Transmigration of Souls

UC-NRLF
HARPER'S LIBRARY of LIVING THOUGHT
THE
TRANSMIGRATION
OF SOULS
BY
D. ALFRED
BERTHOLET
HARPER
BROTHERS
LONDONXNEWYOEK
THE
TRANSMIGRATION
OF SOULS
BY
D.
ALFRED BERTHOLET
PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY
IN
THE UNIVERSITY OF BASLE
TRANSLATED BY
J. CHAYTOR,
REV. H.
M.A.
HEADMASTER OF PLYMOUTH COLLEGE
LONDON AND NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS

45
ALBEMARLE STREET,
1909
W.
CONTENTS
PART
IDEAS ANTECEDENT TO THE BELIEF IN
METEMPSYCHOSIS
PAGE
CHAP.
I.
II.
THE BELIEF THAT THE SOUL CAN BE

RATED FROM MAN'S BODY
SEPA3
THE BELIEF THAT ORGANISMS OTHER THAN

.10
HUMAN POSSESS SOULS
.
ANIMAL SOULS
PLANT SOULS
SOULS
III.
17
OTHER MATERIAL OBJECTS
22
IN THE TRANSMIGRATION OF
SOULS FROM ONE BEING TO ANOTHER
24
IN
THE BELIEF
TRANSMIGRATION FROM MAN TO MAN
24
TRANSMIGRATION FROM MEN TO ANIMALS
29
TRANSMIGRATION FROM MEN TO PLANTS
42
TRANSMIGRATION FROM MAN TO INANIMATE OBJECTS
PART
48
II
METEMPSYCHOSIS PROPERLY SO CALLED

I.
II.
PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS
...
METEMPSYCHOSIS AMONG THE CELTS

vii
271636
57
61
CONTENTS
CHAP.
III.
METEMPSYCHOSIS
IN INDIA
VEDIC-BRAHMAN BELIEFS
....
....
BUDDHIST BELIEFS
IV.
V.
IN
METEMPSYCHOSIS
QUARTERS
IN THE BIBLE AND
IN
JUDAISM
IN ISLAM
IN THE CHRISTIAN
VI. CONCLUSION
64
64
72
THE GREEK DOCTRINE OF METEMPSYCHOSIS

THE BELIEF
PAGE
WORLD
IN
79
OTHER
...
....
86
86
94
95
119
PART
IDEAS ANTECEDENT TO THE BELIEF

IN
METEMPSYCHOSIS
THREE
presuppositions are necessarily antecedent to any belief in the transmigration of
souls.
belief that man has a soul which can
be separated from his material body.
1.
The
2.
The
non- human organisms

(animals, plants, and perhaps even inanimate objects) possess souls of like
belief
that
nature.
3.
The
belief that the souls
both of
men and
of lower organisms can be transferred
from one organism to another.
THE TRANSMIGRATION
OF SOULS
CHAPTER
THE BELIEF THAT THE SOUL CAN BE

SEPARATED FROM MAN'S BODY
TET
us
first
-L^ has a
from
man
consider the belief that
soul which can be separated
his body, or, to express the idea
by a
metaphor, that the connection of the soul

with the body is that of a guest with a house
in
which he stays and
tion of leaving
time.
it
history.
earliest periods of
modern
In
usually deduced from the
"
thought,
ijiten-
this idea
tell,
popular conclusion that a

is
with the
after a certain lapse of
So far as we can
be traced to the
mental
lives,
perception, and
3
"
times
"
soul
can
man's
the
exists,
phenomena
will
"
:
of
man
THE TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS

has a soul, because he can think, feel, and
In the uninterrupted activity of
will.
normal
these
intellectual
we
functions,
we may observe, so to speak,

the pulsation which indicates their vitality.
Primitive man reasoned very differently
believe that
his attention, like that of a child,
attracted, not
by the normal and
stant regular recurrence, but
by
was
first
its
con-
the ab-
normal, which struck him as strange and

Now man was confronted
extraordinary.
by one abnormal
fact,
which even now he
has not entirely ceased to regard as unusual,

the fact of death. Death, then, must first be
considered
when we ask what
led
men
to
infer the existence of the soul.
What
the chief fact that distinguishes

the living man from the dead ? The only
is
outward sign
With
the cessation of respiration.

"
"
the last breath a
something leaves
is
the body, which existed within it during

A window or door is thrown open
life.
when
man
dies, a
custom
4
still
widespread
SOUL SEPARATED FROM BODY

among our own country
Hottentots,
folk.
Islanders,
Fiji
Indians, Siamese, Chinese,
Similarly,
Samoyeds,
and others make
a hole in the roof of the house or hut in
man
which a
dies,
apparently with the
object of offering free passage to the mysteri"

"
ous
which leaves the body
something
"
at death. I speak of the mysterious
some"
but
old
the
of
thing
poet
unhesitatingly
:
gives
it
Orpheus
"
The
a name, in describing the death of

:
soul,
breathed
forth,
then faded in the
air."
This breath or spirit-soul (in the most

"
"
different languages the word
soul
origin-
means simply breath) thus withdraws

from the eye of man, which has no power
to perceive it.
But suppose for a moment
ally
that
primitive
man, whose psychological
not equal to ours, sees a dream

knowledge
and dreams, perhaps, that his dead friend
is
hunting with him as in days gone by

he sees him string his bow, shoot his arrow,
is

pursue the animal he has hit, and call upon
his friend to follow
a conversation ensues,
:
as has
happened often enough in his lifeand so forth. How is the dreamer to
time,
explain these experiences
The body
of his
when he wakes
dead friend
lies
motionless
prey to corruption. Yet it

was the form of his friend that he saw in
in the grave, a
dream, and it was his friend's voice

that he heard
with his own eyes he saw
his
him, with his
What
as
is
is
him speak.
To conclude,
ears he heard
he to understand
we should
dream
own
conclude, that
it
was merely a
so obvious a statement that
we
can hardly conceive of any other reply.

But the power to discriminate between
dream
by no means
man and must be acquired by
illusions
innate in
experience
and
was
different conclusion
man
is
only after a long course of
development
tive
reality
it
attained.
very
offered itself to
primi-
what he saw and heard
in his
sleep was, in reality, his friend

6
but the

appearance could not have been that of
the
body
resting
man was
early
the
in
well
"
and
double,
"
something
it
Homer
dead
left
we meet among
Instructive also
is
primithe form in
appears, in the words placed
in the
mouth
of Achilles,
friend, Patroclus, appears to
dream
'
the
mysterious
the body with
Such, in fact, is the con-
clusion with which
which
word,
that had
the last breath.
tive tribes.
it
bewildersomething
dead body, a second ego, a
in
"
this
Hence
"
must have been a

ingly like the
of
grave
assured.
by
when his
him in a
Gods
of a truth, then,
ween
in the
shadowy
houses of Hades
Spirit
and form do abide, but within them
is
no
understanding.
For in this selfsame night the form of the hapless
Patroclus
Hovered above me and wept with sore lamentation

and wailing,
Spake his behests, and marvellous like to himself
was the phantom." ILIAD xxiii, 103-107.

This belief in the existence of a soul that
can be separated from the body

rooted in the mind of man.
is
seemed to provide an explanation

dream experiences. The dreamer,
of
all
for in-
himself in a distant region
finds
stance,
deeply
The theory
which he had visited long before.

His
body has not moved from the couch on
which he
has
left
lies
him
it is
to
therefore his soul which
renew acquaintance with
that distant spot

the soul returns with
the impressions gained by its experience
:
and the dreamer awakes.

have,
in
some
instances,
Such theories
led
primitive
tribes (e.g. the Malays) to believe that it
dangerous
to
wake a
soul might have left his
sleeping
man
is
his
body and might be
unable to return immediately, in which case

"
the body would be left
The
soulless/'
difference
and
is
dreams
one only of degree

the
soul
leaves
in sleep
the
body
temporarily, while in death the separation

is final, an idea expressed in the Koran and
8

a wonderful religious signifiGod takes to Himself the souls of
there given
"
cance
men
at their death
Himself the souls of
and He takes also to

those who do not die,
while they sleep. He keeps with Him the

souls of those whose death He has ordained,
He
but the others

Truly herein
lie
sends back for a season.
signs for thoughtful
men
to
"
ponder
Other
served
The
(Sura xxxix).
psychical
to
word
confirm
phenomena
this
"
ecstasy/'
doubtless
primitive
for
theory.
"
instance,
oneself," implies the

exit of the soul from the body (cf. 2 Cor.
standing outside
xii,
of
f.).
These few indications
may
serve to prove
that the belief in the possibility of a separation between soul and body was both vivid
and widely spread.
This belief
may
be
regarded as the first necessary condition

antecedent to the belief in metempsychosis.
CHAPTER
II
THE BELIEF THAT ORGANISMS OTHER

THAN HUMAN POSSESS SOULS
WE
have stated that the second ante-
cedent condition was the belief that
beings or objects
beyond the
limits of
human
possessed souls of similar nature. The

we pursue the history of the past,
the more general does this belief appear.
life
further
Nor
is
how
our
necessary to seek instances in

remote antiquity. We need only observe
it
own
children personify everything
around them with their own
characteristics.
girl sings her doll to sleep as she

has herself been sung to sleep by her own
little
mother, and asks the doll
how
it
has
ii?.
slept, just as she
the morning
may
be asked
by her mother. A child will beat the stick

that has tripped it up, for its naughtiness
which caused the
fall
and deserved punish-
10
ORGANISMS POSSESS SOULS

ment, even as the child's own shortcomings
are punished. Mankind at large has entertained ideas no less infantile during the long
course of its development, nor has it by any
means everywhere emerged from the stage

which the individual regards the objects
in
about him as endowed with souls akin to

his
own.
ANIMAL SOULS
Animals are
souls.
In
first
modern
thought, the term

sionally be found.
signify
tribes
regarded as possessing
totemism
The term
the belief existing
and
also
of
"
histories
"
elsewhere,
religious
will occa-
is
used to
among Indian
that
man
is
related to a particular species of animal, or

is
even descended from
then takes the
name
it.
of his
The
believer
totem animal,
we take our family names, calls himself

the bear, the beaver, the raven, etc., designs
as
the animal upon his weapons, and is careful

to avoid harming or killing any member of

the species. Should he kill a totem animal
at any time, the act is performed with the
most elaborate precautions. If, for instance,
the
Chippewa Indians
attempt
to
bear,
action
their
justify
kill
to
they
the
victim, put the pipe of peace in the animal's
mouth, and solemnly beg the bear to forgo

Similar ceremonies are
vengeance.
performed by the Samoyeds in a far distant
his
country
and a wholly
different
Such instances, which might be
climate.
infinitely
man regards animals

human character, and
multiplied, prove that

as possessing souls of
that
those
men, are
thought to survive bodily death, and often
as likely to become formidable enemies.
their
souls,
like
of
Conversely, these souls may prove useful

the Arab of antiquity was buried with his
:
.camels
the
German
slaughtered
at
survival
this
of
his
warrior's charger
grave
custom
is
was
a noteworthy
the habit of
leading a dead man's favourite horse in the

procession on the occasion of a solemn
12

In either case
funeral.
is
the undoubted
man
presence
could use the animals for riding in the next
world. In short, as man's nature is twofold,
of
and
a belief that the dead
as the spiritual element survives
death of the corporeal, so also

of animals.
Moreover,
bered that to
the
civilisation
and animal
are
men
is
it
in the earlier stages of
difference
accustomed to think
;
on the
the nature
must be remem-
by no means
not far to seek
is
between
man
so wide as
the reason
we
is
early man's occupation

nomadic cattle breeder
and profession of
brought him into daily and hourly contact
he lived under the same
with his animals
;
same room with them.

Greek, was once a term which
roof, or even in the

"
Ethos," in
It is
implied association in one dwelling.
sufficiently significant that our modern
word,
"
ethos
ethics,"
first
of
as
rules
man
seems to be derived from
a comprehensive
term
for
the
which governed the intercourse
with the other inmates of his house.

13

man
In any case, in simpler ages
no
his animals as
less
members
than his comrades and friends

talks
to
his
"
camel.
horse,
Even
regarded
of society
the Indian
and the Arab
to his
the cattle understand
what
a saying in the
spoken
famous Indian collection of fairy tales, the
in
is
Pancatantra.
words,"
is
Nor did a
less sophisticated
age than ours find anything surprising in

the idea that animals could occasionally
use
human
language, or at least a language
immediately
intelligible
to
man.
Animals
occasionally appear as announcing imminent danger or good fortune, for they have
knowledge of much that man cannot even
suspect.
We
usually relegate animal lan-
guage to the region of fables and fairy

for instance,
in
the
tale
of
the
tales
Sleeping
Beauty, a frog jumps out of the water,

speaks to the queen who is longing for a
child,
and promises that her wish
shall
be
fulfilled.
Similar examples might be quoted with-

But we must remember that
out end.
as
the vein of gold gleams in the heart of the

rock, so the features characteristic of these
stories are
but fragments from the
infinite
storehouse of popular beliefs. As a matter

of fact, the close connection and intercourse
between
without
men and
effect
animals has not been
upon the
latter
man associates with them,
the more
the nearer do they
we
approach him on the intellectual side
may realise the fact by comparing the dog
;
European civilisation with the dog in the

East, where he is avoided as an unclean
in
animal.
Thus
association
it
with
is
natural that increased
animals
belief in their kinship
with
should
increase
man and
similarity of their souls to his.
in the
This ancient
idea finds wonderfully poetic and yet most

"
realistic expression in Ibsen's
Sea Woman/'
When Wangel
asks his wife on
what subject
she has been continually talking with

"
"
We spoke
the strange man/' she replies,
chiefly of the sea ... of storm and calm,
'5

dark nights upon the sea.
We also
spoke of the sea on bright sunlight days.
of
But
the most part
for
we spoke
of
the
whales and dolphins, and of the seals which

usually lie out there upon the rocks in the
heat of the day. And then, you know, we
spoke of the gulls and eagles and other seaAnd I tell you, is it not strange ?
birds.
When we spoke
to me as if all of
seemed
of these things, it
them, sea-animals and sea"

were
related
to him."
And you
birds,
also
"
Yes,
"
all
And
asks Wangel.
"
his wife replies,
to
them
Hebbel has expressed a similar
belief
it
with no
seemed
as
if I
less art in his
"
also
was kin
Nibelungen," in the
words he gives to the serpent.

