Belief in Metempsychosis ultimately prevailed all over India, and it is fully accepted by Hinduism in our own day. Brahmans now teach that the destiny of the soul depends on the mental attitude of the dying person: if his thoughts are centred on Brahma he enters the state of everlasting bliss, being absorbed in the World Soul; if, however, he should happen to think of a favourite animal or a human friend, the soul will be reborn as a cow, a horse, or a dog, or it may enter the body of a newly-born child and be destined to endure once again the ills that flesh is heir to.
In Egypt, according to Herodotus, the adherents of the Transmigration theory believed that the soul passed through many states of existence, until after a period of about three thousand years it once again reanimated the mummy. The Greeks similarly taught that “the soul continues its journey, alternating between a separate, unrestrained existence and fresh reincarnation, round the wide circle of necessity, as the companion of many bodies of men and animals”.[163] According to Cæsar, the Gauls professed the doctrine of Metempsychosis quite freely.[164]
Both in India and in Egypt the ancient doctrine of Metempsychosis was coloured by the theologies of the various cults which had accepted it. It has survived, however, in primitive form in the folk tales. Apparently the early exponents of the doctrine took no account of beginning or end; they simply recognized “the wide circle of necessity” round which the soul wandered, just as the worshippers of primitive nature gods and goddesses recognized the eternity of matter by symbolizing earth, air, and heaven as deities long ere they had conceived of a single act of creation.
FOOTNOTES:
[146] Dr. E. Röer's translation (Calcutta).
[147] Deussen's Philosophy of the Upanishads, p. 39.
[148] Muir's Original Sanskrit Texts, vol. i, pp. 29-30.
[149] See Egyptian Myth and Legend.
[150] Muir's Original Sanskrit Texts, vol. i, p. 46.
[151] Abridged from Muir's Original Sanskrit Texts, pp. 43, 44, and Wilson's Manu, p. 50.