1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Metempsychosis

METEMPSYCHOSIS (Gr. μετεμψύχωσις), or, the doctrine that at death the soul passes into another living creature, man, animal, or even plant. This 'doctrine, famous in antiquity and still held as a religious tenet by certain sects of the civilized world, has its roots far back in primitive culture. It is developed out of three universal savage beliefs: (i) that man has a soul, connected in some vague way with the breath, which can be separated from his material body, temporarily in sleep, permanently at death; (2) that animals and even plants have souls, and are possessed to a large extent of human powers and passions; (3) that souls can be transferred from one organism to another. Innumerable examples might be mentioned of the notion that a new-born child is the reincarnation of someone departed, as in Tibet the soul of the Dalai-Lama is supposed to pass into an infant born nine months after his decease. Transmigration of human souls into non-human bodies is implied in totemism, for, as Professor Frazer says, "it is an article of faith that as the clan sprang from the totem, so each clansman at death reassumes the totem form." All these savage notions are to be regarded as presuppositions of metempsychosis, rather than identified with that doctrine itself as a reasoned theory.

Till full investigation of Egyptian records put us in possession of the facts, it was supposed that the Egyptians believed in metempsychosis, and Herodotus (ii. 123) explicitly credits them with it. We now know that he was wrong. All that they believed was that certain privileged souls might in the other world be able to assume certain forms at pleasure, those of a sparrow-hawk, lily, &c. Herodotus misunderstood the Egyptians to hold beliefs identical with those which were current in his day in Greece. In India, on the contrary, the doctrine was thoroughly established from ancient times; not from the most ancient, as it is not in the Vedas; but onwards from the Upanishads. In them it is used for moral retribution: he who kills a Brahman is, after a long progress through dreadful hells, to be reborn as a dog, pig, ass, camel, &c. This we always find in metempsychosis as a reasoned theory. It is formed by combina tion of two sets of ideas which belong to different planes of culture: the ideas of judgment and punishment after death elaborated in a relatively cultured society by a priestly class are combined with ideas, like that of totem-transmigration, proper to a savage society. In India we may explain the whole phenomenon as an infusion of the lower beliefs of the non-Aryan conquered races into the higher religious system of their Aryan conquerors. In later Hinduism metempsychosis reached a monstrous development; according to Monier-Williams it was believed that there were 8,400,000 forms of existence through which all souls were liable to pass before returning to their source in the Deity. Buddhism appeared as a reaction against all this, and sought by a subtle modification to harmonize the theory with its own pessimistic view of the world. According to Buddhism there is no soul, and consequently no metempsychosis in the strict sense. Something, however, is transmitted, i.e. Karma (character), which passes from individual to individual, till in the perfectly righteous man the will to live is extinguished and that particular chain of lives is brought to an end.

We do not know exactly how the doctrine of metempsychosis arose in Greece; it cannot, as was once supposed, have been borrowed from Egypt and is not likely to have come from India. It is easiest to assume that savage ideas which had never been extinguished were utilized for religious and philosophic purposes. The Orphic religion, which held it, first appeared in Thrace upon the semi-barbarous north-eastern frontier. Orpheus, its legendary founder, is said to have taught that "soul and body are united by a compact unequally binding on either; the soul is divine, immortal and aspires to freedom, while the body holds it in fetters as a prisoner. Death dissolves this compact, but only to re-imprison the liberated soul after a short time: for the wheel of birth revolves inexorably. Thus the soul continues its journey, alternating between a separate unrestrained existence and fresh reincarnation, round the wide circle of necessity, as the companion of many bodies of men and animals. To these unfortunate prisoners Orpheus proclaims the message of liberation, that they stand in need of the grace of redeeming gods and of Dionysus in particular, and calls them to turn to God by ascetic piety of life and self-purification: the purer their lives the higher will be their next reincarnation, until the soul has completed the spiral ascent of destiny to live for ever as God from whom it comes." Such was the teaching of Orphism which appeared in Greece about the 6th century B.C., organized itself into private and public mysteries at Eleusis and elsewhere, and produced a copious literature.

The earliest Greek thinker with whom metempsychosis is connected is Pherecydes; but Pythagoras, who is said to have been his pupil, is its first famous philosophic exponent. Pythagoras probably neither invented the doctrine nor imported it from Egypt, but made his reputation by bringing Orphic doctrine from North-Eastern Hellas to Magna Graecia and by instituting societies for its diffusion.

The real weight and importance of metempsychosis is due to its adoption by Plato. Had he not embodied it in some of his greatest works it would be merely a matter of curious investigation for the anthropologist and student of folk-lore. In the eschatological myth which closes the Republic he tells the story how Er, the son of Armenius, miraculously returned to life on the twelfth day after death and recounted the secrets of the other world. After death, he said, he went with others to the place of Judgment and saw the souls returning from heaven and from purgatory, and proceeded with them to a place where they chose new lives, human and animal. "He saw the soul of Orpheus changing into a swan, Thamyras becoming a nightingale, musical birds choosing to be men, the soul of Atalanta choosing the honours of an athlete. Men were seen passing into animals and wild and tame animals changing into each other." After their choice the souls drank of Lethe and then shot away like stars to their birth. There are myths and theories to the same effect in other dialogues, the Phaedrus, Meno, Phaedo, Timaeus and Laws. In Plato's view the number of souls was fixed; birth therefore is never the creation of a soul, but only a transmigration from one body to another. Plato's acceptance of the doctrine is characteristic of his sympathy with popular beliefs and desire to incorporate them in a purified form into his system. Aristotle, a far less emotional and sympathetic mind, has a doctrine of immortality totally inconsistent with it. In later Greek literature the doctrine appears from time to time; it is mentioned in a fragment of Menander (the Inspired Woman) and satirized by Lucian (Gallus § 18 seq.). In Roman literature it is found as early as Ennius, who in his Calabrian home must have been familiar with the Greek teachings which had descended to his times from the cities of Magna Graecia. In a lost passage of his Annals, a Roman history in verse, Ennius told how he had seen Homer in a dream, who had assured him that the same soul which had animated both the poets had once belonged to a peacock. Persius in one of his satires (vi. 9) laughs at Ennius for this: it is referred to also by Lucretius (i. 124)124) and by Horace (Epist. i. 52). Virgil works the idea into his account of the Underworld in the sixth book of the Aeneid (vv. 724 sqq.). It persists in antiquity down to the latest classic thinkers, Plotinus and the other Neoplatonists.