have learned to adopt than by any proofs they have tested; not by
argumentation about a subject, but by the way of looking at it.
The moralist regards all creation as the work of a personal God, a
theatre of moral ends, a just Providence watching over the parts,
and the conscious immortality of the actors an inevitable
accompaniment. The physicist contemplates the universe as
constituted of atoms of attraction and repulsion, which subsist in
perfect mobility through space, but are concreted in the molecular
masses of the planets. The suns are vast engines for the
distribution of heat or motion, the equivalent of all kinds of
force. This, in its diffusion, causes innumerable circulations and
combinations of the original atoms. Organic growth, life, is the
fruition of a force derived from the sun. Decay, death, is the
rendering up of that force in its equivalents. Thus, the universe
is a composite unity of force, a solidarity of ultimate unities
which are indestructible, though in constant circulation of new
groupings and journeys. To the religious faith of the moralist,
man is an eternal person, reaping what he has sowed. To the
speculative intellect of the physicist, man is an atomic force, to
be liberated into the ethereal medium until again harnessed in
some organism. In both cases he is immortal: but in that, as a
free citizen of the ideal world; in this, as a flying particle of
the dynamic immensity.

PART SECOND.

ETHNIC THOUGHTS CONCERNING A FUTURE LIFE.

CHAPTER I.

BARBARIAN NOTIONS OF A FUTURE LIFE.

PROCEEDING now to give an account of the fancies and opinions in
regard to a future life which have been prevalent, in different
ages, in various nations of the earth, it will be best to begin by
presenting, in a rapid series, some sketches of the conceits of
those uncivilized tribes who did not so far as our knowledge
reaches possess a doctrine sufficiently distinctive and full, or
important enough in its historical relations, to warrant a
detailed treatment in separate chapters.

We will glance first at the negroes. According to all accounts,
while there are, among the numerous tribes, diversities and
degrees of superstition, there is yet, throughout the native pagan
population of Africa, a marked general agreement of belief in the
survival of the soul, in spectres, divination, and witchcraft; and
there is a general similarity of funeral usages. Early travellers
tell us that the Bushmen conceived the