"
On him
that is outcast and scorned of men,

Denied by his own brethren and betrayed,
Do thou bestow protection, and recall
Kinship as ancient as the world
Something of
gether with
this
"
itself."
ancient kinship/' to-
other primitive features, has
been transferred, as
is
16
well
known,
to the

millennium by
passages
Israelitish
Hosea
as
ii,
prophecy, in such
18
Isa. xi, 6 ff.
;
and elsewhere.
PLANT SOULS
Animals thus have souls akin to those of
men
man,
have plants, trees, shrubs, flowers, etc.
For this reason, for instance, in Silesia the
death of the master of the house is announced
:
so also, in the belief of primitive
not only to the cattle in the stalls, and to

the bees in the hive, but also to the trees in
the garden arid to the corn in the barns.
Language has
also preserved
Even
the old belief.
plants are said to
words, to perform
exercise of
"
something of
works
in scientific
breathe
"
;
in other
just that function the
which provided early
man
with
visible proof of his belief in the existence
We
of the soul.
that a vine
"
has been cut.
are all accustomed to say

"
"
"
or
when it
bleeds
weeps
We
remember the question
of the little Walter Tell,

c
17

"
Father, the trees upon the mountain side,

they in truth shed blood, when the bright axe
Do
Has
cleft their
Thus a
Nauders
belief
bark?"
was
certain kind of larch tree bled
The Indian
felled.
current
actually
in Tyrol fifty years
at
ago that a
when
legal code of
it
was
Manu
forbids the use of red resin, apparently, as
has been stated, because it was thought to

be coagulated blood, which was no more to
be tasted than any other kind of blood.

(There was a widespread belief
instances
may be found, for example, in the Old

Testament that the soul was inherent in
the blood as well as in the breath
the soul
appears to depart from the body when

the blood streams from a mortal wound.)
There
a belief current in Berg that a

certain orchis gives a piteous cry when torn
is
But the mysterious

wind is especially
out of the ground.
rustling of leaves in the
regarded as the language of the tree, which

would be silent if it were not in some way
inhabited by a soul.
18
Speaking trees are

common among
Zulus
the
the most various nations,

and the Greeks, the Scandi-
navians and the Babylonians, etc. Among

the Germans the power of understanding
their language
But poets
is
part of the poetic faculty.
are merely the heirs of those
divinely gifted persons born under a
who have been
star,
happy
invariably thought by
popular belief to have ears for the message
by the rustling of the leaves. Even in

modern superstition and the superstition
of to-day was the belief of yesterday
told
female curiosity occasionally applies to a

tree spirit or dryad for valuable informa-
In Franconia, on
tion.
St.
Thomas'
Day^
the girls go to a tree, knock upon it three

times with due solemnity, and listen for
answering knocks within telling them what/

sort of
husbands they
will get.
The
tree
spirits are widely believed to possess knowThe

ledge of all kinds of secret matters.
poet's assertion, however,

"
This would
gladly carve on every stem,"

19

gives a
wrong idea
of the spirit's inoffensive-
Greater caution
ness.
is
necessary
many
a Greek or Indian legend relates how the

tree spirit betrayed secrets confided to it.
Even to-day the belief is well known that

the cracking of wooden wall panels is a
sign of an approaching death, a belief proceeding from the same idea that the tree
ever ready to reveal to man its
knowledge of the future which is hidden
spirit
is
But
from man.
represents
"
Some
Mohammed
of
unfaithful."
taught
has the faculty of

knowledge. Tradition
this spirit
belief as well as of
them
as saying of trees,
are believers, others are
Finally, experience
man from
must have
the earliest ages that the
consumption of such plants, for instance,

as contain opium produced a certain mental
excitement, for which he could only account
by assuming the operation of a soul or
spirit.
Hence he
inferred that the soul or
was primarily incarnate in the plant

which he had eaten. The expressions of this
spirit
20

belief
remain to
though their original
us,
meaning has been changed
we speak
of
"
"
esprit de
spirits of wine/' the French, of
"
vin," and the Germans, of the
Weingeist."
The strength and growth of a plant depend

upon the soul incarnate within it. The
Karenes in Further India have a special
form of invocation adapted to cases when
their
rice
kelah
(spirit),
Come
to the rice
fields
come from the

of the bird,
"
fail
come
east
Oh, come, Rice-
Come into the field

Come from the west,
Come from the throat
!
from the pouches of the ape,
from the throat of the elephant.

Come
from all the barns. Oh, Rice-kelah, come
.
the rice."
of
the
As intended
soul,
this
precisely with the
to secure the return
invocation
corresponds
form of expression which
we apply to human beings

and came to himself/'
21
"he
recovered,

SOULS IN OTHER MATERIAL OBJECTS
The
belief in plant souls is
ible to us
than the
we regard
intellig-
belief that objects
which
entirely inanimate possess
as
Yet there
souls.
more
no doubt that these
is
were equally prevalent among primitive tribes.

In any case, there is every
reason for the existence of this idea, if our
beliefs
explanation
was
life
is
correct,
which stated that
man
chiefly led to the conception of soul-
by
he sees
his
dream
many
himself in waking
as
seen
Weapons, as
is
hence, these
dreams must be the
in
of
their
realities.
generally known, are laid
in the grave with
dead
easily convince
may
moments
doubles
mysterious
remote from his
objects far
sleeping place, as he
things
In dreams
experiences.
dead warriors that the
may have them
for their journey into
the beyond, or to the Elysian fields. It is

immediately obvious that the uncivilised
man who
buries
these
22
objects
does
not

imagine that the implements which he lays
can leave it and accompany
in the grave
owner into the next world
their
it is,
so
to speak, only the souls of these objects
which follow the dead man.

is
not confined to
ancient Athens, with
man was
But
uncivilised
its
this idea
man.
In
famous culture,
by a falling stone, a
special court was held to pass sentence upon
the offending object, which was condemned
if
killed
and transported beyond the
frontier
Such
only explicable upon the supposition that the stone was believed to have a
action
is
soul.
In any case,
suffice to explain
second
idea
these
what
necessarily
examples will
have termed the
antecedent
metempsychosis, the
organisms other than human,
belief
in
objects which
idea
to
that
and even
we regard as inanimate, may

manner of mankind.
possess souls after the
CHAPTER
III
THE BELIEF
IN THE TRANSMIGRATION
OF SOULS FROM ONE BEING
TO ANOTHER
TRANSMIGRATION FROM MAN TO MAN
WE
now
proceed to consider the third

"antecedent idea/' the idea that
the soul of one being
may
another being, and thus
be transferred to
we
are brought
face to face with the subject of our enquiry.
Evidence for the existence of
this belief
may
be found, for instance, in the well-known
Roman custom which

relation to
^man
in order to catch his last
other words, his soul.

said
obliged the nearest

face of a dying
bend over the
to
breath, in
similar
have existed among a
custom
is
tribe
in
if a woman died
Florida (North America)
in child-birth, the child was held over her
;
face so that
it
might breathe
24
in the soul as
FROM BEING TO BEING

Among the same tribe
lips.
women
were
accustomed to go
pregnant
it
left
her
and meet funeral processions
in the
hope
of receiving within themselves the soul of
the deceased, for the benefit of the unborn

the Algonquin Indians used to bury
the bodies of children by the roadside that
child
might enter the bodies of passing

women and so be born again. For the same
reason the Calabaris, the finest and most/
their souls
highly civilised negroes of the slave coast,

the soul
buried their dead in their houses
;
of a
man
dead
thus buried was thought to

was next born in the
pass into the child that

house.
The
belief that the soul of a
man
reappears in a child
It
possible that
is
some
is
dead
widely spread.
trace of
existed
it
even among the ancient Babylonians. On

this belief the Tibetans certainly base the
of
principle
spiritual
succession
dignity
Dalai-Lama,
afterwards
is
to
on the
child
born
the
supreme
death
nine
of
months
chosen as his successor,

25
the
and
is

naturally regarded as a child of the
This, indeed,
spirit as the deceased.
same
the
is
essential point of the belief in the trans-
migration of the soul from man to man

the belief explains the reason for an intellec;
tual or physical likeness between
and
two men,
the reason for family

the
Khonds, an aborigiAmong
nal Indian tribe, a birth is celebrated seven
in
particular
likenesses.
days after its occurrence by a festival at

which the priest examines the body of the
and
child,
states
which
of
the
'ancestors has been reborn in

is
then
naming
named
after
this
of children, in fact,
it
family
the child
The
ancestor.
is
in
many ways
connected with the belief that the souls of

ancestors return to
INew
Zealand,
for
life
in the children.
instance,
the
In
priests
stand before a new-born child and repeat

a long list of ancestral names until the
child sneezes or cries out at one of
the ancestor
is
them
thus found whose soul
incarnated in the child and after

26
is
whom
re-
the
FROM BEING TO BEING

child
A very similar custom
then named.
is
exists in Little
Popo
when a
is
child
the oracle
in colonial
West Africa
born the parents consult
by means
of sixteen date-stones,
in order to discover
whether a soul from
the mother's or father's side of the family

is reincarnate in the child, and which soul
it
is.
the
the
The reply
of the oracle determines
name of the child, who thus receives

name of the ancestor whose soul is sup-
posed to have returned again to earth.
Not
until their conversion to Christianity
do we find that the ancient Germans gave

a child the
name
earlier times the
of a living relative
name
of a
dead
in
man was
always chosen, and especially of a dead

father, as he was supposed to continue his
life
in his child.
In Dahomey,
was born with a complete
set
if
of
a child
teeth,
the chief magician explained the event as

being a reincarnation of the king, who had
returned to devour his son, and the child
was
drowned.
The
27
famous
Australian

traveller, George Grey, relates that he was
once caressed by an old woman who thought
that she had found a deceased son in him,
and shed
tears over him.
Here a further
appears
savages often believe
to be merely reincarnated mem"
bers of their own race.
Who dies a black
:
[feature
white
men
man rises again a white man/' is said to

a common saying among the aborigines
be
of
Australia.
do not propose to discuss the unpleasant

question, whether the motive of cannibalism
I
is
a similar
intellectual
man
from
belief, in distorted
powers
may
be
form, that
transmitted
man by
a transmigration of the
soul
the theory of the cannibal being that
the conqueror who devours his defeated
to
foe thus appropriates the strength, courage,
dexterity, etc.,
enemy.
which lived in the soul
of his
This indication of the belief will
suffice.
28
FROM BEING TO BEING

THE TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS FROM
MEN TO ANIMALS
In every case hitherto discussed we saw
the human soul after death was
that
thought to pass into another human body.

soul can, however, choose a body with
The
no similarity to
its
original
home.
This
under various forms
belief in reincarnation
may have been suggested by the facts of

nature as observed by primitive man, who
must, for instance, have noticed how the
became a
caterpillar
not
man
"
We
worms
become celestial
to
It
expressed
"
butterflies,"
seems again that men's
minds were occupied

thought
should
are but
Dante.
words,
Why
undergo a similar change
Born
says
butterfly.
in early times
by
Paul
St.
by the
in
the
That which thou sowest, thou
sowest not that body which shall be, but

bare grain, it may be of wheat or of some
other grain, but
God
gives
29
it
a body as
it

Him " (i Cor. xv, 37 f.). Seeing that
primitive man was unable to draw a clear
pleases
line
of distinction
men and
between the worlds
we can hardly
of animals,
of
feel
surprised at the universality of the belief
that the
human
soul can be reincarnated in
Instances
animals.
are
legion.
Every
reader will recall the constant transformations of
men
into animals in classical
myth-
ology or in Grimm's fairy tales. Magicians

and witches have a special power of assuming
animal forms themselves, or of thus transforming others, perhaps ultimately to restore their original shapes. These temporary
transformations
not,
They
or
"
"
metamorphoses
do
however, specially concern us here.

are of interest merely as proving the
ease with which simple imaginative powers
can accept the possibility of transformation

from one to another form of life. Our point
much rather the reason for the belief that

the human soul could pass into another
is
species of
body
after death.
30
FROM BEING TO BEING

Here we
phrase
may
above
refer
again
mentioned,
the
to Dante's
"
celestial
In the plastic arts this idea

butterfly/'
had long been a commonplace. In ancient/
Greece
representations
butterfly
are
common
of
the
soul
as
How
enough.
a\
far
the Greeks regarded these merely as pictorial

or typical representations, how far, that is,
they regarded the soul as actually incarnate
insect, is a question that will
to us. As regards antiquity,
occur
naturally
it is hardly a suitable question, for it may
in the
winged
be said in general that the ancient world

was unable to make that distinction between
the
symbolical and the
perfectly familiar to
observation,
it
may
to Matt, xxvi, 26.)
Campo Santo
which
modern thought.
is
(This
be said, will also apply
Anyone who now
at the mosaic butterflies
the
actual
looks
on the ascent to
at Florence will at once
realise that these butterflies are
not copies,
but types of the human soul after death.;

In one Irish district popular belief actually
31

1
regards the souls of "the grandfathers' as

incarnate in the butterflies
in Sweden
"
the name for butterfly is
old woman's
:
In
soul/'
there
Germany
is
a saying that
the
children before birth fly about with
The conception
butterflies.
of the soul in
the form of a butterfly readily leads to the

very widespread belief that souls take the
form
of
The Iroquois
birds.
North
of
(America, for instance, release a bird upon

the evening of a burial, in the belief that it
will
become the home
instances
though
every
of
it
case
is
of
the soul
other
custom are numerous,
this
impossible to determine in
these soul-birds do
whether
more than typify the departure and the

upward journey of the liberated soul. The
ancient
for
Egyptians,
instance,
placed
soul-birds with their dead, though they did
toot believe that their
was
to continue
life
in the next world
under the form of
birds.
point is also that the bird was

the dwellers in the next
invariably a cock
curious
32
FROM BEING TO BEING

world were regarded as male without exception, even if they had been women in this
world.
way
is
In Finnish the
the
"
way
name
of birds
for the
"
:
milky
the souls of
dead are apparently thought to fly

along the milky way into the next world
the
in the
derella
sits
form of
we
In the story of Cinremember the white bird which
upon the
birds.
tree over her mother's grave
and throws down whatever she

