By Clifford Herschel Moore, Ph.D., Litt.D. Professor of Latin in Harvard University colophon Cambridge Harvard University Press London: Humphrey Milford Oxford University Press 1918 COPYRIGHT, 1918 HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS   THE INGERSOLL LECTURESHIP I , II , III , IV . NOTES Extract from the will of Miss Caroline Haskell Ingersoll, who died in Keene, County of Cheshire, New Hampshire, Jan. 26, 1893 First. In carrying out the wishes of my late beloved father, George Goldthwait Ingersoll, as decl

T HE invitation of the committee charged with the administration of the Ingersoll lectureship and my own inclination have agreed in indicating that aspect of the general subject of immortality, which I shall try to present tonight. I shall not venture on this occasion to advance arguments for or against belief in a life after death; my present task is a humbler one: I propose to ask you to review with me some of the more significant ideas concerning an existence beyond the grave, which were curr

The time has now come for us to return from our rather long historical survey to Virgil’s Apocalypse, and to listen to the words with which Anchises’ shade taught his eager son: These words express the commingled beliefs of Orphic, Pythagorean, Platonist, and Stoic. How extensively such beliefs were held by Virgil’s contemporaries we cannot say with accuracy, but certain it is that this book and this passage would never have made the religious appeal which they made in antiquity, if they had not

In view of the facts with which we have been occupied we shall not make the error of thinking that Christianity brought the hope of immortality among men, for, as we have seen, hope—nay, sure confidence, in the soul’s survival was widespread throughout the ancient world when Jesus began his ministry. What can we say of early Christian teaching, and how was it related to its pagan environment? Christianity grew out of Judaism. Now it is a striking fact that the Jews were later than most of the pe

Although we now have examined the conditions which, to my mind, are the most significant in the relation of pagan ideas of immortality to those of early Christianity, there yet remain matters which, if less important, are still of more than merely curious interest. We shall now look at some of these questions. What notions of heaven and of hell did the Greeks and Romans have? This inquiry is often made. The reply is easily given. Man has always painted hell and paradise after his own conception

    1. Eduard Norden, Aeneis , Buch VI , Leipzig, 1903, is most useful for its commentary, especially on religious and philosophic matters. 2. W. Warde Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People , Macmillan Co., 1911, pp. 419 ff. So Dante’s journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise secured his conversion and salvation, bringing him finally to freedom and to knowledge. Paradiso , XXXI, 85-87 and XXXIII entire. 3. Metempsychosis was the subject of the Ingersoll lecture by Professor G