DRUIDIC DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
THAT strange body of men, commonly known as the Druids, who
constituted what may, with some correctness, be called the Celtic
priesthood, were the recognised religious teachers throughout
Gaul, Armorica, a small part of Germany on the southern border,
all Great Britain, and some neighboring islands. The notions in
regard to a future life put forth by them are stated only in a
very imperfect manner by the Greek and Roman authors in whose
surviving works we find allusions to the Druids or accounts of the
Celts. Several modern writers especially Borlase, in his
Antiquities of Cornwall1 have collected all these references from
Diodorus, Strabo, Procopius, Tacitus, Casar, Mela, Valerius
Maximus, and Marcellinus. It is therefore needless to cite the
passages here, the more so as, even with the aid of all the
analytic and constructive comments which can be fairly made upon
them, they afford us only a few general views, leaving all the
details in profound obscurity. The substance of what we learn from
these sources is this. First, that the Druids possessed a body of
science and speculation comprising the doctrine of immortality,
which they taught with clearness and authority. Secondly, that
they inculcated the belief in a future life in inseparable
connection with the great dogma of metempsychosis. Thirdly, that
the people held such cheerful and attractive views of the future
state, and held them with such earnestness, that they wept around
the newborn infant and smiled around the corpse; that they
encountered death without fear or reluctance. This reversal of
natural sentiments shows the tampering of a priesthood who had
motives.
A somewhat more minute conception of the Druidic view of the
future life is furnished us by an old mythologic tale of Celtic
origin.2 Omitting the story, as irrelevant to our purpose, we
derive from it the following ideas. The soul, on being divested of
its earthly envelop, is borne aloft. The clouds are composed of
the souls of lately deceased men. They fly over the heads of
armies, inspiring courage or striking terror. Not yet freed from
terrestrial affections, they mingle in the passions and affairs of
men. Vainly they strive to soar above the atmosphere; an
impassable wall of sapphire resists their wings. In the moon,
millions of souls traverse tremendous plains of ice, losing all
perception but that of simple existence, forgetting the adventures
they have passed through and are about to recommence. During
eclipses, on long tubes of darkness they return to the earth, and,
revived by a beam of light from the all quickening sun, enter
newly formed bodies, and begin again the career of life. The disk
of the sun consists of an assemblage of pure souls swimming in an
ocean of bliss. Souls sullied with earthly impurities are to be
purged by repeated births and probations till the last stain is
removed, and they are all finally fitted to ascend to a succession
of spheres still higher than the sun, whence they can never sink
again to reside in the circle of the lower globes and grosser
atmosphere.
1 Book ii. ch. 14.
2 Davies, Celtic Researches, appendix, pp. 558-561.
These representations are neither Gothic nor Roman, but Celtic.
But a far more adequate exposition of the Druidic doctrine of the
soul's destinies has been presented to us through the translation
of some of the preserved treasures of the old Bardic lore of
Wales. The Welsh bards for hundreds of years were the sole
surviving representatives of the Druids. Their poems numerous
manuscripts of which, with apparent authentication of their
genuineness, have been published and explained contain quite full
accounts of the tenets of Druidism, which was nowhere else so
thoroughly systematized and established as in ancient Britain.3
The curious reader will find this whole subject copiously treated,
and all the materials furnished, in the "Myvyrian Archaology of
Wales," a work in two huge volumes, published at London at the
beginning of the present century. After the introduction and
triumph of Christianity in Britain, for several centuries the two
systems of thought and ritual mutually influenced each other,
corrupting and corrupted.4 A striking example in point is this.
The notion of a punitive and remedial transmigration belonged to
Druidism. Now, Taliesin, a famous Welsh bard of the sixth century,
locates this purifying metempsychosis in the Hell of Christianity,
whence the soul gradually rises again to felicity, the way for it
having been opened by Christ! Cautiously eliminating the Christian
admixtures, the following outline, which we epitomize from the
pioneer5 of modern scholars to the Welsh Bardic literature,
affords a pretty clear knowledge of that portion of the Druidic
theology relating to the future life.
There are, says one of the Bardic triads, three circles of
existence. First, the Circle of Infinity, where of living or dead
there is nothing but God, and which none but God can traverse.
Secondly, the Circle of Metempsychosis, where all things that live
are derived from death. This circle has been traversed by man.
Thirdly, the Circle of Felicity, where all things spring from
life. This circle man shall hereafter traverse. All animated
beings originate in the lowest point of existence, and, by regular
gradations through an ascending series of transmigrations, rise to
the highest state of perfection possible for finite creatures.
