as been broached in various forms widely differing in
the extent of their application. Among the Jews the writings of
Philo, the Talmud, and other documents, are full of it. They seem,
for the most part, to have confined the mortal residence of souls
to human bodies. They say that God created all souls on the first
day, the only day in which he made aught out of nothing; and they
imply, in their doctrine of the revolution of souls, that these
are born over and over, and will continue wandering thus until the
Messiah comes and the resurrection occurs. The

4 Jarves, Hist. Sandwich Islands, p. 82.

5 Wilson, Western Africa, p. 210.

6 Dr. Roth, Agyptische Glaubenslehre.

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 a