The white bird may be regarded
soul of the
mother
in bird-form
desires.
as
the
in fact,
the mother
to
had promised on her death-bed

In
stay with Cinderella and help her.
Venice,
among
the famous pigeons in the
Square of St. Mark, is a particular white

bird, which is said to be the soul of Daniele
Manin, the great patriot, whom the gondoThis white pigeon is
liers call their father.
said to return every year
and
to fly over the
San Marco at midnight to behold

beloved Venice.
In Cornwall, on the
piazza di
its
other hand, King Arthur
33
is
said to live in

the form of a raven.
There
is
a kindlier
legend in the Irish district of Mayo which

believes that the souls of maidens become
Nreincarnate
wild Gieritz
old
land,
Samoan
However, in the
the
on
Aar, in Switzerswamp
maids become plovers.
The
in
swans.
islanders prefer smaller creatures
should an islander be killed in battle or
drowned
his friends
and
relations sit
down,
spread out a cloth before them, call upon the

gods, and wait for some insect to crawl upon
the cloth.
When an
ant, cricket, or
insect of the kind appears
some
regarded as
the soul of the young man, and is buried
with all due solemnity. If no insect appears
it is
assumed that the
it is
spirit is
angry with
the watchers, others take their places, and

an insect naturally appears sooner or later.
The
for the
soul shows a particular preference
form of the snake.
In this form
it
can even leave the body during sleep

an instance is the story of King Guntram,
which throws much light upon primitive
:
34
FROM BEING TO BEING

ideas concerning the soul.
One day the
king went to sleep upon the breast of his

faithful servant.
The servant then saw a
little
creature like a snake crawl out of his
mouth and go towards a brook,

which it could not cross.
The servant
master's
placed his sword over the water the reptile

crossed and went into a mountain on the
;
After some time
other side.
it
returned to
the sleeper the same way, who soon woke

and said that in his dream he had crossed
an iron bridge and entered a mountain

of gold.
As the counterpart
we may quote
visit of
Virgil's
full
of this story
description of the
Êneas to his father's grave. Êneas,
due performance of pious custom, had

poured libations to the dead of wine, milk,
in
and blood, had strewn flowers and

upon him
called
"
Then from
the depths of the shrine
came smoothly
gliding a serpent,
Winding
its
twined
mighty length
;
35
in sevenfold circles en-

Slowly
it
circled the
tomb and wound
its
way
to
the altars,
Azure bedight was
its
back and the spangled scales
of the portent
Glittered with verdant gold, as the
in the heavens
bow
after rain
Gleams with a thousand hues beneath the touch
of
the sunbeam.
Silent,
amazed stood ^neas
but the serpent,
its
long length trailing,

Glided among the cups and the polished vessels of
service,
Tasted the viands and back
to the depths of the
tomb receded,
Mindless of harm and left the tasted food and
ÊNEID V, 84-93.
altars."
the
Greek vase paintings frequently represent

the occupants of graves in the form of
This does not imply the belief
that the dead continued to live permanently
snakes.
in serpent form, but merely that their souls
could become visible in this form from time

i
Zulu simplicity, on the other hand,

if a
regards the snake-form as permanent
snake appears with a scar on one side a
to time.
man may come who knew some

of the place thus
marked
36
inhabitant
in his life-time
FROM BEING TO BEING

"
Do you not
That primitive
man regarded the serpent as an uncanny,
and
say,
That
see the scar
on
is
So-and-so.
"
his side
supernatural creature is a matter of common

This is probably the chief
knowledge.
reason
regarding the serpent as the

form in which the souls of the dead confor
tinued their existence

feeling that inspires
for fear
is
the
first
man's relations with
may be proved from many

It should also be remembered
the dead, as
sources.
that in
many
countries snakes are fond of
entering houses
side, as
and approaching the
fire-
though they were driven by some
natural instinct to seek
human
association.
Legend often represents the house-snake as

playing with the child of the house, as
sharing food and drink with him, sleeping
and giving him health

but
must not be angered, or evil will
in his cradle
the snake
upon the household.

The belief is widely disseminated that
fall
human
souls
are
incarnate
37
in
animals

which make their homes in men's houses,
even when they are unwelcome visitors.
The mouse,
very often appears

The soul
as the reincarnation of a soul.
for instance,
can leave the body of a sleeper in the form

of a mouse as well as in that of a snake,
the
body
mouse is a form more regularly assumed
In the year 914 there was a
after death.
to return after a while to the
great famine, and Bishop Hatto of Mayence

gathered the poor who had nothing to eat
into a barn
and burnt them
of mice suddenly
came
then a swarm
out of the
fire
these
were, of course, the souls of the unfortunate
people demanding vengeance

the bishop day and night.
and pursued
He
fled to
tower in the middle of the Rhine at Bingen

swam the stream
to escape his foes, but they
and devoured him, whence
known
Mice
as the
also
Gertrude,
thian's
"
mouse-tower
have
who
is
peasant
their
his
"
tower
is
even to-day.
saint,
patron
St.
represented in the Carin-
calendar
38
as
spinning
FROM BEING TO BEING

woman, with mice and rats running up her
The explanation of so strange an
distaff.
attribute of the saint
is
simply this
Ger-
trude was formerly one of the war Valkyries,
and
souls spent their first night after death
with her
thus the mice depicted with the
saint are merely the reincarnated souls of

Hence the saying " to
the deceased.
whistle to mice
"
is
to call the souls of the
we may compare the legend of

Arab superstition"
the piper of Hameln.
regards a particular species of mouse as
inhabited by the souls of an extinct Israeldead
itish tribe
hence these mice will not touch
camel's milk, which was forbidden to thq

Israelites.
tion
may
Together with the mouse, menmade of toads, which in
also be
Tyrol, for instance, may not be killed on

"
All Souls' Day,
because poor souls are in
"
poor souls, make

on quarter days.
Certain uncanny creatures which fly by
them
they
also, like
pilgrimages to chapels
night are often regarded as the habitations

39

of souls
such are the owl, the bat, and
especially the vampire, which has a particularly evil reputation for sucking the warm
blood from the living and leaving them

pale
is
legend
Slav races.
in
The
and dying.
so-called
to be found chiefly
belief, to
the
among
The Abipones, an Indian
Argentine, have a
the
vampire
tribe
less
repulsive
the effect that the souls of the dead
become incarnate
duck, which
flies
melancholy
wails.
these cries
is
a certain species of
about at night uttering
in
The mournful
effect of
the reason in this case for
assuming a connection between these birds

and the souls of the dead. Mohammed
refused to eat lizards because he regarded
them as the descendants of an Israelitish
tribe
which had undergone

:
the Zulus
v^phosis
souls of the
intelligible
also
this
metamor-
believe
that the
dead can pass into

is
the
animals resembling
idea
lizards.
that
man in form
souls
:
More
enter
in Guinea,
souls are thought to enter the bodies of the

40
FROM BEING TO BEING

apes which live in the neighbourhood of the
burial
places.
fear of the dead
The general
is
and
respect
expressed in the belief
that their souls inhabit the bodies of animals

of imposing appearance
tigers, lions, bears,
But
wolves, even crocodiles and whales.
almost any animal
may
be so inhabited.
When
the head of a great fish was placed

on the table before Theodoric, King of the
Ostrogoths, in his palace at Ravenna, he

"
cried trembling,
That
is
had been executed by
An
Icelandic
his
He
wishes to devour me."

died.
Symmachus (who
orders)
then
legend
fell ill
relates
he/
and
that
Pharaoh's servants who were drowned in

the
Red Sea continue
to live beneath the
On
the eve of St.
John they are allowed

human shape, and come
to
resume their
and singing
anyone can take
sea in the form of seals.
away
joyfully.
their seal
skins,
If
he has them in his
power, and they remain

men.
41
to land dancing
in
the form of

In some instances the various kinds of
Those
hostile
are regarded as inhabited
by the
animals are differentiated.

to
man
souls of enemies, while the inoffensive con-
tain the souls of
members
Thus
of the tribe.
'Hie Tlascalans of Mexico believe that the
Aouls of distinguished
men
înto weasels, beetles,
etc.
enter great and

sweet-singing birds and the nobler quadrupeds, while the souls of common people pass
tribes of
Similarly, the
Madagascar believe that the species
of animal to be inhabited
by the
soul
is
determined by the rank which the deceased
man
held during his lifetime.
SOUL-TRANSMIGRATION FROM MEN TO
PLANTS
After death the
human
soul can
into plants as well as into animals.
soul seems to
for the bean.
pass
The
show a particular preference

Hence the Pythagoreans were
.forbidden to eat beans.
"
To
eat beans
"
to eat the heads of one's parents

42
is
was a
FROM BEING TO BEING

Pythagorean saying, which was intended
Horace pours
to be literally interpreted.
full
"
measure of
relative
"
satire
upon Pythagoras, the
of the bean, in reference to a
succulent country dish of beans (Satire II,

The black marks in the bean
vi, 63 ff.).
flower were interpreted
by the Greeks
as
a similar sign
Ai, Ai, the cry of sorrow
was found by them in the hyacinth, which
flower was also regarded as an incarnation.
;
At the same time the bean had an evil

reputation as causing bad dreams. Beans,
in fact,
have a history of
Romans had a
This
their
own
the
belief
concerning
they thought that they drove away
spirits by throwing beans behind them./
them
evil
similar
may remind
us of a feast which the
Japanese celebrate on the evening of February 25 at the parting of winter and spring.
They try to drive out malicious spirits by
strewing
roasted
beans
"Come
and exclaiming
devil !"/-
in, happiness, go away,

Egyptian priests were not even allowed to
43

At any
look at beans.
he
i.e.
"
who
is
in the beans
rate,
we know
that
"
is
absent-minded,
that as beans can contain the soul of
the dead, so they can hold the

living
originally
fell
of a
much evidence to show

and
the spring festival
Day
upon the same day. The
man. There
that All Souls'
mind
is
spring festival in Malta, for instance,
and on
the Rhine, was therefore kept as a bean

festival. It was a time of rejoicing. A bean
queen, the feminine counterpart of Prince

Carnival,
was chosen, and
songs were sung
cheerful, licentious
hence the origin of the
German
expression that any licentious and

"
outrageous act
surpasses the bean-song/'
Apart from leguminous plants, any tree

or shrub may receive the passing soul. The
Dyaks
of Borneo, for instance, believe that
the sap, with

to this cause,
its
resemblance to blood,
and
is
due
for similar reasons certain
tribes in Australia or the Philippines refuse
to
fell
trees.
In this connection must be
taken the numerous stories of transforma44
FROM BEING TO BEING

mythology such
Philemon and Baucis, who were
transformed upon death into an oak and a
tions to trees in classical
as that of
lime tree respectively.

Comparatively recently the two sacred trees were shown,
protected
large
by a wall from the profane world.

number of similar legends and
stories are current,
old folk-song
"
such as the wonderful
They buried him
And
And
And
in Mary's church
her in Mary's nave,
over her a red rose grew
a white thorn from his grave

to one another,
They bent
Entwined their branches fair,

For every passer-by to see
Two
lovers rested there."
More elaborate is the Portuguese story (3s

Count Nello, from whose grave a cypress
grew, while an orange tree blossomed upon
the grave of his lady-love, the Infanta.
The King, who had opposed
their marriage,
ordered the trees to be cut down.
blood flowed from their stems

45
But
and two

white doves flew out and away to the King,
as he was sitting down to meat, so that he
"
burst out with a cry,
Curse your love,
curse it
neither in life nor in death can I
:
\divide you/'
Such
beliefs are
now
regarded as nothing
more than poetical ideas, but in the far
distant
day
of primitive speculation,
from
which poets have transmitted these stories

to us, they were considered to be matters of
fact.
So much
is
plainly obvious from time
to time even through the veil of poetical
treatment.
case
in
point
is
Virgil's
account of Êneas' discovery of a cornel tree

and a branching myrtle plant upon a grave.
Êneas goes up and attempts to root up
the plant, purposing to adorn the altar
with the green shoots. But the roots drip

black blood, and when Jneas has torn up
the third root, he hears a piteous cry from
the soul of Polythe depths of the mound
:
dor us,
mercy.
who was
slain
An Annamite
by
Achilles, cries for
story
46
tells of
a fisher-
FROM BEING TO BEING

man who made
a gash in a tree trunk which

had drifted ashore. Blood streams forth,
and
appears that an empress and her
it
three daughters
who had been thrown
into
the sea had been reincarnated in the tree.
The Abyssinians assert that at the spot

where a maiden buried her seven brothers
seven palm trees grew from their bones.
Here we observe that the soul creates for
the tree which
itself
habitation
races,
member
further
its
future
garden receive the soul
of the family
upon
his death.
from the wood of one of these
trees the cradle
new
be
carries the thread of the story yet
Fancy
to
such as the Slavs, believe that the
fruit trees in the
of a
is
on the other hand, many other
life
is
made, which
is
to contain
does not the soul of the ancestor
thus return to the grandson or the great-
grandson ?
We have already referred to the belief
that the soul is contained in the blood. In
full
correspondence with this idea

47
is
the

fact that belief in the migration of souls to
plants occasionally occurs in another form,
which regards plants as developed from

drops of blood. Thus the Greeks believed
that the anemone sprang from the blood of
the dying Adonis.
A legend from the
Armenian town of Erzeroum states that
first grew from the blood of the
Ferdad
at the spot where he threw
dying
himself from the rocks in despair for his
the tulip
rejected love.
Even
the red poppies
upon
Waterloo are regarded by

as springing from the blood
Ithe battlefield of
popular belief
\of the brave warriors
who
fell
in the battle.
SOUL-TRANSMIGRATION FROM MAN TO
INANIMATE OBJECTS
Primitive thought regards objects which
we consider inanimate as no less capable of
possessing souls after the nature of man
than animals and plants

hence we need
feel no surprise at the belief that mortal
:
souls can pass into inanimate objects.