Fate reigns in all the states below that of humanity, and they are
all necessarily evil. In the states above humanity, on the
contrary, unmixed good so prevails that all are necessarily good.
But in the middle state of humanity, good and evil are so balanced
that liberty results; and free will and consequent responsibility
are born. Beings who in their ascent have arrived at the state of
man, if, by purity, humility, love, and righteousness, they keep
the laws of the Creator, will, after death, rise into more
glorious spheres, and will continue to rise still higher, until
they reach the final destination of complete and endless
happiness. But if, while in the state of humanity, one perverts
his reason and will, and attaches himself to evil, he will, on
dying, fall into such a state of animal existence as corresponds
with the baseness of his soul. This baseness may be so great as to
precipitate him to the lowest point of being; but he shall climb
thence through a series of births best fitted to free him from his
evil propensities. Restored to the probationary state, he may fall
again; but, though this should occur again and again
3 Sketch of British Bardism, prefixed to Owen's translation of the
Heroic Elegies of Llywarch Hen.
4 Herbert, Essay on the Neo Druidic Heresy in Britannia.
5 Poems, Lyric and Pastoral, by Edward Williams, vol. ii. notes,
pp. 194-256.
for a million of ages, the path to happiness still remains open,
and he shall at last infallibly arrive at his preordained
felicity, and fall nevermore. In the states superior to humanity,
the soul recovers and retains the entire recollection of its
former lives.
We will quote a few illustrative triads. There are three necessary
purposes of metempsychosis: to collect the materials and
properties of every nature; to collect the knowledge of every
thing; to collect power towards removing whatever is pernicious.
The knowledge of three things will subdue and destroy evil:
knowledge of its cause, its nature, and its operation. Three
things continually dwindle away: the Dark, the False, the Dead.
Three things continually increase: Light, Truth, Life.
These will prevail, and finally absorb every thing else. The soul
is an inconceivably minute particle of the most refined matter,
endowed with indestructible life, at the dissolution of one body
passing, according to its merits, into a higher or lower stage of
existence, where it expands itself into that form which its
acquired propensities necessarily give it, or into that animal in
which such propensities naturally reside. The ultimate states of
happiness are ceaselessly undergoing the most delightful
renovations, without which, indeed, no finite being could endure
the tedium of eternity. These are not, like the death of the lower
states, accompanied by a suspension of memory and of conscious
identity. All the innumerable modes of existence, after being
cleansed from every evil, will forever remain as beautiful
varieties in the creation, and will be equally esteemed, equally
happy, equally fathered by the Creator. The successive occupation
of these modes of existence by the celestial inhabitants of the
Circle of Felicity will be one of the ways of varying what would
otherwise be the intolerable monotony of eternity. The creation is
yet in its infancy. The progressive operation of the providence of
God will bring every being up from the great Deep to the point of
liberty, and will at last secure three things for them: namely,
what is most beneficial, what is most desired, and what is most
beautiful. There are three stabilities of existence: what cannot
be otherwise, what should not be otherwise, what cannot be
imagined better; and in these all shall end, in the Circle of
Felicity.
Such is a hasty synopsis of what here concerns us in the theology
of the Druids. In its ground germs it was, it seems to us,
unquestionably imported into Celtic thought and Cymrian song from
that prolific and immemorial Hindu mind which bore Brahmanism and
Buddhism as its fruit. Its ethical tone, intellectual elevation,
and glorious climax are not unworthy that free hierarchy of
minstrel priests whose teachings were proclaimed, as their
assemblies were held, "in the face of the sun and in the eye of
the light," and whose thrilling motto was, "THE TRUTH AGAINST THE
WORLD."
The latest publication on the subject of old Welsh literature is
"Taliesin; or, The Bards and Druids of Britain." The author, D. W.
Nash, is obviously familiar with his theme, and he throws much
light on many points of it. His ridicule of the arbitrary tenets
and absurdities which Davies, Pughe, and others have taught in all
good faith as Druidic lore and practice is richly deserved. But,
despite the learning and acumen displayed in his able and valuable
volume, we must think Mr. Nash goes wholly against the record in
denying the doctrine of metempsychosis to the Druidic system, and
goes clearly beyond the record in charging Edward Williams and
others with forgery and fraud in their representations of ancient
Bardic doctrines.6 In support of such grave charges direct evidence
is needed; only suspicious circumstances are adduced. The non
existence of public documents is perfectly reconcilable with
the existence of reliable oral accounts preserved by the initiated
few, one of whom Williams, with seeming sincerity, claimed to be.
6 Taliesin, ch. iv.