Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/76

 stage of perfection, then there is no more change, his soul has no longer to fear transmigration, for he is identical with the god Foe. The soul is exalted into the region of nothingness, and thus delivered from bondage to external sensuous form.

In so far, however, as a man has not, by renunciation, by sinking into himself, attained to this felicity—though this latter is indeed in him, for his spirit is this potentiality—he is still in need of duration, and so of bodily existence too, and in this way the idea of metempsychosis takes its origin.

3. It is here, accordingly, that the aspects of power and of magic combine with this idea, and the religion of Being-within-itself runs out into the wildest superstition. The theoretical relation, owing to the fact that it is, properly speaking, inherently empty, is reversed and changes into the practical one of magic. The mediation of priests here comes in, and they represent at once the Higher, and the power above the forms or shapes which man assumes. The adherents of Foe are in this respect superstitious to the utmost degree. They believe that man passes into all possible forms, and that the priests are those who, living in the supersensuous world, determine the form which the soul is to take on, and are therefore able to keep it from assuming ill-omened shapes. A missionary tells a story of a dying Chinese who had sent for him, and complained that a Bonze (these are the priests, those who know, to whom is known what is happening in the other world) had told him that just as he was now in the service of the Emperor, so would he remain in it after death likewise; his soul would pass into an imperial post-horse; he must then perform his duties faithfully, not kick, not bite, not stumble, and content himself with a small amount of food.

The dogma of metempsychosis is also the point at which the simple worship of Being-within-itself