Hugo Grotius · 27 of 132

SECT. XXII. Which is confirmed by tradition.

In order to establish this, we must first shew, that souls remain after they are separated from their bodies: which is a most ancient tradition, derived from our first parents (whence else could it come?) to almost all civilized people; as appears from Homer’s verses, and from the philosophers, not only the Greeks, but also the ancient Gauls, which were called Druids, and from the Indians called Brachmans, and from those things, which many writers have related, concerning the Egyptians, and Thracians, and also of the Germans. And, moreover, concerning a divine judgment after this life, we find many things extant, not only among the Greeks, but also among the Egyptians, and Indians, as Strabo, Diogenes Laërtius, and Plutarch, tell us: to which we may add a tradition, that the world should be burnt; which was found of old, in Hystaspes and the Sibyls, and now also in Ovid and Lucan, and amongst the Indians in Siam; a token of which is the sun’s approaching nearer to the earth, observed by astronomers. So likewise, upon the first going into the Canary Islands and America, and other distant places, the same opinion concerning souls and judgment was found there.