XXV

OF THE GREEK LEGISLATORS, OF MINOS AND ORPHEUS, AND OF THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

HOW MANY compilers repeat the battles of Marathon and Salaminia? These are great exploits that are very well known: others are incessantly telling us that a proud son of Noah, named Settim, was king of Macedon, because in the first book of Maccabees, it is said that Alexander went out of the country of Kittim. Other objects shall engage my attention.

Minos lied about the time in which ye place Moses; and this has given the learned Huet, bishop of Avranche, some false grounds to maintain that Minos, born in Crete, and Moses, born upon the confines of Egypt, were the same person; a system which, as absurd as it is, has found some partisans.

This is not a Grecian fable; Minos was doubtless a legislative king. The famous marbles of Paros, those most precious monuments of antiquity (and for which we are indebted to the English) fix his birth four hundred and eighty-two years before our vulgar era. Homer, in his Odyssey, calls him “The wife confident of God.” Flavian Josephus does not hesitate saying that he received his laws from a god. This is a little strange in a Jew, who, it should seem, ought to allow no other god than his own, unless he thought like the Romans his masters, and like all the first people of antiquity, who allowed the existence of all the gods of other nations.

It is certain that Minos was a very rigid legislator, as it was supposed that he should judge the departed souls in the infernal regions; it is evident that the belief of a future state generally prevailed, at that time, in a considerable part of Asia and Europe.

Orpheus is as real a personage as Minos: it is true that the marbles of Paros do not mention him; this probably was because he was not born in Greece, properly so called, but in Thrace. Some have doubted the existence of the first Orpheus, upon a passage of Cicero, in his excellent book upon the Nature of the Gods. Cotta, one of the interlocutors, avers that Aristotle did not believe that this Orpheus had been amongst the Greeks; but Aristotle makes no mention of him in those works of his which are handed down to us. Besides, the opinion of Cotta does not coincide with that of Cicero. A hundred ancient writers mention Orpheus. The mysteries which bear his name testify his existence. Pausanias, who was the most exact writer amongst the Greeks, says, that his verses were sung in religious ceremonies, in preference to those of Homer, who did not live till a great while afterwards. We know very well he did not descend into hell; but even this fable proves that the infernal regions were a point of the theology of those remote times.

The vague opinion of the permanence of the soul after death, an aerial soul, a shadow of the body, manes, a light breeze, an unknown, incomprehensible soul, but yet exciting, and the belief of rewards and punishments in a future state, were adopted throughout Greece, in the islands, in Asia, and in Egypt.

The Jews were the only people who appeared entirely ignorant of this mystery; the book of their laws does not make the least mention of it: we there meet with nothing but temporary rewards and punishments. In Exodus, we read, “Honor thy father and thy mother, that Adonai may prolong thy days upon earth:” in the book of Zend (part II) we find, “Honor father and mother, in order to deserve heaven.”

Bishop Warburton, who has demonstrated, that the Pentateuch makes no mention of the immortality of the soul, supposes that this dogma was not necessary in theocracy. Arnaud, in his Apology of Port Royal, expresses himself thus: “It is the summit of ignorance to doubt of this truth, which is the most prevalent, and which is attested by all the fathers, that the promises made in the Old Testament are only temporary and terrestrial, and that the Jews adored God only for carnal advantages.”

It has been objected, that if the Persians, the Arabians, the Syrians, the Indians, the Egyptians, and the Greeks, believed in the immortality of the soul, a future life, eternal rewards and punishments, the Hebrews might also believe them: that if all the legislators of antiquity have established wife laws upon this foundation, Moses might also have done the same: that if he was ignorant of those useful dogmas, he was unworthy of leading a nation: that if he knew them and concealed them, he was still more unworthy.

To these arguments, it is answered, that God, whose organ was Moses, deigned to level himself to the meanness of the Jews’ capacity; I shall not engage in this thorny question, and constantly respecting every thing that is divine, I shall continue examining the history of men.