Rabbins distinguish two kinds of metempsychosis; namely, "Gilgul," which is a series of single transmigrations, each lasting till death; and "Ibbur," which is where one soul occupies several bodies, changing its residence at pleasure, or where several souls occupy one body.7 The latter kind is illustrated by examples of demoniacal possession in the New Testament. The demons were supposed to be the souls of deceased wicked men. Sometimes they are represented as solitary and flitting from one victim to another; sometimes they swarm together in the same person, as seven were at once cast out of Mary Magdalene.
More frequently, however, the range of the soul's travels in its repeated births has been so extended as to include all animal bodies, beasts, birds, fishes, reptiles, insects. In this extent the doctrine was held by the Pythagoreans and Platonists, and in fact by a majority of its believers. Shakspeare's wit is not without historical warrant when he makes the clown say to Malvolio, "Thou shalt fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam." Many the Manichaans, for instance taught that human souls transmigrated not only through the lowest animal bodies but even through all forms of vegetable life. Souls inhabit ears of corn, figs, shrubs. "Whoso plucks the fruit or the leaves from trees, or pulls up plants or herbs, is guilty of homicide," say they; "for in each case he expels a soul from its body." 8 And some have even gone so far as to believe that the soul, by a course of ignorance, cruelty, and uncleanness pursued through many lives, will at length arrive at an inanimate body, and be doomed to exist for unutterable ages as a stone or as a particle of dust. The adherents of this hypothesis regard the whole world as a deposition of materialized souls. At every step they tread on hosts of degraded souls, destined yet, though now by sin sunk thus low, to find their way back as redeemed and blessed spirits to the bosom of the Godhead.
Upon the whole, the metempsychosis may be understood, as to its inmost meaning and its final issue, to be either a Development, a Revolution, or a Retribution, a Divine system of development eternally leading creatures in a graduated ascension from the base towards the apex of the creation, a perpetual cycle in the order of nature fixedly recurring by the necessities of a physical fate unalterable, unavoidable, eternal, a scheme of punishment and reward exactly fitted to the exigencies of every case, presided over by a moral Nemesis, and issuing at last in the emancipation of every purified soul into infinite bliss, when, by the upward gravitation of spirit, they shall all have been strained through the successively finer growing filters of the worlds, from the coarse grained foundation of matter to the lower shore of the Divine essence.
In seeking to account for the extent and the tenacious grasp of this antique and stupendous belief, in looking about for the various suggestions or confirmations of such a dogma, we would call attention to several considerations, each claiming some degree of importance. First, among the earliest notions of a reflecting man is that of the separate existence of the soul after the dissolution of the body. He instinctively distinguishes the
7 Basnage, Hist. Jews, lib. iv. cap. xxx.: Schroder, Judenthum, buch ii. kap. iii. Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum. th. ii. kap. i.
8 Augustine, De Morlb. Manicha., lib. ii. cap. xvii.: De Hares.. cap. xlvi.: Contra Faustum, lib. xvi. cap. xxviii.
thinking substance he is from the material vestment he wears. Conscious of an unchanged personal identity beneath the changes and decays everywhere visible around him, he naturally imagines that "As billows on the undulating main, That swelling fall and falling swell again, So on the tide of time inconstant roll The dying body and the deathless soul."
To one thus meditating, and desiring, as he surely would, to perceive or devise some explanation of the soul's posthumous fortunes, the idea could hardly fail to occur that the destiny of the soul might be to undergo a renewed birth, or a series of births in new bodies. Such a conception, appearing in a rude state of culture, before the lines between science, religion, and poetry had been sharply drawn, recommending itself alike by its simplicity and by its adaptedness to gratify curiosity and speculation in the formation of a thousand quaint and engaging hypotheses, would seem plausible, would be highly attractive, would very easily secure acceptance as a true doctrine.
Secondly, the strange resemblances and sympathies between men and animals would often powerfully suggest to a contemplative observer the doctrine of the transmigration of souls.9 Looking over those volumes of singular caricatures wherein certain artists have made all the most distinctive physiognomies of men and beasts mutually to approximate and mingle, one cannot avoid the fancy that the bodies of brutes are the masks of degraded men. Notice an ox reclining in the shade of a tree, patiently ruminating as if sadly conscious of many things and helplessly bound in some obscure penance, a mute world of dreamy experiences, a sombre mystery: how easy to imagine him an enchanted and transformed man! See how certain animals are allied in their prominent traits to humanity, the stricken deer, weeping big, piteous tears, the fawning affection and noble fidelity of the dog, the architectural skill of the beaver, the wise aspect of the owl, the sweet plaint of the nightingale, the shrieks of some fierce beasts, and the howls of others startlingly like the cries of children and the moans of pain, the sparkling orbs and tortuous stealthiness of the snake; and the hints at metempsychosis are obvious. Standing face to face with a tiger, an anaconda, a wild cat, a monkey, a gazelle, a parrot, a dove, we alternately shudder with horror and yearn with sympathy, now expecting to see the latent devils throw off their disguise and start forth in their own demoniac figures, now waiting for the metamorphosing charm to be reversed, and for the enchanted children of humanity to stand erect, restored to their former shapes. Pervading all the grades and forms of distinct animal life there seems to be a rudimentary unity. The fundamental elements and primordial germs of consciousness, intellect, will, passion, appear the same, and the different classes of being seem capable of passing into one another by improvement or deterioration.
Spontaneously, then, might a primitive observer, unhampered by prejudices, think that the soul of man on leaving its present body would find or construct another according to its chief intrinsic qualities and