The Philosophy of History. Friedrich von Schlegel

doctrine, there was a striking and fundamental difference; and if the leading tenet was the same among both, the views which each connected with it were very dissimilar. Deprived, as we are, of the old books and original writings of the Egyptians, we are unable perfectly to comprehend and seize their peculiar ideas on this subject, and state them with the same assurance as we can those of the Indians, whose ancient writings we now possess in such abundance, and which in all main points perfectly agree with the accounts of the ancient classics. But we are left to infer the ideas of the Egyptians on the Metempsychosis only from their singular treatment of the dead, and the bodies of the deceased; from that sepulchral art (if I may use the expression) which with them acquired a dignity and importance, and was carried to a pitch of refinement, such as we find among no other people; from that careful and costly consecration of the corpse, which we still regard with wonder and astonishment in their mummies and other monuments. That all these solemn preparations, and the religious rites which accompanied them, that the inscriptions on the tombs and mummies had all a religious meaning and object, and were intimately connected with the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, can admit of no doubt; though it is a matter of greater difficulty to ascertain with precision the peculiar ideas they were meant to express. Did the Egyptians believe that the soul did not separate immediately from the body which it had ceased to animate, but only on the entire decay and putrefaction of the corpse? Or did they wish by their art of embalmment to preserve the body from decay, in order to deliver the soul from the dreaded transmigration? The Egyptian treatment of the dead would certainly seem to imply a belief that, for some time at least after death, there existed a certain connection between the soul and body. Yet we cannot adopt this supposition to an unqualified extent, as it would be in contradiction with those symbolical representations that so frequently occur in Egyptian art, and in which the soul immediately after death is represented as summoned before the judgment-seat of God, severely accused by the hostile demon, but defended by the friendly and guardian spirit, who employs every resource to procure the deliverance and acquittal of the soul. Or did the Egyptians think that by all these rites, as by so many magical expedients, they would keep off the malevolent fiend from the soul, and obtain for it the succour of good and friendly divinities? Now that the gates of hieroglyphic science have been at last opened, we may trust that a further progress in the science will disclose to us more satisfactory information on all these topics.

      The Indians, however, who ever remained total strangers to the mode of burial and treatment of the dead practised in Egypt, adopted a very different course to procure the deliverance of the human soul from transmigration:—they had recourse to philosophy—to the highest aspirings of thought towards God—to a total and lasting immersion of feeling in the unfathomable abyss of the divine essence. They have never doubted that by this means a perfect union with the Deity might be obtained even in this life, and that thus the soul, freed and emancipated from all mutation and migration through the various forms of animated nature in this world of illusion, might remain for ever united with its God. Such is the object to which all the different systems of Indian philosophy tend—such is the term of all their enquiries. This philosophy contains a multitude of the sublimest reflections on the separation from all earthly things, and on the union with the God-head; and there is no high conception in this department of metaphysics, unknown to the Hindoos. But this absorption of all thought and all consciousness in God—this solitary enduring feeling of internal and eternal union with the Deity, they have carried to a pitch and extreme that may almost be called a moral and intellectual self-annihilation. This is the same philosophy, though in a different form, which in the history of European intellect and science, has received the denomination of mysticism. The possible excesses—the perilous abyss in this philosophy, have been in general acknowledged, and even pointed out in particular cases, where egotism or pride has been detected under a secret disguise, or where this total abstraction of thought and feeling has spurned all limit, measure, and law. In general however, the European mind, by its more temperate and harmonious constitution, by the greater variety of its attainments, and above all, by the purer and fuller light of revealed truth, has been preserved from those aberrations of mysticism which in India have been carried to such a fearful extent, not only in speculation, but in real life and practice; and which, transcending as they do all the limits of human nature, far exceed the bounds of possibility, or what men have in general considered as such. And the apparently incredible things which the Greeks related more than two thousand years ago, respecting the recluses of India, or Gymnosophists, as they called those Yogis, are found to exist even at the present day; and ocular experience has fully corroborated the truth of their narratives.

END OF LECTURE IV.