The Druids are said to be very expert in astronomy, in geography, and
in all parts of mathematical knowledge. And authors speak, in a very
exaggerated strain, of their excellence in these, and in many other
sciences. Some elemental knowledge I suppose they had; but I can
scarcely be persuaded that their learning was either deep or extensive.
In all countries where Druidism was professed, the youth were generally
instructed by that order; and yet was there little either in the
manners of the people, in their way of life, or their works of art,
that demonstrates profound science, or particularly mathematical skill.
Britain, where their discipline was in its highest perfection, and
which was therefore resorted to by the people of Gaul, as an oracle in
Druidical questions, was more barbarous in all other respects than Gaul
itself, or than any other country then known in Europe. Those piles of
rude magnificence, Stonehenge and Abury, are in vain produced in proof
of their mathematical abilities. These vast structures have nothing
which can be admired, but the greatness of the work; and they are not
the only instances of the great things, which the mere labour of many
hands united, and persevering in their purpose, may accomplish with
very little help from mechanics. This may be evinced by the immense
buildings, and the low state of the sciences, among the original
Peruvians. The Druids were eminent, above all the philosophic lawgivers
of antiquity, for their care in impressing the doctrine of the soul's
immortality on the minds of their people, as an operative and leading
principle. This doctrine was inculcated on the scheme of transmigration,
which some imagine them to have derived from Pythagoras. But it is by no
means necessary to resort to any particular teacher for an opinion which
owes its birth to the weak struggles of unenlightened reason, and to
mistakes natural to the human mind. 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 splendour 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; whilst
others of deeper penetration, observing that bodies, worn out by age, or
destroyed by accidents, 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. When Homer represents the ghosts of his heroes
appearing at the sacrifices of Ulysses, he supposes them endued with
life, sensation, and a capacity of moving, but he has joined to these
powers of living existence uncomeliness, want of strength, want of
distinction, the characteristics of a dead carcass. This is what the
mind is apt to do; it is very apt to confound the ideas of the surviving
soul and the dead body. The vulgar have always, and still do confound
these very irreconcilable ideas. They lay the scene of apparitions in
churchyards; they habit the ghost in a shroud; and it appears in all
the ghastly paleness of a corpse. A contradiction of this kind has given
rise to a doubt, whether the Druids did in reality hold the doctrine
of transmigration. There is positive testimony, that they did hold it.
There is also testimony as positive, that they buried, or burned with
the dead, utensils, arms, slaves, and whatever might be judged useful
to them, as if they were to be removed into a separate state. They might
have held both these opinions; and we ought not to be surprised to find
error inconsistent.