zed after its human type. He
divides the soul into several distinct and independent powers, which are
ever revolving between life and death: they inhabit the stars and depend
upon them, since the soul which has been righteous on earth will be
happy after death in the star to which it was originally destined; but
those who on earth only desire here bodily pleasures will wander as
shades round the tombs, or will migrate into the bodies of various
animals. He constitutes the stars into contingent and sensible gods:
they have beautiful and immortal bodies of a round form, and are made of
fire. He asserts poetic inspiration and madness to be the result of
demoniac possession, and says with Socrates that those who deny demoniac
powers are themselves demoniacs.

We see from this account the mythical origin of all that concerns the
organization and genesis of the world, the destinies and nature of the
soul, since these are sublimated myths; the elements are first regarded
as deities, and the world is made in the image of man, and considered to
be alive; the stars and the earth are endowed with life and
intelligence; the fate of souls before and after death, their
recollection of a prior existence, their transmigrations and wanderings
around the tombs, demoniac possession in inspiration and madness, are
all very ancient mythical representations, which form a great part of
the theoretical and spiritual cosmogony of savages in all times and
places. We have seen that not only relatively civilized peoples, but
those which are quite savage divide souls into distinct parts:
throughout Africa, America, and Asia, there is a belief in the
transmigration of souls into animals, plants, and other objects. The
Tasmanians believed that their souls would ascend to the stars and abide
there; and all savages hold the demoniac possession of inspired persons,
of madmen, and of the sick, which has led to what may be called a
diabolic pathology. The general conception of the world as a living
animal, with all the tendencies ascribed to it by Plato, is only the
primeval fact of the animation and personification of phenomena applied
to the general idea of the universe. Hence it is easy to see how much of
Plato's physics and psychology are due to the necessary and historic
course of myth, and to the schools into which myth had been modified
before his time.

We must dwell more particularly on his theory of ideas, since in this
the advance made by Pla