48
The
FROM BEING TO BEING

most frequent form
of this belief regards
the soul of a deceased
man
as inhabiting
an
image erected to him, or as present especially

in his picture or statue.
we may
In this connection
common
refer to the
fact, that the
ordinary believer regards the image before
which he kneels as personifying the being

which he there adores. An infinite number
examples might be quoted, from the
ancient Tyrians, who put fetters upon the
statue of their sun god to prevent him from
of
leaving their town, to the Russian peasant

of the present day, who blindfolds his ikon
that
it
may
righteous act.
not see him commit an unIn
fact,
a mere stone
may
serve as a habitation for the departing soul.

Primitive simplicity can have seen no
greater difficulty in accepting this idea than
in believing its contrary, that men were
born from stones.
originally
This latter
be found among the Greeks, as

aware
everyone
strangely enough, it
exists in remarkably similar form among
belief is to
is
49

the South American tribe of the
on the Orinoco.
stories to
turned
More
Tamanakes
familiar to us are the
be found in every country of
into
explanations
stones
of
these
the
are
existence
men
popular
of
rocks
showing some resemblance to the human

A more striking example of the
form.
belief that the
human
inanimate object
is
soul can pass into an
provided by China with
that the soul (or more correctly,

one of the three souls) of an ancestor enters
its belief
the tablet erected to his
memory by
his
family. Here the departed relative receives

the veneration of his descendants, and is
informed of their joys and sorrows

if, for
is a marriage in the house:
instance, there
hold, the
head
of the family burns incense
before the tablet, pours libations of wine to

it, reads the announcement of the betrothal
before
it,
and eventually burns
spot, in order to give the
it
in that
message a form
in greater congruity, so to say, with the
position of the deceased.

50
FROM BEING TO BEING

A large number of
the examples which
have hitherto quoted

belief
that the
we
in illustration of the
human soul can be reinhuman body, or in
carnated in another
some non-human organism, might
well be
considered as examples of metempsychosis

is
perhaps more
correctly restricted to cases
where we find
But
proper.
a connected
this
term
series of transmigrations,
in other words,
the
life
of
where,
an individual
forms but one link in a chain of reincarnations

as
it is
we have
more
done,
satisfactory to regard,
the belief in isolated
instances of metempsychosis as the
important of the antecedent
supposed by
proper.
most
beliefs
pre-
the idea of metempsychosis
Thus, in the preceding pages, our
instances have been purposely chosen from
the most different races and climates
for
the very diversity of our sources of information should arouse the impression that the
metempsychosis was not confined

to any one race or group of races, but was
belief in

the
common
property of mankind.
The
com-
study of comparative religion or of

parative philosophy, if undertaken from
the historical point of view, must leave us
profoundly impressed with the fact, that
the further
and
we
retrace early theories of
of nature, the greater
is
which such theories display
life
the similarity
whereas
if
we
follow the development of these ideas from

their source downwards, an increasing ten-
dency to diverge
is
constantly apparent.
Hence the antecedent
ideas necessary to
the belief in the transmigration of souls, in
the restricted sense of the term, are to be
found throughout the world. Why, then,

did not the belief in metempsychosis become
universal
To produce
condition
was
this result a further
required
metempsychosis
the
belief
in its proper sense
in
can only
begin at a particular stage of intellectual
development,
arise
among
disposition
and,
moreover,
can
only
peoples possessing that special

to
compare
52
facts
and make
FROM BEING TO BEING

deductions from them, which
to the
this.
is
necessary
development of any such
The Semitic
were far too
peoples,
realistic in their
for
mode
belief as
instance,
of
thought
metempsychosis to take
root among them. Such traces of the theory
as may be found among them are due to
for the belief in
foreign influence.
53
PART
II
METEMPSYCHOSIS PROPERLY SO CALLED
CHAPTER
SO
we know, there are but three

peoples who may be considered as
far as
representative
typically
of
the
belief
in
in the proper sense of the
metempsychosis
term
the Indians, the Greeks, and the
Celts. We have disregarded instances based
;
upon inadequate evidence thus the Bishop

of Cracow, Vincent Kadlubek (died 1223)
:
states in his Polish chronicle that a foolish
was universally entertained by the

Getse (by whom he elsewhere means the
belief
Prussians)
which
to the effect that souls
leave men's bodies return again in new-
born bodies, and that
many
souls
become
this
by assuming animal forms
evidence seems to me to be somewhat un-
bestial
reliable.
Another and probably more notice57

able omission will be that of the Egyptians,
who would perhaps
occur to
the
casual
reader as soon as he heard the term metempsychosis mentioned.
We may
be referred
famous passage in the Greek historian

"
now the
Herodotus, in which he says
to a
who have affirmed

the human soul is immortal,
Egyptians are the first
the opinion that

and that when the body decays the soul
invariably enters another body upon the
point of birth. When it has thus successively passed through the bodies of all the
animals on earth, in the water, and in the

air, it returns once more into a human body
upon the point

migrations
years."
As
it
it
of birth,
and
this circle of
completes in three thousand

happens, a large number of
have provided tolerably cominformation

plete
concerning the true nature
of Egyptian ideas upon the condition of the
inscriptions
and the observations of

Herodotus, as above quoted, remain un-
soul after death,
confirmed.
It is true that in certain

58
chap-
ters of the so-called
soul
is
of the
Dead, the
credited with the capacity of trans-
upon occasion
itself
forming
beings,
Book
and of taking the form
sparrow-hawk, of a
lily,
But
crocodile, etc.
into
other
of a golden
of a sacred ram, of a
in these cases it
must
be carefully remembered that the transformation is not due to any natural law to
which the soul concerned

is
is
subjected, but
rather represented as a special privilege

may be conceded at times to the
which
nor does the

magicians
statement imply more than an attempt to
secure greater sanctity for the dwellers in
souls
of skilful
the next world
by providing them with un-
usual powers of self-transformation.

On
the other hand, the doctrine of metempsy-
form invariably regards
chosis in its strict
reincarnation as the inevitable destiny of

liberation from this
the human soul
;
necessity
soul,
and
more or
is
is
the great ideal and hope of the

considered to be, at most, the
less
remote goal of a toilsome

59

course of self-redemption.
The succession
is
reincarnations
determined
of these
by
existing theories
religious
will
be
beliefs
whom
and
upon moral
retribution or
ethical purification
so
much
apparent when we consider the

of the Indians and Greeks, among
metempsychosis assumed
form.
60
its classical
CHAPTER
II
METEMPSYCHOSIS AMONG THE CELTS
OUR
knowledge of the
in general is
Celtic ideas
very
little.
Celtic
religion
extremely vague, and of
upon metempsychosis we know

however,
Caesar,
in
his
De
Bello Gallico (VI, xiv, 4) tells us that the
Druids
the Celtic priests
believed that
the soul did not die, but passed from one

individual to another
they regarded this
:
belief
life
as a great stimulus to morality of
and
felt
no fear
of death.
somewhat
Diodorus Siculus, says, when

describing the Gauls, that at meals they
would often dispute about trifles and chal-
later writer,
lenge one another to duels,

of
life
they make no
"
account.
for of the
In
end
fact, the
opinion of Pythagoras (see below) prevails

among them, that the souls of men are
61

immortal, and come to
again after a
"
certain term of years, entering other bodies
However, the value of this
(V, xxviii).
life
statement
is
considerably modified by the
"
author's following words
upon the occasion of a burial, many cast letters upon the
:
funeral pile, which they have written to

their dead friends, in the hope that the dead
will read
them/
ment by the
(II, vi,
somewhat
historian
later state-
Valerius
Maximus
10) says that the Gauls lend one
another inconceivably large sums of
money
on the mere promise of repayment in the

next world. These customs would rather
incline us to believe that the
expect a
common
life
and not reincarnation
dead had to
beyond the grave,
for another life
upon
Accordingly, the observations of

the ancient historians upon Celtic belief in
earth.
metempsychosis are to be accepted with

caution, nor should I venture to give a
definite list of the successive reincarnations
in
which the Celts believed, as other writers

62
AMONG THE CELTS

have attempted to do upon the evidence of
other and even more doubtful statements.
At any
rate, the
words of a famous sixth
century bard upon his
own
are sufficiently definite.
He
reincarnations
asserts that
he
became a lynx, a dog, and a
stag, then a
an
a
a
axe,
cock,
stallion, and a goat,
spade,
and finally a grain of corn, which was
The question has

swallowed by a hen.
also been raised whether these
beliefs
were indigenous and common to all Celtic
tribes
it has been conjectured that individual Druids borrowed them from Greek
:
colonists.
To
these
questions
answer can as yet be given.
no
final
CHAPTER
III
METEMPSYCHOSIS
IN INDIA
VEDIC-BRAHMAN BELIEFS
the country in which the belief
is
INDIA
in the
transmigration
chiefly flourished.
date of
I
am
souls
of
has
Opinions concerning the
appearance are divergent.

inclined to think that the date can well
its
first
be placed at a very early period, although

the
oldest
monuments
of
the
so-called
Vedic literature show very scanty traces of

the belief. However, an early Indian code
requires that
upon the occasion
of a sacrifice
a fragment of the offering to the departed

spirits should also be thrown to the birds,
"
because we are taught that our fathers
glide along, taking the form of birds/' For
our
purpose,
classical
form
acquaintance with the

of Indian metempsychosis
an
64
METEMPSYCHOSIS
will
suffice.
IN INDIA
The conception
is
obviously
dominated by the idea of moral retribution.

In the Indian collection of fairy
Pancatantra,
tales,
the
which we have already

between a king and
to
referred, the difference
a god
or
marked
is
the king can reward good
bad actions at the time
commis-
of their
sion, while the
god can only give rewards
or punishments
upon the occasion
of a re-
As regards the nature
of these
incarnation.
man
may be said, in brief, that a

becomes the mirror of his deeds. This
fact
is
rewards,
it
vividly stated
by the famous
legal
code of Manu, the essential parts of which

are pre-Buddhist
and represent Brahman
Thus a Brahman or
ideals.
priest
who
asks
an offering and does not use

for the purpose stated becomes a
for gifts for
them
all
vulture or crow (XI, 25)

for vultures and
crows may be said to live by abstracting
:
The reasons
food.
for special forms of re-
birth are not always so obvious as in this
case
nor do we always
65
know what moral

conceptions the
ticular animals.
the
Indians
If,
to
applied
par-
we examine
theft, we find
for instance,
of
punishments for
"
he who from greed
(XII, 61-69)
steals
or
other
list
'
stones,
precious
pearls,
corals,
be born a goldsmith (the

valuables,
name of a bird) he who steals gold will
will
... he who steals honey, a

insect, he who steals milk, a crow,
become a
stinging
he who
thief of
rat
steals sugar-cane juice, a
the
dog
butter becomes an ichneumon, of
;
meat, a vulture, of lard, a heron, of oil, a

winged stag-beetle, of salt, a cricket, of
sour milk, a Balaka bird, of
silk,
a par-
tridge, of flax, a frog, of cotton, a crane,
of a cow,
an iguana
(a species of lizard), of
syrup, a flying fox, of scent, a musk rat,

of green vegetables, a peacock, of any
cooked food, a porcupine, of uncooked food,

a hedgehog, of fire, a heron, of household
wasp, of bright coloured clothes,
a guinea fowl, of a stag or elephant, a wolf,
of a horse, a tiger, of roots and fruit, an ape,
utensils, a
66
METEMPSYCHOSIS
of a
woman, a
IN INDIA
bear, of water, a black
and
white cuckoo, of a cart, a camel, of cattle, a

He who deprives another of his
he-goat.
property by force or eats sacrificial offerings
of which no sacrifice has been made, un-
doubtedly
becomes
who commit
an
Women
animal.
theft bear corresponding guilt
and become the females

above enumerated/
of
the
animals
Elsewhere in the same code the punish-
ment appointed for a faithless wife is to

become a jackal after death (V, 164, IX, 30),
while if she is faithful to her husband during
his life or after his
privilege
of
death she will have the
union with him after death.
Further (XII, 55 ff.), he who kills a Bral>

man, after a long progress through dreadful
hells, is to
be reborn as a dog, pig,
ass,
camel,
cow, goat, sheep, stag, bird, etc. The soul

of the Brahman who is addicted to for-
bidden drink enters the bodies of great and

small
moths, carrion-eating birds,

and destructive animals. Men who take
insects,
67

pleasure in inflicting pain become carnivorous animals
those who eat forbidden food
;
become worms
thieves become creatures
which devour their own kind (such as fish,
;
The worst fate is reserved for those

who commit adultery with the wife of a
etc.).
priest or teacher (the so-called deadly sin
in the legal code)
their souls are to return
hundreds of times into grass, shrubs, creeping animals, carnivorous animals with claws
and
cruel dispositions.
Generally speaking,
opinion naturally prevails that the
threatened reincarnation is not a final
the
punishment, but is merely the prelude to

another birth, so that the series extends
through
an
of
infinity
time
the
code
speaks of successive migrations through ten
thousand millions of
lives! (VI, 63).
is immediately obvious that

dogmas of
kind are not the pure result of simple
we see the handiwork of an
popular belief
Ît
this
educated
priesthood,
for
so
complex
system could only have been the result of

68
METEMPSYCHOSIS IN INDIA
The code
comparison and inference.
Manu
is
the
first
of
attempt to systematise the
world of living things and to subordinate

the several classes of
The
life.
direction
by the soul on its migrations

then determined as threefold, according
as the man by his deeds has fitted himself
to be followed
is
world of gods, of men, or of animals.

