PRE-EXISTENCE, a priority of being, or the being of one thing before another. Thus a cause, if not in time, is yet in nature pre-existent to its effect. Thus God is preexistent to the universe, and a human father is pre-existent to his son. The Peripatetics, though they maintained [7:18:517] the eternity of the world, were likewise dogmatical in their opinion, that the universe was formed, actuated, and governed, by a sovereign intelligence.

The pre-existence of the human soifl to its corporeal vehicle had been from time immemorial a prevailing opinion amongst the Asiatic sages, and from them was perhaps transferred by Pythagoras to the philosophy of the Greeks; but his metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, is too trivial either to be seriously proposed or refuted. Nevertheless, from the sentiments of Socrates concerning the immortality of the soul, delivered in his last interview with his friends, it is obvious that the tenet of pre-existence was a doctrine of the Platonic school. If at any period of life, say these philosophers, you should examine a boy, of how many ideas, of what a number of principles, of what an extent of knowledge will you find him possessed? These without doubt could neither be self-derived nor recently acquired. With what avidity and promptitude does he attain the knowledge of arts and of sciences, which appear entirely new to him? These rapid and successful advances in knowledge can only be the effects of reminiscence, or of a fainter and more indistinct species of recollection. But in all the other operations of memory, we find retrospective impressions attending almost every object or idea which emerges to her view; nor does she ever suggest any thought, or word, or action, without informing us, in a manner equally clear and evident, that those impressions had been made upon our senses, mind, or intellect, on some former occasion. Whoever contemplates her progress, will easily discover, that association is her most faithful and most efficacious auxiliary; and that by joining impression with impression, idea with idea, circumstance with circumstance, in the order of time, of place, of similarity or dissimilarity, she is enabled to accumulate her treasures and enlarge her province even to an indefinite extent. But when intuitive principles, or simple conclusions, are elicited from the puerile understanding by a train of easy questions properly arranged, where is the retrospective act of the memory, by which the boy recognises those truths as having formerly been perceived in his mind? Where are the crowds of the concomitant, antecedent, or subsequent ideas, with which those recollections ought naturally to have been attended? In a word, where is the sense of personal identity, which seems to be absolutely inseparable from every act of memory? This hypothesis, therefore, will not support the notion of pre-existence. After the Christian religion had been considerably diffused, and warmly combated by its philosophical antagonists, the same doctrine was resumed and taught at Alexandria, by Platonic proselytes, not only as a constituent topic of their master’s philosophy, but as an answer to those formidable objections which had been deduced from the doctrine of original sin, and from the vices which stain, as well as from the calamities which disturb, human life. Hence they strenuously asserted, that all the human race were either introduced to being prior to Adam, or pre-existent in his person; that they were not, therefore, represented by our first parents, but actually concurred in their crime, and participated in their ruin.

The followers of Origen, and such as entertained the notion of pre-adamites, might argue from the doctrine of preexistence with some degree of plausibility. For the human beings introduced by them to the theatre of probation had already attained the capacity or dignity of moral agents; as their crime therefore was voluntary, their punishment might be just. But those who believe the whole human race created in Adam to be only pre-existent in their germs or stamina, were even deprived of this miserable subterfuge; for in these “homunculi” we can neither suppose the moral nor rational constitution unfolded. Since, therefore, their degeneracy was not spontaneous, neither could their sufferings be equitable. Should it be said that the evil of original sin was penal, as it extended to our first parents alone, and merely consequential as felt by their posterity, it will be admitted that the distinction between penal and consequential evil may be intelligible in human affairs, where other laws, assortments, and combinations than those which are simply, and purely moral, take place. But that a moral government, at one of the most cardinal periods of its administration, should admit gratuitous or consequential evil, seems to us irreconcilable with the attributes and conduct of a wise and just legislator. Consequential evil, taken as such, is misery sustained without demerit, and cannot result from the procedure of wisdom, benignity, and justice, but must flow from necessity, from ignorance, from cruelty, or from caprice, as its only possible sources. But even upon the supposition of those who pretend that man was mature in all his faculties before the commission of original sin, the objections against it will still remain in full force; for it is admitted by all except the Samian sage, that the consciousness of personal identity which was felt in pre-existence, is ob- ∙literated in a subsequent state of being.

Now it may be demanded, whether agents thus resuscitated for punishment have not the same right to murmur and complain as if they had been perfectly innocent, and only created for that dreadful catastrophe? It is upon this principle alone that the effects of punishment can be either exemplary or disciplinary; for how is it possible, that the punishment of beings unconscious of a crime should ever be reconciled either to the justice or beneficence of that intention with which their sufferings are inflicted? Or how can others be supposed to become wise and virtuous by the example of those who are neither acquainted with the origin nor the tendency of their miseries, but have every reason to think themselves afflicted merely for the sake of afflicting? To us it seems clear, that the nature and rationale of original sin lie inscrutably veiled and hidden in the bosom of Providence; nor can we, without unpardonable presumption and arrogance, form the most simple conclusion, or attempt the minutest discovery, either different from or extraneous to the clear and obvious sense of revelation. This sense indeed may with propriety be extracted from the whole, or from one passage collated with another; but independently of it, as reason has no premises, she can form no deductions. The boldness and temerity of philosophy, not satisfied with contemplating pre-existence as merely relative to human nature, has dared to try how far it was compatible with the three Persons of the sacred Trinity. The Arians, who allowed the subordinate divinity of our Saviour, believed him pre-existent to all time, and before all worlds; but the Socinians, who esteemed his nature as well as his person merely human, insisted, that before his incarnation he was only pre-existent in the divine idea, not in nature or person. But when it is considered, that children do not begin to deduce instructions from nature and experience, at a period so late as we are apt to imagine; when it is admitted, that their progress, though insensible, may be much more rapid than we apprehend; when the opportunities of sense, the ardour of curiosity, the avidity of memory, and the activity of understanding, are remarked; we need not have recourse to a pre-existent state for our account of the knowledge which young minds discover. It may likewise be added, that moral agents can only be improved and cultivated by moral discipline. Such effects therefore of any state, whether happy or miserable, as are merely mechanical, may be noxious or salutary to the patient, but can never enter into any moral economy as parts of its own administration. Preexistence, therefore, whether rewarded or punished, without the continued impression of personal identity, affords no solution of original sin.