ording to its chief intrinsic
qualities and

9 Scholz, Beweis, dass es eine Seelenwanderung bei den Thieren
giebt.

forces, whether those were a leonine magnanimity of courage, a
vulpine subtlety of cunning, or a pavonine strut of vanity. The
spirit, freed from its fallen cell, "Fills with fresh energy
another form, And towers an elephant, or glides a worm, Swims as
an eagle in the eye of noon, Or wails, a screech owl, to the deaf,
cold moon, Or haunts the brakes where serpents hiss and glare,
Or hums, a glittering insect, in the air."

The hypothesis is equally forced on our thoughts by regarding the
human attributes of some brutes and the brutal attributes of some
men. Thus Gratiano, enraged at the obstinate malignity of Shylock,
cries to the hyena hearted Jew, "Thou almost mak'st me waver in my
faith, To hold opinion, with Pythagoras, That souls of animals
infuse themselves Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit
Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter, Even from the
gallows did his fell soul fleet, And, whilst thou lay'st in thine
unhallow'd dam, Infused itself in thee; for thy desires Are
wolfish, bloody, starved, and ravenous."

Thirdly, there is a figurative metempsychosis, which may sometimes
the history of mythology abounds in examples of the same sort of
thing have been turned from an abstract metaphor into a concrete
belief, or from a fanciful supposition have hardened into a
received fact. There is a poetic animation of objects whereby the
imaginative person puts himself into other persons, into trees,
clouds, whirlwinds, or what not, and works them for the time in
ideal realization. The same result is put in speech sometimes as
humorous play: for example, a celebrated English author says,
"Nature meant me for a salamander, and that is the reason I have
always been discontented as a man: I shall be a salamander in the
next world!" Such imagery stated to a mind of a literal order
solidifies into a meaning of prosaic fact. It is a common mode of
speech to say of an enthusiastic disciple that the spirit of his
master possesses him. A receptive student enters into the soul of
Plato, or is full of Goethe. We say that Apelles lived again in
Titian. Augustine reappeared in Calvin, and Pelagius in Arminius,
to fight over the old battle of election and freedom. Luther rose
in Ronge. Take these figures literally, construct what they imply
into a dogma, and the product is the transmigration of soul