Within these three worlds different grades
for the
are
In the animal world,
distinguished.
the lowest species are those
for instance,
without powers of locomotion
then come
the small and great insects, the snakes, and

on a higher plane are elephants,
tortoises
;
horses, lions, tigers,

all
must
mythological
be noticed that
also
animals,
level,
and boars
certain
are
are
as
if
highest of
animals.
among
It
these
they were upon the same
placed
men
of
despised castes
the value
so relative is
and savages
placed on human life as such.
:
The
theo-
logians, the penitents, the sacrificers, and

the learned are placed highest in the human
69

scale
by
this religion,
which fact
suffices to
its
betray
priestly origin.
This doctrine as set forth in Manu's code,
which teaches that
man
receives retribution
misdeeds by becoming what they

has
been well criticised by Herder as
are,
"
how lightly does the cruel man
follows
for his
suffer for his cruelty,
body
of a tiger.
if
his soul enters the
The former
shape now becomes
tiger in
human
the reality untroubled
by conscience or the sense of duty, which

pricked him at times in his former state.
Now he may rage and mangle as hunger,
thirst, and appetite bid him, at the promptings of an instinct which only now can be
satiated. Such was the desire of the human
tiger.
reward.
Instead of punishment, he receives

He is what he wished to be and
what he was but very imperfectly while
human
in
shape/'
Brahman theology apparently disa

tendency to connect the souls of
played
the departed with the waning and waxing
Later
70
moon. The
so-called Upanishads, the philo-
sophical scriptures, which

their translator, declared
New
Vedas what the

"
Bible, state,
all
directly to the
waxing crescent
who
moon.
is
Paul
to
Deussen,
be
Testament
to
is
the
to the
leave this world go
By
their lives its
increased,
and by means
them
to second
waning
brings
But the moon is also the gate of the
heavenly world, and he who can answer
of
its
it
birth.
the moon is allowed to

He
who can give no answer
pass beyond
is turned to rain by the moon and rained
down upon the earth. He is born again
here below, as worm or fly, or fish or bird,
the questions of
it.
or lion, or boar or
tiger, or
man,
animal with teeth, or
or anything else in one or
another place, according to his works and

to his knowledge. So when a man comes to
the moon,
thou
the
moon
asks him,
who art
the moon
he answers rightly,
to pass onward, and he comes
to the world of fire, then to the world of
?
allows
If
him
wind, then, to the world of gods,"

71
etc.

While these words give us the impression
of a course of
development gradually
to higher planes, within the
same
rising
literature
the round of transmigrations is sometimes

represented as a circle, as in the lines
:
"
His mother that was becomes his wife

His wife that was becomes his mother
His father becomes his son,
And
his son, again, becomes his father.

in the circle of the Samsara,*
Thus
Like as the buckets upon the wheel

Revolve, so turns he ever backwards
To his mother's breast and to his birth."
BUDDHIST BELIEFS
Buddhism
inherited the
Brahman
belief
The use of the term,

however,
speaking of Buddhism is of
questionable legitimacy, for Buddhism does
not accept that which we have termed the
in metempsychosis.
in
first
necessary condition antecedent to a

the transmigration of souls, the
belief in
existence
a personal soul.
of
directly rejects this conception,

*
i.e.
course of migration.
72
Buddhism
and
for it
there
no
is
existence
nomena
real ego
moment and
and
the indimeanwhile,
but a light which has been
itself
life
is
kindled at another
matter
is
action
man
existence
the soul with a flame
call
every
itself
upon
vidual
admits only the
independent spiritual pheconstant succession.

Thus it
in
compares what we
which reproduces
feeds
it
of
light.
provided by
The combustible
human
matter
action
by
for
further
and advances towards
reincar-
nation, and
creates
Buddhist theory, is so
miserable a destiny that man's redemption
culminates in the removal of any possibility
this, in
of reincarnation, that
the
A
is
human
belief in
no
is,
in the negation of
will to act.
metempsychosis, when there
belief in
the existence of the soul,
seems to us an impossible contradiction.

Popular Indian theory, however, was not so
deeply impressed with the inconsistency.
In general, the doubts of the learned concerning the existence of a personal soul have,
73

perhaps, never been seriously accepted by
many people anywhere in the world. Thus
the belief in soul-transmigration remained
unshaken, and in popular theory even the
Buddhists considered that one and the

same soul went through the whole round of
Buddhist
reincarnations.
taught that he
who would
doctrine
even
attain complete
enlightenment must reach the moment when

he succeeds in arousing recollection of his
former states of existence by means of continued spiritual introspection. That recollection arose in Buddha, and in this respect
he became a pattern and example to his
followers
"In such a frame of mind,
:
earnest,
purified,
from dross,
I
directed
recollection
cleansed,
steady,
docile, pliable, firm,
my mind
to gain
of earlier states
freed
impregnable,
knowledge by
of existence.
remembered many former states as one

then as a hunlife, then as two lives
I
dred thousand
times of
many
lives
creations
74
remembered the
and many times
of
METEMPSYCHOSIS
IN INDIA
decay, of the world and death
was
I,
there
such was
such and such
my name, such my family,

my profession and my rank,
such weal and woe did

such was the end of
death
I re-entered life
my
experience,
life
elsewhere
Thus
I re-entered life here.
and
there after
recalled
dead,
many
different forms of previous existence/'
These previous existences of the master

became the subject matter of pious legends,
which were elaborated to serve the cause of

Buddhist ethical theory with all the extravagance native to Indian imaginations.
Buddha's special mode of behaviour in all
his previous lives
was made the pattern to
be followed by his devotees in every conceivable
situation.
edifying
narratives
Thus
of
his
the
numerous
reincarnations
provide a complete code of moral precepts.

As is well known, sympathy is the chief
Buddhist virtue.
the
practice
of
An
inspiring
sympathy
is
example
given,
instance, in the following anecdote.

75
of
for
In one

his previous lives
as a hare.
Buddha was
incarnate
happened one day that a

hungry Brahman came and asked him for
food.
Buddha had nothing to give, but
It
would not send him away empty. What

was to be done ? " Go/' he said, at length,
"
collect wood and light a fire.
I will roast
and
me." His
shall
then
eat
myself
you
suggestion was carried out. Naturally the
he was
poor hare had nothing to lose
;
rewarded for his sympathy by a reincar-
nation upon a
correspondingly higher plane.
Opportunity for virtuous action of this

kind will eventually come to everyone
:
for Buddhist imagination did not readily

conceive a conclusion to the succession of
reincarnations.
The number
to be infinite, as
may
of
them seems
be inferred from the
following conversation of Buddha with his

"
What think ye, children, whether
disciples.
is
greater, the blood that
was shed
at your
beheading upon the long journey from birth

to death
and from birth

76
to death, or the
METEMPSYCHOSIS
IN INDIA
"
"
water of the four great seas ?

As we
the
oh
understand,
master,
teaching delivered
by the enlightened
we have shed
one,
upon the long journey from birth to death

and from birth to death more blood at our
beheading than there
seas."
"
Good,
my
is
water in the four
children,
good
is it
ye thus understand the teaching

delivered
to
you
more blood,
that
have
indeed,
children, on this long journey, hastening

ever from birth to death and from birth
again to death, have ye shed at your beheading than there is water in the four seas.
For long, ye children, as cattle and calves

have ye shed more blood at your beheading
than there
is
water in the four seas
and
more blood
for
long, ye children, as buffaloes
buffalo-
calves have ye shed
at your
beheading than there

seas/'
is
water in the four
Thus the speech continues
excellent
Buddhist
example
it is
an
of the general style of
exhortation,
with
its
circum-
stantial repetition of each several clause in

77

a sentence
it
proceeds to treat successively
of the reincarnation of
men
as sheep
and
lambs, goats and kids, deer and stags, sv/ine
and sucking-pigs,
This
may
fowls, pigeons, geese, etc.
suffice as
a description of the
Indian doctrine of metempsychosis in

classical
among
form
the
many
to
pursue
later sects
its
its
progress
(such as the
famous Sikhs) would lead us beyond the

limit of our space.
CHAPTER
IV
THE GREEK DOCTRINE OF

METEMPSYCHOSIS
there
was any
WHETHER
nection between
direct con-
the Indian belief
metempsychosis which we have just described and the Greek doctrine remains an
in
The Greek
open question.
historian Hero-
dotus thought that his countrymen had

borrowed the theory from the Egyptians.
This supposition
is
we have already
excluded by the facts

stated
concerning
the
Egyptian form of the belief. Historically,

can apparently be demonstrated to have
it
first
appeared in Thrace, upon the northern

To Thrace belongs the
frontier of Greece.
the famous singer

the mysterious sect
"
"
of the
took their name. Their
Orphici
doctrines are highly coloured by poetical
legendary
figure
Orpheus, from
of
whom
79

imagery, but the following are the main
points which concern our present investigation
soul
and body are united by a com-
pact unequally binding upon either

soul
is
divine,
and
immortal,
aspires
the
to
freedom, while the body holds it in fetters

as a prisoner/*' Death dissolves this compact, but only to re-imprison the liberated
soul after a short time

birth
revolves
soul continues
for the
"
inexorably.
its
wheel of
Thus
the
journey, alternating be-
tween a separate, unrestrained existence

and fresh reincarnation, round the wide
circle
many
Rhode
of
necessity,
bodies of
:
prisoners
as
the
men and
Psyche).
To
companion
animals
these
of
"
(Erwin
unfortunate
Orpheus proclaims the message

need of the
of liberation, that they stand in
grace of redeeming gods and of Dionysu^

and calls them to turn to God
in particular,
ascetic piety of life and self-purification

the purer their lives, the higher will be their
next reincarnation, until the soul has
by
80
THE GREEK DOCTRINE

completed the spiral ascent of destiny, to
God, from whom it comes.
belief
seems to have been
The Orphic
live for ever as
widely current in the Greek colonies in

southern Italy and Sicily.
We know
that southern Italy was also
the centre of Pythagoras' influence, the most
famous exponent
of
metempsychosis among
Here, again, the probably in-
the Greeks.
soluble question arises, whether or to
extent
a connection between the
what
Pytha-
gorean and Orphic teaching may be assumed.

As a matter of fact, the theory of the soul
adopted by either school of thought shows

close affinity.
The Pythagoreans
also re-
garded the soul as temporarily imprisoned in

the body, which it leaves at death
after a
;
period of purification in the lower

returns
to
earth
(the
world
it
Pythagoreans con-
sidered the air to be full of souls) and begins
new
career in a
new body corresponding
to its deeds in the former
himself asserted that he

G
81
life.
Pythagora^
had passed through

four previous earthly lives in
He was
human
form.
able even to point out the place in
the temple of the goddess Hera, where the
which he had used during
shield hung,
his
former
life as Euphorbus at the siege of

where
he was killed by Menelaus.
vTroy,
At a
later date his soul entered the
body
of
These state-
a cock upon one occasion.
ments exposed him to a considerable amount
One
of ridicule.
of his bitterest mockers,
Lucian, represents a certain Mikyllus as

asking this cock whether the events of the
Trojan war, which the cock must have

witnessed as Euphorbus, had actually hap"
What
pened as Homer related them.
could
cock
Homer know
"
them ?
replies the
"at that time he was himself a camel
in Bactria
of
"
!
Many, however, regarded these theories

more seriously. It is difficult to say how
far the people as a
whole were influenced by
them, but their
effect
philosophy
was
upon poetry and
unmistakable
82
at
least
THE GREEK DOCTRINE

names
three
in
connection must be
this
mentioned, the poet Pindar, the philosopher

Empedocles, and Plato**- Pindar considered
that the soul must pass through at least
three earthly lives before it could escape
the
compulsion
the last occasion
to
reincarnation.
when
it
was sent
Upon
to the
upper world by the queen of the lower

it received the privilege of
entering
the body of a king, hero, or sage.
After
death the soul went to the Islands of
world,
the Blessed, where undisturbed enjoyment

awaited it, and was honoured as a hero
by men;
To
the philosopher Empedocles
belong the lines which he spoke in reference

to himself
:
"
Thus
in former lives have I been a boy and a girl,

bush and a bird and a fish without speech in
the depths of the sea."
As
this strange
states,
fragment of autobiography
Empedocles extended metempsy-
chosis to the world of plants.

of the belief
have gone to
83
Few adherents
this extreme,
even

In Buddhism, for instance, the
in India.
limitation of metempsychosis to the animal
world became a dogma, though only after

long discussions of the question." 'Plato also
diverged from the earlier philosopher upon
in general, Plato also regarded
this point
:
the soul as passing through several bodies,

at least three (as did Pindar), an interval of
*
a thousand years
elapsing
reincarnation.
The
position in
for itself
life
soul
between each
chose
(this
is
its
new
a point
peculiar to Plato), always in accordance with

it had acquired during
former existence, so that the soul was
"
"
symmetrical with the body which clothed
Thus man's moral action ultimately
it.
the character which
its
determines
whether he
rises
upwards or
sinks to the level of the animal world.
upward path eventually enables him
The
to
avoid the necessity of reincarnation and

"
realm of eternal
leads him home to the
and untroubled being/'

Neo-platonism, so far as metempsychosis
84
THE GREEK DOCTRINE

was concerned, followed its master's teachEventually Greek beliefs coloured the
ing.
less
the
independent philosophical thought of
Romans
especially
was the school
prominent at Rome
whose doctrines
of the Sextii,
were borrowed from Pythagoreanism
traces
of this school are apparent in the writings of

Virgil,
who
lived about the
same time
after
a thousand years have completed a cycle of

existence for the blessed in Elysium, God
summons them in a body to the stream
of Lethe,
oblivion
desiring
where they drink the waters of

to the upper world
and return
new
births.
CHAPTER V
THE BELIEF IN METEMPSYCHOSIS
IN OTHER QUARTERS
THE BIBLE AND IN JUDAISM
IN
THE
belief in the transmigration of souls
continually recurs sporadically even

within religions in which such a belief
should find no place. Upon the occasion of

a public debate I have heard laymen main-
and support it with numerous Biblical quotations, that both Old and
tain the opinion
New Testament
taught
this
belief.
quotation regarded as of primary import"

Thou
ance is the verse of Psalm xc
:
turnest
man
sayest,
Come
to destruction,
again, ye children of
men
"
;
the question of the young
St.
John ix, 2,
men, is also quoted
this
and again Thou
man
"
Master,
who
or his parents that he

86
sinned,
was born
OTHER QUARTERS
IN
blind
"
What view
In Psalm xc,
these passages
translation
the
conception.
is
we
are
to
take of
3,
Luther's
obvious cause of mis-
Luther
uses
two
different
expressions, while in the original text the

"
same word occurs twice
Thou allowest
:
mankind
to
return
to
dust,
and
'
'
sayest,
"
Return, ye children of the earth

(that is
to say, to dust).
In other words, both
halves of the verse, according to the rule of
"
the so-called
synonymous parallelism/'
make
the same statement,
precisely
both refer to Genesis

the fate of
man
from which he
is
is
iii,
19,
and
which says that
to return to the dust
taken.
This
is
the only
interpretation consistent with the general

sense of the passage, which is, after all, the
for the poet is only conimportant point
cerned with the contrast between the
;
Everlasting God and the transitory life of

man the creature of a day, who dies by an
early death owing to God's anger on account
of his sinfulness (V. 7
f.).
87

