ctual
texture of their inspired books. It is upheld by the venerable
authority of ages, by an intense general conviction of it, and by
multitudes of subtle conceits and apparent arguments. It was also
impressed upon the initiates in the old Mysteries, by being there
dramatically shadowed forth through masks, and quaint symbolic
ceremonies enacted at the time of initiation.13

This, then, is what we must say of the ancient and widely spread
doctrine of transmigration. As a suggestion or theory naturally
arising from empirical observation and confirmed by a variety of
phenomena, it is plausible, attractive, and, in some stages of

11 Professor Wilson's translation, p. 343.

12 De l'Humanite, livre v. chap. xlii.

13 Porphyry, De Abstinentis, lib. iv. sect. 16. Davies, Rites of
the Druids.

knowledge, not only easy to be believed, but hard to be resisted.
As an ethical scheme clearing up on principles of poetic justice
the most perplexed and awful problems in the world, it throws
streams of light through the abysses of evil, gives dramatic
solution to many a puzzle, and, abstractly considered, charms the
understanding and the conscience. As a philosophical dogma
answering to some strange, vague passages in human nature and
experience, it echoes with dreamy sweetness through the deep
mystic chambers of our being. As the undisputed creed which has
inspired and spell bound hundreds of millions of our race for
perhaps over a hundred and fifty generations, it commands
deference and deserves study. But, viewing it as a thesis in the
light of to day, challenging intelligent scrutiny and sober
belief, we scarcely need to say that, based on shadows and on
arbitrary interpretations of superficial appearances, built of
reveries and occult experiences, fortified by unreliable
inferences, destitute of any substantial evidence, it is unable to
face the severity of science.

A real investigation of its validity by the modern methods
dissipates it as the sun scatters fog. First, the mutual
correspondences between men and animals are explained by the fact
that they are all living beings are the products of the same God
and the same nature, and built according to one plan. They thus
partake, in different degrees and on different planes, of many of
the same elements and characteristics. Lucretius, with his usual
mixture of acuteness and sophistry, objects to the doctrine that,
if it were true, when the soul of a lion passed into