2. E;iyp1. — According to the doctrine of the old Egyp- tians, the human race originated after the pure gods and spirits had left the earth; and this they did be- cause the dajmons, who inhabited the earth, had revolt- ed against them, and tainted it with guilt. In order that the diemons might purify themselves, the gods created human bodies, so that in them they might ex- piate their guilt. These earthly bodies, imited to the daemons, are the human race, and human life is mere- ly intended as a means of purifying the soul. All the precepts regidating the course of life are laid down by the Egyptians for this end, and the judgment after death in the palace of Osiris decides whether it has been attained or not. If it has not, then the soul must return to the earth, to renew its expiations, either in a human body, in the body of an animal, or in a plant. Matter was believed to be a substantial reality; and the material form that was once united with spirit in the one being of man was believed to maintain that connection so long as the material form remained. Hence the Egyptian practice of embalming the dead, to arrest the passage of the soid into other forms.
3, Persia. — The transmigration of souls was also a
tenet of the Persian religion before the time of Zoroaster, and was derived, with the language of Avcsta, from In- dian sources. Pherecydes of Syros, who lived before the age of Zoroaster, taught the doctrine, and Pythago- ras received it in Babylon from the Magi ((]. v.).
4. In Greece, the doctrine of transmigration did not become the belief of the people, but was confined to the mysteries and tenets of philosophers, who probably re- ceived it from Egypt or India. According to some, Thales was the first Greek philosopher who propounded it; according to others, Pherecydes, tlie teacher of Py- thagoras. It was subsequently greatly developed by Pythagoras and Plato. The Greek mysteries were, in fact, not only a school in which metempsychosis was taught, but an indispensable grade or lodge thnmgh which all of the aspirants must pass before they could be purified and go on to higher stages of existence. In the system of Plato transmigration had a remedial function, and the soul could attain to divinity only by a varied probation of ten thousand years. Tlie Epicu- reans denied it, but it appears to have been generally inculcated as one of the deepest doctrines of tiie mys- teries. The Neo-Platonists, who believed in magic, as- sumed the doctrine of metempsychosis as a natural in- heritance.
5. Among the Jeirs the doctrine of transmigration — the Gilgul Neshamoth — was taught in the mystical sys- tem of the Cabala (q. v.). "All the souls," says the Zohar, or Book of Light, "are subject to the trials of transmigration ; and men do not know which are the ways of the Most High in their regard. They do not know how many transformations and mysterious trials they must undergo; how many souls and spirits come to this world without returning to the palace of the di- vine king. . . . The souls must re-enter the absolute sub- stance whence they have emerged. But to accomplish this end thej' must develop all the perfections, the germ of which is planted in them ; and if they have not ful- filled this condition during one life, they must commence another, a third, and so forth, until they have acquired the condition which fits them for reunion with God. On the ground of this doctrine it was held, for instance, that the soul of Adam migrated into David, and will come into the Messiah; that the soul of Japheth is the same as that of Simeon, and the soul of Terah migrated into Job. Modern Cabalists — for instance, Isaac Loria — have imagined that divine grace sometimes assists a soul in its career of expiation by allowing it to occupy the same body together with another soul, when both are to supplement each otlier, like the blind and the lame. Sometimes only one of these souls requires the supplement of virtue, which it obtains from tiie other soul, better provided than its partner. The latter soul then becomes, as it were, the mother of the other soul, and bears it under her heart as a pregnant woman. Hence the name of gestation or impregnation is given to this strange association of two souls.
6. Of the Druids, it is told by classical writers that they believed in the immortality of the soul, and in its migration after a certain period subsequent to death. Little is known of the manner in which they imagined such migrations to take place; but, to judge from their religious system, there can be no doubt that they looke<l upon transmigration as a means of purifying the soul and preparing it for eternal life.
7. Xorse. — A very poetical form of belief in transmi- gration is found in (iermanic mythology, according to which the soul, before entering its divine abode, assumes certain forms or animates certain objects, in which it lives for a short period — as a tree, a rose, a vine, a but- terfly, a pigeon, etc.
8. Amour/ the earhj Christians, 3 cvomQ relates, the doctrine of transmigration was taught as a traditional and esoteric one, which was only communicated to a se- lect few. Gnostics and Manichteans welcomed it, and the more speculative or mystical of the Church fathers founii in it a ready explanation of the fall of man and