As concerns the passage
it
in St.
John
ix, 2,
has been urged that the supposition of

who considered that a man
the disciples,
might be born blind on account of

sins, is
only intelligible upon
tion that the person concerned
through a previous
his
own
the assump-
had passed
state of existence
which he had committed the sins
in
in question.
This conclusion can hardly be avoided, and

we must therefore assume that the full force
of these
words and their general implica-
tion were not realised
by the
disciples at the
moment when they put their question to

Jesus, or by the writer who puts it in their
mouths.
In any case, it may readily be

conceded that the Judaism of that age,
notwithstanding
its
exclusiveness,
had not
entirely escaped the
overwhelming influence
Greek intellectualism, and was therefore
by no means entirely ignorant of the theory
of
that souls existed before their incarnation

in bodies,
though
this
would not
of itself
justify the supposition that any universal

88
OTHER QUARTERS
IN
belief
in
For
existed.
metempsychosis
"
"
wisdom of Solomon
"
as saying
For
Solomon
represents King
I was a witty child and had a good spirit
yea, rather, being good, I came into a body
instance, the so-called
undefiled
"
early days
be
19 1).
viii,
(Ch.
During the
of Christianity similar ideas
found in
Rabbinical
may
literature.
The
Rabbis, for instance, occasionally state that

all
human
souls
which were to enter human
bodies up to the time of the Messiah had

In the
existed even before the Creation.
they had remained in a kind

of store-house, in the seventh heaven, or in
infinite past
the garden of Eden, from which they were
brought forth to become incarnate in the

they were to inhabit.
human bodies which

When God requires
a soul he gives
an
order to the angel in charge of this locality,

"
Bring me such and such

a soul, called So-and-So, and of such and
and says
to
him
such an appearance/'
ately goes forth
The angel immedi-
and brings the soul before

v
89

The
God.
itself
soul then
bows and prostrates
before the King of kings, but
is
un-
which
it
has
willing to leave the world in
hitherto lived for another.

to
'"
it
shall
be
The world
Then God says
into which I send thee
fairer for thee
than that in which
Then the soul

a mother and receives a
thou hast lived hitherto."

enters the
body
of
promise from the angel that conducts

that
it
shall enter Paradise
commandments.
if it
The Rabbis
it,
keeps God's
certainly
and
constantly insisted upon the fact that the

body in a state of purity,
soul enters the
but
fundamental con-
this assertion is in
to
tradiction
the continual reluctance
of
God to exchange the world

has lived for another. If this
the soul before

in
which
it
theory concerning the objection of the soul

an earlier state of existence to undergo a
in
change be carried a
little
further,
we
shall
reach the idea expressed in St. John ix, 2,

that actual sin can be committed in a previous state of existence.
90
Nor
is it,
perhaps,
IN
OTHER QUARTERS
no further instances can be
surprising that
adduced from contemporary Jewish

ture.
The
litera-
fact, however, remains, as
be seen at the
may
glance, that the theory

of a soul in an earlier state of existence is
first
very far removed from the theory of metempsychosis proper.
Equally impossible
by
inspired
this
to
it
is
regard
as
belief the familiar state-
ments that John the Baptist or Elias or

Jeremiah had returned to earth in the
person of Jesus (Matt, xvi,
as
Matthew xiv,
beyond
2,
Luke
14).
ix,
Such passages
7 1, demonstrate
cavil the fact that this opinion
was
merely the outcome of that belief in a

resurrection which all pious Jews held at
the beginning of the Christian era.
This
belief
has been placed in a
by the Jewish
it
historian
false perspective
Josephus,
who
as peculiar to the Pharisees, in
represented
a manner that might seem to show them as
this,
accepting a migration of the soul
:
however,
is
due to
his habit,
91
which almost

amounts
to
as
Jewish parties
He
thought.
of
mania,
representing
schools
of
the
philosophic
personally, at least, declares
his belief that the souls of the righteous,
after a sojourn in the holiest part of heaven,
return
may
certain
undefiled
in
lapse
time
of
bodies
after
War
(Jewish
III,
viii, 5).
Traces of the Greek doctrine of metempsychosis are also apparent in the works
of Philo, a writer representative of Greek
and an early contemporary of

He considers that a fall from God
Judaism,
Jesus.
is
the only reason
this earthly life,
of the soul
is
why
i.e.
the soul
is
to the body.
bound to
The ideal
to aspire to direct contempla-
tion of the Deity

only the wise and virtuous can attain this object during the earthly
life, and success is not complete until after
:
death,
when
the soul returns to
incorporeal state.
the
sins
of
sense
He who
is
cannot avoid
compelled
another body after death.

92
its original
to
enter
OTHER QUARTERS
IN
In
its
entirety,
the
belief
metem-
in
psychosis proper Mias not adopted before

the rise of the Jewish philosophy of the
so-called Cabbalists, a much later growth
"
doctrine of the
rolling onward of the
"
"
soul
Souls enter
expresses this belief.
:
its
the
bodies
for
worms,
of
"
wild
such
animals,
and
birds,
the text quoted to
is
support the assertion*' Jahwe (Jehovah)

"
is the God of the spirits of all flesh
(Num.
xxvii, 16),
and the man who has committed
but one sin shall be transformed into an

animal, whatever his good deeds. He who
gives a Jew unclean flesh to eat, his soul
shall enter a leaf, to
by the wind
thither
all
do fade as a
leaf,
be tossed hither and
for
and our
the wind, have taken us
He who
said
"
:
became
it
is
said
"
:
We
iniquities, like
"
away
(Isa. Ixiv, 6).
speaks evil, his soul shall enter a
like
stone,
it is
the soul of Nabal
for
it
is
His heart died within him and he

as a stone
"
(i
Sam. xxv,
37).
Thus
clear that in these cases a belief in

93

metempsychosis
extorted
is
of
from
extra-
Biblical
texts.
vagant interpretations
These pedantic hair-splitting methods of
exegesis are found to produce an even

brilliant result, in the
more
supposed discovery
must have passed into

Jethro, and the soul of Abel
that the soul of Cain
the body of
into the body of Moses, because Jethro gave
Moses his daughter to wife. A similar idea,

that a bond of sympathy between two men
pointed to their relationship in a former
life, was not alien even to such a writer as
Goethe, as
we
shall afterwards see.
IN ISLAM
The great religions of the world, Islam

and Christianity, have no official place for
the reception of metempsychosis
the doctrine made its way, for the most part, into
those sects which were especially open to
;
foreign influence.
Such,
among
the
Moham-
medans, were the sects of the so-called

Mutazilites, the Druses and the Nossairians.
94
IN
OTHER QUARTERS
Quite recently, an American, Samuel Ives

Curtiss, explored the Hermon and Lebanon
districts,
homes
the
Nossairians,
more
thoroughly
beliefs.
It
Druses
and
than
any
and extracts from
previous traveller,
diaries provide
the
of
some information upon
his
their
appears that, after the sacrifice
of the usual offerings, the soul of the
dead
man may go forth by an opening over the

house door and enter the body of a child
on the eve of birth only the soul of a good_
;
man
can enter a
human body
bad men enter animals.
the souls of^

These statements
:
are in almost literal agreement with the
account given of the Druses of the

in the twelfth century
Joseph of Tudela,
by
Hermon
the learned Rabbi
who made
a journey to
the east.
IN THE CHRISTIAN
WORLD
Within the Christian world the doctrine

of
metempsychosis was adopted during the
first
centuries
by
isolated
95
Gnostic
sects,

and
especially
in the fourth
by the
and
invariably denied
by
represented
Augustine,
so-called Manichaeans
centuries
fifth
by the
official
it
was
church, as
Tertullian, Irenaeus, Origen,
We
etc.
are reminded of the
passage quoted previously from the Upanishads, when Bishop Epiphanius, the famous
says of Mani, the
founder of the Manichaean sect, that he con-
opponent of
all heretics,
ceives the souls of
men and
Thence they reach

and sun are ships.
The moon
The smaller ship bears
other living
things to rise after death from the twelve
signs of the Zodiac in figures of light.
their vessel.
the burden for fifteen days, while the
moon
days the
growing
burden is transferred to the larger ship, the
sun. This great ship, the sun, carries them
is
full
to the aeon of
after
life
and
fifteen
to the place of the
This, however, is the destiny only

"
of the good, or
true/' i.e. real Manichaeans.
blessed.
As regards the
less
three classes of
men
good, Mani recognises

beside the
in general
:
96
IN
OTHER QUARTERS
true, there are the half-Manichaeans, the so-
"
called
hearkeners," on the one side, and,
We
on the other, the non-Manichaeans.
learn from the polemical writings of Augustine the two-fold fate
two
"
classes
which awaits these
after death
the souls of the
hearkeners," in the most fortunate cases,
re-enter the body of a man, who becomes

"
one of the
true/* or they enter trees and
plants, the fruit of
"
true
"
which
is
eaten by the
melons and cucumbers are
es-
pecially mentioned as thus eaten, and in

this
way
the soul reaches purification.
souls of the non-Manichaeans,
demned
if
everlastingly, enter lowly
The
not con-
and
fruit-
less plants, which the Manichaeans believed

to derive their nourishment from the earth
and not from the sunshine and
free air, or
Some
they enter the bodies of animals.
that
belief
aroused
the
be
by
surprise may
reincarnation in an animal was regarded as
inferior
to
that in a fruit-bearing plant.
Such indeed was the opinion, strange as

H
97
it

of the Manichaeans, who regarded
the animal world as inferior in the scale of
may seem,
creation to the vegetable world.
In
Middle Ages
the
the
traditions
of
Manichsean gnosticism were continued by

the numerous sects known collectively as
The
Cathari.
vide
much
acts of the Inquisition pro-
interesting matter
from which
we may
gain a knowledge of their theory of

metempsychosis, these documents have been
:
admirably
by the famous
Ignaz von Dollinger
co-ordinated
ecclesiastical historian
in
his
"
Contributions to the History of

The Cathari be-
Mediaeval Sectarianism/'
lieved that the soul
was forced
from body to body,

incarnate in a
until
member
it
to migrate
became
re-
of the sect, that it
might then be absolved of all guilt by the

sacrament of the laying-on of hands, and
be
received
/ " When
into
Paradise
after
souls/' they taught, "leave
death.
men's
bodies after death they are so tortured by

N the demons of the air that they yearn to
98
IN
OTHER QUARTERS
Hence
protection in some body.
these souls will enter even the bodies of
find
animals, and
period
of
many
their
sojourn
They could even

were horses, they
place
could well remember the

a horse -hide.
in
how, when they

shoe at this or that
relate
lost a
made
curious believers then
search
and actually found a
at the place indicated
This story often recurs

It is a
rusty horse-shoe.
in the statements of the Cathari."
striking instance of the

"
in matters of faith.
power
of suggestion
Many
believed that
they had passed through hundreds of bodies.

Paul was said to have passed through
thirteen
through
before
bodies,
according
thirty-two,
he
attained
Connected with the

is
to
according
the grace
belief in
some,
to
of
and
others,
God/'
metempsychosis
the prohibition against killing and eating
animals, which was no less binding upon

the Cathari than upon the Manichaeans and
Indians.
This belief affected mediaeval scholasti99

cism and did not, indeed, lose its influence
until modern times
it is apparent beneath the vigorous lines of the philosopher
:
of the Renaissance,
Giordano Bruno (1548-
1600).
"
Go
then, fool,
and tremble beneath the sword of
Death.
Tremble and quake
at
the talk of fools
quivering anguish
List to the foolish prate of the crowd, as
wert nothing,
if
in
thou
Nothing, in sooth, but the dust of the earth and

a clod from the fallow.
Is not thy body for ever transformed, and flows it
not ever
Into the river of time? And in ceaseless alter-
nation
Doth
it
not cast off the old for the new, ever
losing and gaining ?

Art so mad as to think that thy poor corporeal
substance,
Whether
in whole or in part, for ever shall be as

has been ?
Art so mad as to dream that the bones and the
it
flesh of thy
Still shall
boyhood
now ? that thou comest

manhood ?
abide with thee
unchanged
to thy
how thy limbs, renewed in the

process of change,
Seest thou not
100
IN
Take
OTHER QUARTERS
to themselves
new form
Yet ever one
nature persisting
Ruling within thy heart
Thou
thyself,
that
is forming for ever a being,

one and the same abidest
unchanging.
Thus springs
life
into light
and bodies
rise to
perfection
of the hidden seed thy being expands
;
Out
and
increases,
What
time the spirit-builder collects and gathers
the atoms,
Welds them
Up
to form,
and breathes
in
spirit,
guides the creation

to time when the fetters that bind the
and
life
are
broken,
And back
to the seed flies the spirit, but thence

he again re-enters
The world eternal and ageless. And this is
death to mortals,
Since in their folly they know not the light to
'
'
which we hasten."
In the seventeenth century a different

picture comes before us in the person of the
philosopher or theosophist Franciscus Mer-
van Helmont (1618-1699), who attempted to revive the doctrine of metem-
curius
psychosis in
its
crudest
form.
His
is

picture which borders
upon
caricature,
and
not likely to be regarded seriously by any

one who learns the complacency with which
is
he
upon discovering the
himself
prided
of life and the philosopher's stone.

was he who devoted his acumen to prov-
elixir
It
published work that Hebrew

was the natural language of mankind, and
ing in his
first
would naturally
rise
to the lips of every
human
being, even of the deaf
were
not for the disturbing influence of

In 1662 he was called
society
it
human
and dumb,
Rome
before the Inquisition at
to answer
for his heretical belief in
metempsychosis,
but he did not attain the honour of martyr-
dom.
Only passing mention need be made of
Emanuel Swedenborg, the famous founder
of
the
"
New
Church
"
of
the
Heavenly
He cannot be
Jerusalem
(1688-1772).
considered as a supporter of metempsychosis
in the full sense of the term. But he evolved
one idea, which
is,
for instance, the basis of

102
OTHER QUARTERS
IN
the whole of the Indian system of belief, and

carried
it
to its logical consequences with
greater consistency than
any other thinker

this was the idea that a man becomes after
death what he is and what he does in his
:
Thus, for instance, he says

earthly life.
"
All spirits in the hells appear in the form
:
own
evil
effigy of his
own
of their
and
for
evil,
everyone there is an
because the interiors
exteriors act in unity,
and the
interiors
are visibly exhibited in the exteriors, which
are the face, the body, the speech,
is
and the
On
the same line of thought

his statement elsewhere, that those who
gestures," etc.
possess bestial natures,
who
are, for instance,
sly as foxes, afterwards appear in the actual
form of these animals.

period of German
metempsychosis attracted such
During the
literature
classical
attention that that period
may
almost be
styled the flourishing epoch of the doctrine.

