tainly may be. Some have
even surmised that the zodiacal light is an illuminated tornado of
stones showering into the sun to feed its tremendous
conflagration. The whole scheme is a fine toy, but a very faint
terror. Even if it be true, then we are to perish at last from
lack of fire, and not, as commonly feared, from its abundance!

The belief of mankind that a soul or ghost survives the body has
been so nearly universal as to appear like the spontaneous result
of an instinct. We propose to trace the history of opinions
concerning the physical destination of this disembodied spirit,
its connection with localities, to give the historical topography
of the future life.

The earliest conception of the abode of the dead was probably that
of the Hebrew Sheol or the Greek Hades, namely, the idea born from
the silence, depth, and gloom of the grave of a stupendous
subterranean cavern full of the drowsy race of shades, the
indiscriminate habitation of all who leave the land of the living.
Gradually the thought arose and won acceptance that the favorites
of Deity, peerless heroes and sages, might be exempt from this
dismal fate, and migrate at death to some delightful clime beyond
some far shore, there, amidst unalloyed pleasures, to spend
immortal days. This region was naturally located on the surface of
the earth, where the cheerful sun could shine and the fresh
breezes blow, yet in some untrodden distance, where the gauntlet
of fact had not smitten the sceptre of fable. The paltry portion
of this earth familiar to the ancients was surrounded by an
unexplored region, which their fancy, stimulated by the legends of
the poets, peopled with mythological kingdoms, the rainbow bowers
and cloudy synods of Olympus, from whose glittering peak the
Thunderer threw his bolts over the south; the Golden Garden of the

3 Ennead ii. lib. ix.: Contra Gnosticos, cap. 4.

4 Helmholtz, Edinburgh Phil. Msg., series iv. vol. xi.:
Interaction of Natural Forces.

5 Thomson, Ibid. Dec. 1854: Mechanical Energies of the Solar
System.

Hesperides, whose dragons lay on guard in the remote west; the
divine cities of Meru, whose encircling towers pierced the eastern
sky; the Banquet Halls of Ethiopia, gleaming through the fiery
desert; the fragrant Islands of Immortality, musical and luring in
the central ocean; the happy land of the Hyperboreans, beyond the
snowy summits of northern Caucasus:

"How pleasant were the wild beliefs That dwelt i