Ecclesiastes 3:21

Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward The words imply a strictly sceptical rather than a negative answer. They do not actually deny, still less do they affirm, as some have thought, that the spirit of man does ascend to a higher life, while that of the brute returns to dust. This would indeed be inconsistent with the whole context, and the consensusof the LXX., the Vulgate, the Targum, and the Syriac versions, all of which give "Who knoweth whether the spirit of man goeth upward?" is practically decisive. It is not till nearly the close of the book, with all its many wanderings of thought, that the seeker rests in that measure of the hope of immortality which we find in ch. Ecclesiastes 12:7. Here we have the accents, almost the very formula, of Pyrrhonism (Diog. Laert. ix. 11, §. 73), as borrowed from Euripides:

τίς δʼ οἶδεν εἰ τὸ ζῇν μὲν ἐστι κατθανεῖν,

τὸ κατθανεῖν δὲ ζῇν νομίζεται βροτοῖς.

"Who knoweth if true life be found in death,

While mortals think of what is death as life?"

Once more Lucretius echoes the phase of thought through which the Debater was passing:

"Ignoratur enim quae sit natura animai,

Nata sit an contra nascentibus insinuetur,

Et simul intereat nobiscum morte dirempta,

An tenebras Orci visat vastasque lacunas."

"We know not what the nature of the soul,

Or born, or entering into men at birth,

Or whether with our frame it perisheth,

Or treads the gloom and regions vast of death."

De Rer. Nat. i. 113 116.

So far, however, as scepticism is a step above denial, we may note this as an advance. There is at least the conception of a spirit that ascends to a life higher than its own, as a possible solution of the great enigma presented by the disorders of the world.