They believe the same of all works of
art, as of knives, boats, looking-glasses; and that, as any of these
things perish, their souls go into another world, which is inhabited
by the ghosts of men and women. For this reason they always place
by the corpse of their dead friend a bow and arrows, that he may
make use of the souls of them in the other world, as he did of their
wooden bodies in this. How absurd soever such an opinion as this
may appear, our European philosophers have maintained several
notions altogether as improbable. Some of Plato's followers, in
particular, when they talk of the world of ideas, entertain us with
substances and beings no less extravagant and chimerical. Many
Aristotelians have likewise spoken as unintelligibly of their
substantial forms. I shall only instance Albertus Magnus, who, in
his dissertation upon the loadstone, observing that fire will
destroy its magnetic virtues, tells us that he took particular
notice of one as it lay glowing amidst a heap of burning coals, and
that he perceived a certain blue vapour to arise from it, which he
believed might be the substantial form that is, in our West Indian
phrase, the soul of the loadstone.
There is a tradition among the Americans that one of their
countrymen descended in a vision to the great repository of souls,
or, as we call it here, to the other world; and that upon his return
he gave his friends a distinct account of everything he saw among
those regions of the dead.
Pages:
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66