Be fleeting forward on the endless flight Fatal of that metempsychosis preached.
Does Plato take metempsychosis seriously, as one would be tempted to believe after reading the Republic?
If metempsychosis is included in the scheme of the divine government of the world, this difficulty disappears altogether.
Metempsychosis included many other facts in human evolution, facts that were plainly taught to the disciples in the "inner circles" of the ancient Schools and passed out to the confused medley of public teaching.
Metempsychosis is, therefore, the only system of this kind that philosophy can hearken to.
Let us, then, add the teachings of metempsychosis to those of the Gospel, and place Pythagoras by the side of Jesus.
The conception of the metempsychosis is strikingly fitted for the purposes of humor, satire, and ethical hortation; and literature abounds with such applications of it.
A belief in the metempsychosis limited in the same way to the souls of children also prevailed among the Mexicans.
Hierocles said, and distinguished philosophers both before and since have said, "Without the doctrine of metempsychosis it is not possible to justify the ways of Providence.
Accordingly, the mysterious doctrine of the metempsychosis has held the entire mind, sentiment and civilization of the East, through every period of its history, as with an irreversible spell.
Such examples as these exactly met the weakest point in the metempsychosis theory, and must have had vast influence in fostering the common faith.
With them metempsychosis was a process exactly similar to that imagined by the Brahmins.
Metempsychosis is one of the fundamental dogmas of Buddhism.
The end of metempsychosis is, according to Buddhists, the state of Neibban.
XII-47] The Apaches believe in metempsychosis and consider the rattlesnake as the form to be assumed by the wicked after death.
Ideas of metempsychosis also appear in one of the songs of a Southern Californian tribe, which runs: As the moon dies to be reborn, so the soul of man will be renewed.
A trace of metempsychosis may be noticed in the superstitious belief that sorcerers transformed people into animals.
Notwithstanding its obvious prehistoric origin, many have claimed thatMetempsychosis has its birthplace in old Egypt, on the banks of the Nile.
Among the Greeks, on the contrary, we find a marked degree of interest and speculation regarding the immortality of the soul, and much interest in the doctrines of Metempsychosis or Reincarnation.
Bowen has said: "It seems to me that a firm and well-grounded faith in the doctrine of Christian Metempsychosis might help to regenerate the world.
It is probably from this that the widely-spread doctrine of metempsychosis was derived.
Thus the generality of the belief in metempsychosis is a new proof that the constituent elements of the idea of the soul have been taken largely from the animal kingdom, as is presupposed by the theory which we have just set forth.
But his theory of metempsychosis is the Indic sams[=a]ra, and Plato is full of Sankhyan thought, worked out by him but taken from Pythagoras.
It is interesting to see that hell is prescribed with metempsychosis exactly as it is among the Brahmans.
The esoteric wisdom is here the transfer of the doctrine of metempsychosis to spring.
Mother, what did you say to her, by way of a dose of orthodoxy to antidote the metempsychosis poison?
And I have shown that both the doctrine of metempsychosis and the mythological explanations of meteorological changes have given rise to abundant fable, and among others to the popular and wide-spread superstition of lycanthropy.
The doctrine of metempsychosis is founded on the consciousness of gradation between beasts and men.
Thus the doctrine ofmetempsychosis was emphatically one of rewards and punishments, for the condition of the soul after death depended on its training during life.
The doctrine of Metempsychosisor Re-incarnation has its roots deeply imbedded in the soil of all religions--that is, in the Inner Teachings or Esoteric phase of all religious systems.
The metempsychosis is only for common people; for other souls they have a sublimer doctrine.
The doctrine of the metempsychosis comes from an ancient law of feeding on cow's milk as well as on vegetables, fruits, and rice.
Possibly the transformation belief has reacted on the other, and obscured a belief in actual metempsychosis as a result of the soul of an ancestor passing into a woman and being reborn as her next child.
The Indians, among whom, even in our days, the system of Metempsychosis prevails, think that man's soul is absolutely of the same nature as that of other animals.
Metempsychosis has been immemorially believed in Japan, where the people, even in our days, according to Koempsfer, abstain from meat, and live exclusively upon fruits and vegetables.
Therefore the belief of the doctrine of Metempsychosis necessarily implies a disbelief of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body.
The aim of the doctrine of Metempsychosis was to accustom man to detach himself from the gross matter, to which he is tied here below, and to excite in him the desire of promptly returning there, wherefrom he had formerly descended.
Aaron ben Elijah rejects metempsychosison the ground that there is some relation between a soul and its body, and not every body can receive every soul.
Before leaving the problem of the soul Ibn Daud devotes a word to showing that metempsychosis is impossible.
Such expressions as the transmigration of souls ormetempsychosis imperfectly represent Indian ideas.
In Buddhism, though the Pitakas speak continually of rebirth, metempsychosis is an incorrect expression since there is no soul to transmigrate and there is strictly speaking nothing but karma.
They nevertheless believed in metempsychosis and practised asceticism.
The character of the successive appearances or tenements of the soul is determined by the law of Karma, which even more than metempsychosis is the basis of Indian ideas about the universe.
The doctrine of metempsychosis is also interesting as affecting the relations of men and animals.
It is not really consistent with any doctrine of metempsychosis or with Buddhist teaching as to the impermanence of the Ego.
In one way metempsychosis raises insuperable difficulties to the survival of personality, for if you become someone else, especially an animal, you are no longer yourself according to any ordinary use of language.
Recent research discredits the theory that metempsychosis was an important feature in the earlier religion of Egypt or among the Druids[38].
Thus considered, the doctrine of metempsychosis developed by the Brahmans of India and by the Pythagorean sect of the Occident is the last metamorphosis of a very ancient totemic animal tale.
That means that it is exempt from metempsychosis and likewise from bodily form, so that it does not after death make its appearance in another body.
Somewhat similar to this is another combination of hypnotism and metempsychosis in The Witch of Prague, by F.
Or we reflect that he may be a case of metempsychosis and treat him courteously, for who knows what we may be ourselves some day?
The symbolic treatment of metempsychosis is strongly evident in recent fiction, as the theme lends itself particularly well to the allegoric and symbolic style.
In Hoffmann's Magnetiseur we find the treatment of hypnotism and metempsychosis and the dream-supernaturalism in the same combination that Poe uses.
In Algernon Blackwood's Ancient Sorceries, we have witch-metempsychosis on a large scale, the population of a whole village being but the reanimations of long-dead witches and wizards who once lived there.
Algernon Blackwood tells of a man who remembers having been a centaur and lives in memory-metempsychosis his experiences of that far-off time.
A different version of metempsychosis is shown in The Immortal Gymnasts, by Marie Cher, for here the beloved trio, Pantaloon, Harlequin and Columbine are embodied as human beings and come to live among men.
The theme of metempsychosis is found tangled up with various other motives in fiction, the use of the elixir of life, hypnotism, dream-supernaturalism, witchcraft and so forth.
I know of no other case of mob-metempsychosis in English fiction, but the instances where several are reincarnated at once are numerous.
Blackwood has been much drawn to psychic subjects in general and metempsychosis in particular, for it enters into many of his stories.
The close relation between metempsychosisand hypnotism is shown in various stories.
As is seen by these examples, the relation between witchcraft and metempsychosis is very close, since in recent fiction the witch characters have unusual powers of returning to life in some other form.
The doctrine of metempsychosis was borrowed from Egypt by Pythagoras and classical allusions are so numerous that it is impossible to mention more than a few instances.
This curious mental process expands with what it feeds on until the shade of distinction between wolf-like ghosts and corporeal human wolves is obliterated and the metempsychosis is complete.