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 splendor 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;[8] whilst others of deeper penetration, observing that bodies worn out by age or destroyed by accident 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.