The pre-existence of the
soul in God, conceived more or less in accordance with Plato's theory
of ideas, long remained a common belief, and proved of service even to
the poets. The consequences which followed from it as to the mode of
the soul's continued existence after death were not more closely
considered.
There was a second way in which the influence of antiquity made itself
felt, chiefly by means of that remarkable fragment of the sixth book of
Cicero's 'Republic,' known by the name of Scipio's Dream. Without the
commentary of Macrobius it would probably have perished like the rest
of the second part of the work; it was now diffused in countless
manuscript copies, and, after the discovery of typography, in a printed
form and edited afresh by various commentatOrs. It is the description
of a transfigured hereafter for great men, pervaded by the harmony of
the spheres. This pagan heaven, for which many other testimonies were
gradually extracted from the writings of the ancients, came step by
step to supplant the Christian heaven in proportion as the ideal of
fame and historical greatness threw into the shade the ideal of the
Christian life, without, nevertheless, the public feeling being thereby
offended as it was by the doctrine of personal annihilation after
death. Even Petrarch founds his hope chiefly on this Dream of Scipio,
on the declarations found in other Ciceronian works, and on Plato's
'Phaedo,' without making any mention of the Bible.
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