Reference has been already made to Goethe,
who was
inclined
to
103
explain
a bond of

sympathy between men
due to some
as
relationship in a former state of existence.

"
Ah,
in the
depths of time gone by
Thou wast my
sister or
my
wife,"
he says to Frau von Stein, and he writes to

"
Wieland (probably in April, 1776),
I cannot explain the significance to me of this
woman or her influence over me, except by
.
Yes, we
theory of metempsychosis.
were once man and wife. Now our know-
the
ledge of ourselves
spirit world.
is
veiled,
and
lies
in the
can find no name for us
the
"
In a letter to
past, the future, the All
Frau von Stein under date July 2, 1781, we
"
also read
How well it is that men should
!
die, if only to erase their impressions and

"
return clean washed.
These ideas seem to have been in the

at that time,
minds.
himself
Lichtenberg (1742-1799) says of

"I cannot avoid the idea that I
died before I was born
isms
"
air
and continually occupied men's
also
"
;
we meet with
104
in his
"
Aphor-
the transmigra-
OTHER QUARTERS
IN
tion
of
In
souls.
Schlosser,
Johann
Georg
brother-in-law, wrote
1783
Goethe's
two dialogues upon the same subject. In

the same year appeared the posthumous
dissertation
David
of
the
Hume upon
the Soul," in
psychosis
is
English
philosopher
"
The Immortality of
which he declares that metemthe only theory of the kind
seriously deserving the attention of philo-
sophy. But the most important work upon

the subject belongs to the year 1780, when
a writer than Lessing came forward
to defend the theory.
Some two years
his
previously (in
posthumous observations
no
less
upon Gampe's philosophical dialogues) he

had indicated his opinion in the words
:
"
Is it after all so certain that
my
soul has
only once inhabited the form of man ? Is

it after all so unreasonable to suppose that
my
upon its journey to

should have been forced to wear
veil
tion
soul,
more than once

of
the soul
perfection,
this fleshly
Possibly this migrathrough several human

?
105

was based on a new system
bodies
thought.
merely
of
Possibly this new system was

the oldest of all.
."
Lessing
.
refers to the theory of
metempsychosis as
hypothesis/' and
"
nothing more than a

"
even at times as a
freak of imagination."
"
But in 95 of his work, the Education of
the
Human
he
Race,"
"
says
this
Is
hypothesis ridiculous merely because it is

the oldest, because the human intellect
adopted it without demur, before men's

minds had been distracted and weakened
by the sophistry
of the schools
"
"
On
contrary," says Lessing, in a fragment,
and
"
the
the
opinion in matters of
speculation is invariably the most probable,
because it was immediately accepted by the
first
earliest
sound understanding of mankind." Hence

attempts have been made to use the docmetempsychosis as a key to explain
the whole of Lessing's treatise. This, howtrine of
ever,
is
doctrine
a mistake
upon a
he merely uses the
special occasion as a
06
1
means
OTHER QUARTERS
IN
God
against the
argument that His scheme for the education
to justify the action of
of the
human
race excludes a
individuals from His blessings.
not so," says Lessing

"
number
"
This
of
is
on the contrary,
by which the race is to arrive at

perfection must be trodden by every individual man (early and late). But can he be
the path
supposed to have traversed this path in one

and the same life ? Can a man be both a
sensual
Jew and a
and the same
spiritual Christian in
one
Can he surpass both of

these in one and the same life ? Surely not
life ?
why should not every individual have

"
lived more than one life in this world ?
but
Then, in high enthusiasm, Lessing

pours forth the eloquent passage which forms
"
the famous conclusion of his
Education of
93> 94)
the
Human
ment
'
"
Why
as
it
"
Race," his
religious Testahas been called (
96-100).
should
not at one time have taken
toward perfection which can

bring but temporal rewards and punishthose steps
107

ments to men
Why,
again, should I not
have made at another time that progress to

which our vision of eternal reward is so
great a help ? Why should I not return as
often as I am capable of acquiring fresh
Do I
knowledge and further power ?
much
achieve so
make
it
Never
sojourn
not worth
Or,
is it
me
of
that
The
I forget.
my former state
my present condition
And have
what I must forget

Or is it that I should
Is
my
former
to turn
being ?
time ? Lose time
haste
me
while to return
I forget
would
but poor account.

for ever
my
that
Well for
recollection
enable
one sojourning as to
in
forgotten
for the time

lose so
What need have
not the whole of
to
much
I for
eternity mine
"
?
The whole of eternity belongs to the

individual, and he may use it to rise upon
the long ascent of self -development.
is
the idea of Lessing, which
philosophically
expressed
belonging to the year 1777,

1
08
is
in
"
Such
found more
a
that
fragment
man may
IN
OTHER QUARTERS
have more than
The
five senses/'
essential
the
points of the fragment are as follows
is a simple form of existence, capable
:
soul
of an infinite
it is
number
But
of impressions.
also a finite being.
Hence these
infinite
impressions are only experienced gradually

in an infinite course of time.
The order
and proportion
in
which these impressions
are slowly acquired are due to the senses.
But the
are
which we at present use

Nature never proprimordial.
five senses
not
by leaps and bounds therefore the

must have passed through all the
gresses
soul
now
finds
therefore probable that
man
stages inferior to that on which

itself.
It is
it
passed through a former life with fewer

senses, and that he has traversed stages of
existence
of senses.
marked by varying combinations

This idea is combined with the
further idea that every particle of matter
can be useful to the soul in the development

of a sense, and Lessing is thus led to assume
that additional senses must be possible
109
as,

for instance, the sense of sight responds to
light, so special senses
will
respond
stimulus,
and
to
could and certainly
electrical
will
and magnetic
inform us directly whether
bodies are electrified or magnetised, which

information can now be gained only by
means
of special research.
the most marvellous
A new
phenomena
world of
then
will
be open to us, of which we can now conceive

no more than early opticians knew of light
and
colour.
As Lessing tells us, his theory of metempsychosis was based upon the ideas of
Charles Bonnet, a physicist of Geneva, who
wrote a treatise in French in 1769 upon
philosophical palingenesis (rebirth), giving
many so-called proofs to show how from
the original matter of the brain
all
created
beings were transformed from corporeal to

ethereal natures.
have
fallen
upon
Bonnet 's ideas seem to

fruitful soil elsewhere.
In
1770 Lavater translated his treatise into
German with
annotations,
no
and
his
social
IN
OTHER QUARTERS
how
environment also shows
the belief in
soul-transmigration haunted the minds of

that age.
But not always were the best
minds attracted, and as the doctrine gained

adherents it lost seriousness, for which reason
it
probably became once more unfashionable
and
discredited.
Light
is
thrown upon
downward course by manuscript

the diary of a
woman
of Zurich,
this
entries in
who may
be quoted as an eye-witness of that interest-
She says
ing period.
"
:
The
friends
of
Lavater at Copenhagen believe in a transmigration of the soul.

several
of
Jesus'
earth,
without
former
lives
They
apostles
any
believe that
live
recollection
as apostles.
again
of
on
their
Prince Karl of
Hesse was the apostle Peter, and the Danish

minister of state, Andreas of Bernsdorf, was
Thomas.
Lavater was once King Josiah of

then
he became Joseph of Arimathea,
Judah;
and then the reformer Ulrich Zwingli. The
John is still alive, as Jesus foreknows who he is, and can remember
in
apostle
told,

his life with Jesus.
He
much about
travels
the world, and can assume different forms

in order to avoid recognition.
mason, and
first visited
He
is
a free-
Prince Karl of Hesse
to ask his help as a brother mason.
Prince
Karl gave him some help and then dismissed him without paying any attention
to
him
or
realising
Shortly
talking.
with
whom
afterwards
he was
the
Prince
received a letter from another mason, re-
proaching him for his neglect of this important traveller, and telling him that the man
was
St.
John
John,
who would
did, in fact,
known
to Peter,
him again.
return and made himself
visit
whose attention was now
."
Such is the account given
the
of
Zurich.
The fact that this
by
lady
royal Peter failed to understand the real
aroused.
character of his saintly mendicant brother

was due to the strange illusions of suggestion:
from
this point of
view the story
will
appear
be correctly placed in the book from
"
which I have quoted it (Otto Stoll,
Sug-
to
112
IN
gestion
OTHER QUARTERS
and
in
Hypnotism
Racial
Pys-
chology ").
Thinkers of great self-restraint called for
the abandonment of these theories. Herder's
three dialogues upon the transmigration of
the soul (dated 1791) are marked by greater
"
naturalness of feeling.
To purify the
heart and to ennoble the soul and

instincts
and
seems to
desires, this
true palingenesis of the present
all its
me
life,
the
after
which there certainly awaits us a higher

and brighter metempsychosis, but one of
which we know nothing/'
We
shall not
traces of this
from
the
attempt to follow isolated

belief which mark divergencies
general
course
of
intellectual
progress during the nineteenth century and
have been
thinkers,
by solitary and original

whose names are partly unknown.
left
When
the theory of metempsychosis has

appeared in modern times it has usually
come from
companion
i
foreign sources, as the inseparable

of the Indian,
113
and
especially of

the Buddhist ideas which the
West has been
only too ready to receive. A conspicuous

instance of the fact is to be found in Schopen-
His references to metempsychosis

are certainly favourable
he praises it as a
hauer.
most
admirable
statement
of theory
"
in
mythical form and declares

a myth, and never will a myth be more
:
Never has
closely connected with philosophical truth,
which
is difficult
doctrine
to grasp, than this primaeval
by a most noble and

And again " The myth of
professed
ancient race/'
the transmigration of souls has this great

advantage, that it contains no elements
except those which lie before our eyes in

the sphere of actuality, so that it is able in
consequence to provide ocular proof of its

"
a statement which should at
conceptions
least
tion.
be qualified with a note of interrogaSchopenhauer has even been included
by some
critics
among
ents of this belief.
the passage in his
the professed adher-
Consider, for instance,

"
Parerga and Paralipo114
OTHER QUARTERS
IN
mena
"
"
Constantly as the pieces played

and the masks worn upon the stage of the
world
change, yet the players remain
may
the same throughout.
We
and talk and grow excited

voices ring clearer
sit in
company
eyes light up and

but so did others sit a
:
thousand years ago

they and the scene
were the same, and so shall it be a thousand
:
The mechanism which preyears hence.

vents our realisation of this fact is time."
To
assert
that the players
are
identical
might seem tantamount to admitting the
But in
Schopenhauer makes a
theory of metempsychosis.
passage
distinction
this
between metempsychosis,
transference
of
the
so-called
totality to another body/'
soul
very
definite
"
in
the
its
and the theory
which he supports, palingenesis or rebirth,

"
the decomposition and reconstruction of a
personality, in
which process the
will alone
persists, assumes the form of a new organism,

and receives a new intellect/'
In this
sense
must be interpreted another famous

us

passage in his work ("The World as Will
and Imagination ") where he speaks of the
mysterious connection between the death

of an existing individual and the birth of a
new
personality, as
shown by the
fact
(?)
that the more individuals die, the more are

"
born.
Every new-born being enters its
new existence joyously and enjoys it as a
gift
but there
question.
His
and death
of
and can be no
is
new
gift in
the age
bought by
an organism that has lived
life is
its
span, but contains the indestructible germ

from which new life springs. The old and
the
new
To show
are one being.
the link
connecting them would be to solve a very

difficult
for
problem/'
How
it
was
problem by a
metempsychosis must be
Schopenhauer to solve
direct appeal to
impossible
this
to everyone who has grasped his

fundamental principle that Nature is careful
plain
of the type
and not
of the individual,
that her chief endeavour

of the species.
116
is
and
the maintenance
IN
On
OTHER QUARTERS
metemmodern
the other hand, the theory of
psychosis proper
Ibsen's
"
Caesar
be found in
may
dramatic literature.
case
and Galilean/
in
in
point
is
which the
mysterious Mephistopheles figure of Maxi"

One
mus says to the Emperor Julian
there is who ever returns to the life of the
:
human race within a certain space of time.

He is like a rider attempting to break a wild
horse in the riding school. Time after time
the horse throws him. But a while and he
in the saddle again, a little more firmly
and yet
seated and with more experience
fall he must in his various forms even to this
is
day.
He was doomed
to fall as the
man
divinely wrought in the Garden of Eden

fall as the founder of a
:
he was doomed to
world-wide empire, or as the prince of the

kingdom of God. Who knows how many
times he has been
us unrecognised ?
Knowest thou, Julian, that thou wast not in
"
him whom now thou persecutest ? (i.e. the
among
"Galilean," Christ).
Julian himself, in the

117

part of the play, gives utterance to a
"
similar thought.
In each of the changing
first
Adam
generations was one soul, in which

rose again in purity
he was mighty in
he had strength to
Moses the lawgiver

subdue the world in Alexander of Macedon
:
"
he was almost perfect (Julian, the

apostate," is speaking) in Jesus of Nazareth/'
118
CHAPTER
VI
CONCLUSION
concluding this brief review of the
under which the doctrine of
INsystems
metempsychosis has been formulated in the

course of history,
we may venture
to quote
a passage which will carry us back several

centuries
sion
for
probably its noblest exprestime

it is taken from the
it is
all
famous Persian mystic Djelal-eddin-Rumi

(1207-1273), and may be rendered as
follows
"
A stone
A plant
I
*
cp.
I
I
died and rose again a plant,

died and rose an animal
;
died an animal and was born a man.*
Herder's "Thought of the Origin and Growth of
a Child's Life."
"
in thy mother's womb thou tookest thy

twain, and all unconscious of thyself,
Plant-like, wast hanging on another's heart,
When
life
From
Didst grow to animal and a child of man,

So say they earnest to the light of day."
From
119
the poem,
"The Ego."

