrier between finite and infi- nite mind, urges its followers to aspire, by their own efforts^ to that divine perfectibility of which it teaches that man is capable, and by attaining which man becomes a god^^ says Brian Houghton Hodgson.*
Dreary and sad were the ways, and blood-covered the tortuous paths by which the world of the Christians was driven to embrace the Irensean and Eusebian Christianity. And yet, unless we accept the views of the ancient Pagans, what claim has our generation to having solved any of the mysteries of the " kingdom of heaven ?*' What more does the most pious and learned of Christians know of the future destiny and prog- ress of our immortal spirits than the heathen philosopher of old, or the modem ** Pagan '' beyond the Himalaya ? Can he even boast that he knows as much, although he works in the full blaze of *' divine " revela- tion ? We have seen a Buddhist holding to the religion of his fathers, both in theory and practice ; and, however blind may be his faith, however absurd his notions on some particular doctrinal points, later engraftings of an ambitious clergy, yet in practical works his Buddhism is far more Christ-like in deed and spirit than the average life of our Christian priests and ministers. The fact alone that his religion commands him to '^ honor his own faith, but never slander that of other people," f is sufficient. It places the Buddhist lama immeasurably higher than any priest or clergy- man who deems it his sacred duty to curse the ** heathen '' to his face, and sentence him and his religion to ''eternal damnation." Christianity becomes every day more a religion of pure emotionalism. The doctrine of Buddha is entirely based on practical works. A general love of all beings, human and animal, is its nucleus. A man who knows that unless he toils for himself he has to starve, and understands that he has no scape- goat to carry the burden of his iniquities for him, is ten times as likely to become a better man than one who is taught that murder, theft, and prof- ligacy can be washed in one instant as white as snow, if he but believes in a (Jod who, to borrow an expression of Volney, " once took food upon earth, and is now himself the food of his people."
* 4