Transmigration

was anciently regarded as purgatorial, which is an advance on the savage theory, and involves a belief in the moral government of the universe. Early Hindus taught that there were three futures po ible for anyone: (1) in heaven with the gods, after a life of virtue on earth: (2) on earth, a continuance of anxious weary lives, for those who have lived the ordinary busy worldly life: (3) on earth in animal forms, more or le degraded according to the degree of wickedne in the previous human life. Each of these three phases was again subdivided into three: and these nine cla es were known to Plato, whose doctrine is explained at the end of the Republic (see Er). Prof. Max Miiller says (Vedanta Lectwres, 1894) that: “If aman feels that what—without any fault of his own—he suffers in this life can only be the result of some of his 2 L* former acts, he will bear his sufferings with more resignation, like a debtor who is paying off an old debt, And, if he knows besides that, in this life, he may be suffering not only to pay off his old debts, but actually to lay by moral capital for the future, he has a motive for goodne which is not more selfish than it ought to be.” [This is the Catholic doctrine of “ works of supererogation.”—Ep,] But this a umes that we carry into future lives a consciousne of personal identity, and a memory of the past, with many other a umptions (see Sou)), Sir Le Page Renouf warns us against supposing the metempsychosis of Indians and Greeks to be discoverable in Egyptian allusions to transformations (see Egypt). ‘These are “ expre ly said to be entirely voluntary; the nature of them depends upon the will and pleasure of the glorified personage” (see Proc, Bib. Arch. Socy., May 1893): the unglorified suffered the ‘‘ second death,” being given over to the “devourer,” a monster shown awaiting his prey in the hall of Judgment. All medieval Europe believed in such transformations, and that the soul could leave the body during sleep. Endle legends occur (as also in Arab tales) about such changes of shape; and souls were seen stealing from the mouths of sleepers in the form of mice. Men were cautioned not to go to sleep thirsty, for if the soul—so stealing out to drink—was chased away it might never find its way back, The Teutonic gode Holda, who was the guardian of souls, was symbolised as a mouse, and scared evil mice from sleeping maidens and children. With her, as the White Lady, departed souls spend the first night, and the second with St Michael, leaving for their future home on the third, Dryden alludes to such beliefs when he says— “ Here and there the unembodied spirit flies And lodges where it lights in man or beast.” 7 Thus no existence was thought to cease, but only to undergo a metamorphosis or “change of form.” Even Buddhists accepted the theories of the Vedanta and Darsana schools on this subject. Kapila — said that: “Joy, fear, and grief, arise to him that is born, through return to his memory of things previously experienced”: so that — Gotama remarked that: “If joy arises before causes for joy are — experienced, the child must have existed in a previous life.” This — doctrine was known to the Jews, but is set aside by Christ (John — ix, 2, 3) The Nyaya school (see Darsanas) argued that the soul — “must be eternal: if otherwise it would be mortal: for whatever — has a beginning has of nece ity an end.” In the Bhagavad-git a Krishna is made to say: “One cannot say of the soul it has been, or is about to be, or is to be hereafter; it is a thing without birth.” Plato also (Phedrus) says that the soul “is deathle , Evil may attack or corrupt it, but cannot waste its substance: it is one thing, not composite, and must therefore live for ever.” The logic and the a ertion alike may be disputed; but the idea was yet earlier brought to the West by Pythagoras, who begged that a dog might not be beaten, lest it should have in it the soul of some former friend. The followers of Swedenborg (18th century 4,c.) said that the cunning would become foxes, and the timid hares, and this idea is everywhere traceable from savage ages, The Rig Veda speaks of the dead as “ being glorified, and putting on a body,” for “ the good man shall be born in the next world with his entire body” (Sarvatanw). This is nearer to the belief of Christ and of Paul as to a spiritual body, Origen was condemned for speaking of the soul as corporeal, a erting that it had been seen i uing from the mouth of the dying in the form of a child. He wrote that: “Corporeal matter, in whatsoever quality (or form) it is placed, is nece ary to the soul, now indeed carnal, though hereafter it will become subtle, and purer, and what is termed spiritual.” In the Buddhist Jataka (or “birth ”) tales, Gotama is made to describe the transmigrations of himself and of other sages, But Buddhist philosophy is concerned with the surviving effect of conduct (see Karma), not with the immortality of an individual identity or soul, Buddhists teach the existence of a definite number of beings, which exist in various conditions (see Buddhism), and this number is only occasionally diminished when some one being attains to Nirvana, and is born no more. The Buddhists thus attempt to avoid two extremes, that of belief in a soul, and that of disbelief in retribution, They believed that “if a man reaps sorrow, disappointment, and pain, he himself —and no other—must at some time have sown folly, error, and sin; and if not in this life, then in some former birth.” Metempsychosis was a prominent feature of neo-Platonic teaching at Alexandria, Prof. Knight tells us that: “Philo of the first century ({B.c.) held it: Plot in us and Porphyry in the third (a.c.): Jamb lich us in the fourth: Hierocles, and Probus in the 5th century.” It was a Gnostik, and especially a Manic he an, dogma: “It was held by Nemesius who emphatically declared that all Greeks believing in immortality believed in (metempsychosis); and we have hints of it in Boethius.” The 2nd Council of Constantinople (553 A.C.) condemned it as held by Origen, but the idea survived late among the Christian schoolmen. It found an earnest advocate in Le ing: Herder maintained it, and it fascinated the minds of Fourier, and Leroux. 557