Why
should
What have
by death ?
world of men
That I may wear an angel's wings in heaven
Yet e'en as angel may I not abide,
For nought abideth save the face of God.
Thus o'er the angels' world I wing my way
Onwards and upwards, unto boundless heights
Then let me be as nought, for in my breast
Rings as a harp-song, that we must return
I
fear
As man, death sweeps me from
lost
this
To Him."
In such words as these
we can catch
the
expression of that instinct which leads
all
men, whether they live under an Eastern or

Western sky, directly to the conclusion that
they are not
are growing
"
"
complete
and
aspiring,
we
feel
that
and that one
we
life
not enough to enable us to reach that

perfection whither we are urged by the in-
is
most depths
of our being.
Or do we not
that our progress within this one life

must force us to cry in the fine words of
feel
Riickert
"
Oh
for a longer life
and
How
Thou knowest
thy faults
failings,
they forbid thee yet to
the angels
"
120
make
thy
home
with
CONCLUSION
The
fulfilment of this desire
is
shattered by
the stern fact of death, and then the doctrine

of
to
metempsychosis in
its
noblest form comes
compensate the ever-present conscious-
human inadequacy. It is essentially

the same instinct which found expression in
ness of
Roman
Catholicism in the conception of a
purgatorial
are
tory
fire.
Metempsychosis and purga-
simply more
or
less
anthropo-
morphic methods of expressing the same

But as that instinct is true for
instinct.
man, so do these
undoubtedly contain a germ of truth, and on this germ they

beliefs
upon the fragmentary

The
truth which they hide within them.
moral and educational importance of the
live, as all beliefs live
belief
in
metempsychosis
lies
in
the fact
a manifestation of that instinct and
that
it is
also
an evidence of the
belief that all
human
action will be inevitably rewarded or punished, a belief especially native to Indian

soil,
and
this is
an importance which must
not be under-estimated.
121
In so far as the

theory
is
personal
based upon the supposition that a

divine
power
and disand that the
exists
penses this retributive justice,
must climb a long steep path
soul
proach
preserve
ever,
is
this
power,
its religious
not
all
does
to ap-
metempsychosis
character.
the theory
is
This,
how-
also the ex-
pression of another idea,
which gives
philosophical character.
It is the earliest
intellectual
it
attempt of man, when consider-
ing the world and his position in it, to conceive that world, not as alien to him, but as
akin to him, and to incorporate himself and
an indispensable and eternal

element in the past and future of the world
his
with
life
as
which
totality.
forms one comprehensive

an
eternal element, because,
say
it
regarded philosophically, the belief in metempsychosis seems a kind of unconscious anticipation of the principle now known as the
"
conservation of energy/'
Nothing that
has ever existed can be lost either in life *
*
The publisher has called my attention to the following
verse of Christian Wagner (born 1835), in which he ex-
122
CONCLUSION
or
All
by death.
souls
is
but change, and hence
do not perish, but return again and
again in ever- changing forms.
Moreover,
of
metempsychosis, esdevelopments
pecially as conceived by Lessing, can without difficulty be harmonised with the
later
modern idea
of evolution
from higher to
lower forms.
But
at this point
of a statement of
on
we
see the truth, as soon
plumbed a
as the depths are
Goethe
little
deeper,
Eckermann,
(to
"
September, 1829)
nature of the soul and
Immortality, the
its connection with
the body, are eternal problems concerning

which philosophers can give us no help."
Historically, as
we have clearly seen through-
out our examination of this subject, the

presses the thought of a
of life."
"
"
metempsychosis during the course
Yea, thy fragrant breath
May
who knows?
lend fragrance to the rose
All the love that
it
expressed
be rosebuds at thy breast ;

Breaths of distant childhood yet
May
Greet thee in the violet."
123

belief in
metempsychosis is profoundly
rooted in the superstitious theory of the
"
"
animism
mainworld, the so-called
by primitive man, whose childlike

simplicity led him to regard every being in
tained
environment as made in his own image,

of which again his idea was no less simple,
his
as in short
like his
endowed with
own.
souls (" animse ")
Are our views to remain upon
the level of the beliefs of primitive man ?

Surely we should not run the risk of also
losing ourselves in the contemplation of the
objective world, but should rather consider

that the time is at hand to think of the
manhood within us and

element from
level of
all
to differentiate this
external beings below the
But
humanity.
at the
same time
we do not thus strengthen the claim of our

own souls to a past of their own indeed,
:
a modern thinker cannot evade the strong
impression made by scientific instruction in

the facts of heredity.
Assuming that my
soul has entered
my
present body, after a
124
CONCLUSION
greater or less interval of time, from a former
body
in
which
once lived,
how am
I to
explain the strong likeness which unquestionably connects me with my parents and
my
It
family ?
cludes spirit and
a similarity which
mind as well as body.
is
in-
We
have indeed had occasion to point out that

this very fact of family likeness was a partial
stimulus to the belief in metempsy-
attempts were made to

resemblances
explain family
by assuming
that the soul of a dead ancestor had become
chosis, in so far as
reincarnate (see above, p. 26). But how can

the likeness of a child to its living parents
be explained
been given:
oxygen
their
The
"As
following answer has
surely as the particles of
will leave particles of other gases for
own
kind, so will the karma-laden soul
(i.e. the soul burdened with the consequences

of its former actions) seek the mode of in-
carnation with which
it
is
brought into
connection by a mysterious power of attracIn this phrase, from the works of

tion/'
125

the .well-known
element
suspicious
"
Sinnett,
theosophist
to
me
is
where
the
the
word
we
mysterious/'
Just
require
enlightenment mystery seems to prevail,
enough to show that metempsychosis can never be more than a hypo-
and
this fact is
thesis at best.
It is a hypothesis utterly
incapable of explaining such facts as the

increase of degeneracy in families of drunk-
ards
the children bear the heavy burden
that parents and grandparents have raised,

each member adding his own contribution
to the whole.
tragical struggle
Many have
witnessed the
waged by the children
of
such parents, striving with all their might

and shrinking from no laudable endeavour
and perweight. The
to shake off the crushing burden,

falling at last
haps
fact
that
is
though
may
it is
foreign to us.
refuse to admit its
ourselves,
mask
beneath
of
its
we can never break with a
but
unconsciously,
what we
past,
Consciously we
connection with
under
the
desire to be, there will

126
CONCLUSION
always be a hint of what we have acquired
from others, and perhaps from our nearest
and
dearest.
"
Each word that we may speak, and in

Each feature is another's, yet is ours,
Our very own, yet lent us but for use.
the face
Thus, ever changing, alternating, creeps

The holder of another's goods through life."
"
Herder, The Ego."
Passing reference has been made to the fact

that the doctrine of metempsychosis is inconsistent with the constant increase of the
world's
population.
ever-increasing souls
must not be
ever,
which
is
Whence come these

Undue stress, how-
laid
upon
this
argument,
admittedly anthropomorphic and
inadequate as a means of criticism.

When the idea of strict moral retribution
becomes dominant
in the theory of
metem-
psychosis, the moral importance of the doctrine
is
materially limited
by the
fact that
the individual soul in process of migration

through several bodies preserves no recollection of former existences or of actions per127

formed during them. Buddha, Pythagoras,
and others are certainly said to have been
able to view the whole series of their former
lives.
lous
These, however, are purely miracu-
occurrence
that
and whatever view
cases,
of
their
may be
adopted, the fact remains

mortals
do not enjoy the
ordinary
But
advantages of this special capacity.
not
the
man
within
discover
may
ordinary
himself some
in
dim
traces of this
memory
of
Many have found themselves

circumstances which they seemed to
past lives
know by
past experience, though unable to

state that they had ever encountered a
"
similar situation in their present lives.
I
came to places and found myself in circumstances where I could have sworn that
had
saw people with whom I

and upon whose old
thought
"
acquaintanceship I was ready to rely
already been.
I
had
lived
these words Herder places in the

his
Theages in his
first
of
dialogue upon the
transmigration of the soul.

128
mouth
But when
his
CONCLUSION
interlocutor Charicles can suggest no other
"
reexplanation of these experiences than
collection of a former state of existence/' the
further assertions of Theages
may
serve as a
warning against such premature conclusions.

His words may therefore be quoted at length,
as his argument has not now lost its value,
notwithstanding the somewhat exalted style
in
which
it
is
propounded and which was
characteristic of the spirit of that age.

"
Have you never obTheages says

served in your own case how the soul is ever
How, especially in
busy within itself ?
:
childhood and youth,

ordinates
stories,
ideas,
it
builds
makes
plans, co-
imagines
bridges,
and dreamily repeats
all
these im-
aginings decked with the magical colouring

of
dreams
Watch
that
child
quietly
playing and talking to himself. As he talks

he is in a dream of living pictures. Some
day these pictures and thoughts will come

back to him, at a time when he does not
expect them and cannot
K
129
tell
whence they

come.
the
will
They
scenic
come before him with
decoration
in
which he
all
first
conceived them, or in which some dream

of his youth first created them.
tion will
The
situa-
become an agreeable delusion
to
mind, as every act of recollection which

easy and fruitful in idea is delusive he
his
is
an inspiration from another

world, because it comes in that character,
namely, without trouble and with a wealth
will regard it as
of imagery.
One
immediately
before
recall this past
to
his
heart
single feature in the scene
him may
suffice
to
one single chord vibrating
will
arouse
the
slumbering
melodies of past times. These are moments
of sweetest exaltation, especially amid wild
and beautiful scenery, or in pleasant converse with those
whom we
unexpectedly
regard as friends of an older time, because
we are sweetly deceived in them, or they
recollections of paradise, not of a
in us
:
human
already lived, but of the paradise of youth, of childhood and its happy
life
130
CONCLUSION
dreams which came to us sleeping or waking,
and are, in very truth, real paradise. Thus
a truth, not so marvellous,
however, as you supposed, but very natural/'
is
palingenesis
we wish
an instance, one comes

to us almost unsought, in Holderlin's words
If
to test
to Diotima, which were written about the
same
time.
" Diotima
Noble being
Mine by
kinship's holy tie,

Sister, ere my hand I gave thee,
Long I knew thee lovingly."
We
are reminded of Goethe's words con-
cerning his former relationship with Frau

von Stein (see above p. 104). ButHolderlin
does
not,
like
Goethe,
acquaintanceship
or
relationship
earlier state of existence.
him
to refer to the
directly
It is
dreams of
assume
in
enough
his childhood
within the limits of this present

therefore continues as follows
life,
and he
"
Then
an
for
was, in wandering day-dreams,

Heedless of the cheerful day,
it
That beneath the spreading branches

I, in happy boyhood, lay,

Then
the May-time of my soul

Slow unfolded sweet delight,
And
I felt thy heavenly breath

O'er me, as the Zephyr light."
Assuming, then, that experience of this kind

can merely revive and intensify certain dim
and
recollections of early life in this world
that
we cannot
what
existence,
this life is
we have
does
it
recall
any
earlier state of
the use of believing that

an expiation for the guilt which
is
incurred in former
lives, or
what
matter in what form we are born
again, if no memory can connect this present

mode of existence with any that may be
to come ?
The solution of this great problem of
existence which metempsychosis professes

to offer thus leaves, in general,
culties
unanswered
therefore,
many
if
diffi-
the theory
be examined from the religious point of view,

it is more than ever difficult to recognise it
as the
means
uplifting the
specially chosen
human soul
we can
in these matters
132
by God
to Himself.
for
But
only conclude by
CONCLUSION
humbly admitting, with Herder's Charicles
(at the end of the dialogues upon metempsy"
we will not venture to make
chosis), that
the secret ways of Providence into a hypothesis serving as a track or high-road, upon
which mankind would either be
lost in fear or
the idle and insolent would secure a footing/'

Yet, though we are enclosed within the
limits of our short earthly
the infinite,
in
life,
we
aspire to
because an eternal flame
our hearts.
In letters of
is
fire
burning
seems to proclaim that we must in some
it
beyond the limits of ourselves.

Metempsychosis is an ancient and a serious,
way
if
rise
a feeble attempt to decipher the meaning
of this fiery message.
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Transmigration of Souls

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UC-NRLF

HARPER'S LIBRARY of LIVING THOUGHT

THE UNIVERSITY OF BASLE

HEADMASTER OF PLYMOUTH COLLEGE

LONDON AND NEW YORK

HARPER & BROTHERS

IDEAS ANTECEDENT TO THE BELIEF IN

THE BELIEF THAT THE SOUL CAN BE

THE BELIEF THAT ORGANISMS OTHER THAN

OTHER MATERIAL OBJECTS

TRANSMIGRATION FROM MAN TO MAN

TRANSMIGRATION FROM MEN TO ANIMALS

TRANSMIGRATION FROM MEN TO PLANTS

TRANSMIGRATION FROM MAN TO INANIMATE OBJECTS

METEMPSYCHOSIS PROPERLY SO CALLED

METEMPSYCHOSIS AMONG THE CELTS

THE GREEK DOCTRINE OF METEMPSYCHOSIS

IDEAS ANTECEDENT TO THE BELIEF

presuppositions are necessarily antecedent to any belief in the transmigration of

non- human organisms

belief that the souls

of lower organisms can be transferred

from one organism to another.

THE BELIEF THAT THE SOUL CAN BE

consider the belief that

soul which can be separated

his body, or, to express the idea

metaphor, that the connection of the soul

which he stays and

usually deduced from the

popular conclusion that a

after a certain lapse of

THE TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS

we may observe, so to speak,

his attention, like that of a child,

by the normal and

stant regular recurrence, but

normal, which struck him as strange and

which even now he

has not entirely ceased to regard as unusual,

when we ask what

infer the existence of the soul.

the chief fact that distinguishes

the cessation of respiration.

the body, which existed within it during

SOUL SEPARATED FROM BODY

Indians, Siamese, Chinese,

and others make

a hole in the roof of the house or hut in

apparently with the

object of offering free passage to the mysteri"

a name, in describing the death of

then faded in the

This breath or spirit-soul (in the most

means simply breath) thus withdraws

man, whose psychological

not equal to ours, sees a dream

hunting with him as in days gone by

THE TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS