oo, veritably
inculcates it as fact.

Finally, we are the more confirmed in this supposition when we
find that his lineal disciples and most competent expounders, such
as Proclus, and nearly all his later commentators, such as Ritter,
have so understood him. The great chorus of his interpreters, from
Plotinus to Leroux, with scarcely a dissentient voice, approve the
opinion pronounced by the learned German historian of philosophy,
that "the conception of the metempsychosis is so closely
interwoven both with his physical system and with his ethical as
to justify the conviction that Plato looked upon it as legitimate
and valid, and not as a merely figurative exposition of the soul's
life after death." To sum up the whole in one sentence: Plato
taught with grave earnestness the immortality of the soul, subject
to a discriminating retribution, which opened for its temporary
residences three local regions, heaven, earth, and Hades, and
which sometimes led it through different grades of embodied being.
"O thou youth who thinkest that thou art neglected by the gods,
the person who has become more wicked departs to the more wicked
souls; but he who has become better departs to the better souls,
both in life and in all deaths."30

Whether Aristotle taught or denied the immortality of the soul has
been the subject of innumerable debates from his own time until
now. It is certainly a most ominous fact that his great name has
been cited as authority for rejecting the doctrine of a future
life by so many

28 The Laws, b. ix. ch. 10.

29 Phadrus, 60-62.

30 The Laws, lib. x. cap. 13.

of his keenest followers; for this has been true of weighty
representatives of every generation of his disciples. Antagonistic
advocates have collected from his works a large number of varying
statements, endeavoring to distinguish between the literal and the
figurative, the esoteric and the popular. It is not worth our
while here, either for their intrinsic interest or for their
historic importance, to quote the passages and examine the
arguments. All that is required for our purpose may be expressed
in the language of Ritter, who has carefully investigated the
whole subject: "No passage in his extant works is decisive; but,
from the general context of his doctrine, it is clear that he had
no conception of the immortality of any individual rational
entity."31

It would take a whole volume instead of a chapter to set forth the
multifariou