Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke [180]
people, as an operative and leading principle. This doctrine was inculcated on the scheme of transmigration, which some imagine them to have derived from Pythagoras. But it is by no means necessary to resort to any particular teacher for an opinion which owes its birth to the weak struggles of unenlightened reason, and to mistakes natural to the human mind. The idea of the soul's immortality is indeed ancient, universal, and in a manner inherent in our nature; but it is not easy for a rude people to conceive any other mode of existence than one similar to what they had experienced in life; nor any other world as the scene of such an existence, but this we inhabit, beyond the bounds of which the mind extends itself with great difficulty. Admiration, indeed, was able to exalt to heaven a few selected heroes; it did not seem absurd, that those, who in their mortal state had distinguished themselves as superior and overruling spirits, should after death ascend to that sphere, which influences and governs everything below; or that the proper abode of beings, at once so illustrious and permanent, should be in that part of nature, in which they had always observed the greatest splendour and the least mutation. But on ordinary occasions it was natural some should imagine, that the dead retired into a remote country, separated from the living by seas or mountains. It was natural, that some should follow their imagination with a simplicity still purer, and pursue the souls of men no further than the sepulchres, in which their bodies had been deposited; whilst others of deeper penetration, observing that bodies, worn out by age, or destroyed by accidents, still afforded the materials for generating new ones, concluded likewise, that a soul being dislodged did not wholly perish, but was destined, by a similar revolution in nature, to act again, and to animate some other body. This last principle gave rise to the doctrine of transmigration; but we must not presume of course, that where it prevailed it necessarily excluded the other opinions; for it is not remote from the usual procedure of the human mind, blending, in obscure matters, imagination and reasoning together, to unite ideas the most inconsistent. When Homer represents the ghosts of his heroes appearing at the sacrifices of Ulysses, he supposes them endued with life, sensation, and a capacity of moving, but he has joined to these powers of living existence uncomeliness, want of strength, want of distinction, the characteristics of a dead carcass. This is what the mind is apt to do; it is very apt to confound the ideas of the surviving soul and the dead body. The vulgar have always, and still do confound these very irreconcilable ideas. They lay the scene of apparitions in churchyards; they habit the ghost in a shroud; and it appears in all the ghastly paleness of a corpse. A contradiction of this kind has given rise to a doubt, whether the Druids did in reality hold the doctrine of transmigration. There is positive testimony, that they did hold it. There is also testimony as positive, that they buried, or burned with the dead, utensils, arms, slaves, and whatever might be judged useful to them, as if they were to be removed into a separate state. They might have held both these opinions; and we ought not to be surprised to find error inconsistent.
SAXON CONQUEST AND CONVERSION.
But whatever was the condition of the other parts of Europe, it is generally agreed that the state of Britain was the worst of all. Some writers have asserted, that except those who took refuge in the mountains of Wales and Cornwall, or fled into Armorica, the British race was, in a manner, destroyed. What is extraordinary, we find England in a very tolerable state of population in less than two centuries after the first invasion of the Saxons; and it is hard to imagine either the transplantation, or the increase, of that single people to have been, in so short a time, sufficient for the settlement of so great an extent of country. Others speak of the Britons, not as extirpated, but as reduced
SAXON CONQUEST AND CONVERSION.
But whatever was the condition of the other parts of Europe, it is generally agreed that the state of Britain was the worst of all. Some writers have asserted, that except those who took refuge in the mountains of Wales and Cornwall, or fled into Armorica, the British race was, in a manner, destroyed. What is extraordinary, we find England in a very tolerable state of population in less than two centuries after the first invasion of the Saxons; and it is hard to imagine either the transplantation, or the increase, of that single people to have been, in so short a time, sufficient for the settlement of so great an extent of country. Others speak of the Britons, not as extirpated, but as reduced