Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XI.djvu/441

 METEMPSYCHOSIS pos), and died in the following year, it was suspected from poison administered by Ms profligate wife Clodia. VIII. Quintns Caeeilins Metellns Pins Scipio, the adopted son of Metellus Pius. (See SCIPIO.) IX. Quintns Ciecilias Metel- lus Creticns, received his surname from the con- quest of Crete, whither he was sent as consul in 69, and whence he returned in 66, but was prevented by his political opponents from celebrating a triumph till after the defeat of Catiline, during whose agitation he had pre- vented an insurrection of the slaves in Apulia. METEMPSYCHOSIS (Gr. fisrd, denoting change, and -^vxAi soul), the supposed transmigration of the soul from one body to another. It is a feature in Brahmanism and Buddhism, which represent the migration after death into the body of a higher or lower animal as a reward of virtue or penalty for vice. The soul may even deteriorate into the vegetable or mineral world. According to Herodotus, the Egyp- tians were the first to entertain this doctrine. They believed that the soul was clothed succes- sively with the forms of all the animals that live on the earth, and that it then returned after a cycle of 3,000 years into the body of a man, to recommence its eternal pilgrimage. The later Pythagoreans maintained that the soul has a life peculiar to itself, which it en- joyed in common with demons or spirits be- fore its descent to the earth, and that there must be a degree of harmony between the faculties of the soul and the form which it assumes. Plato adopts and treats the doctrine in his " Phaedo," maintaining the preexistence of the soul before it appears in man, of which condition it retains dim reminiscences; and after death, according to its peculiar qualities, it seeks and chooses another body. Every soul, according to him, returns to its original source in 10,000 years. After completing each life it spends 1,000 years in the infernal world in a condition corresponding to that life. The idea appears in the speculations of the Neo- Platonists, and in the cabala of the Jews. Por- phyry gave to it its most definite development in Neo-Platonic thought. The cabalists thought that the destiny of every soul was to return into mystical union with the divine substance, but that in order to do this it must first devel- op all the perfections of which it has the germ within itself. Origen, in his work " On Prin- ciples," is supposed to hold this doctrine,- to find in it the final cause of creation, and to maintain that God gave existence to the world as a place of purification for those souls which had sinned in heaven ; and this explains why the Deity introduced so many apparent imper- fections into his work. But Origen's book ex- ists only in the Latin translation, De Principiis, by Rufinus, who is believed by modern critics to have altered the original, and to have inter- polated some of his own notions. This idea, attributed to Origen, was also held by the Gnostics and Manichmns, and by the druids, and is still believed by the Druses. METEOR 429 METEOR (Gr. /zerwpof, lofty, in the air), any phenomenon of short duration occurring in the atmosphere. Rain, snow, hail, fog, and dew are meteors distinguished as aqueous ; the movements of the winds constitute the varie- ties of aerial meteors; luminous meteors are the singular phenomena displayed by the ac- tion of the aqueous particles diffused through the atmosphere upon the rays of light, such as fata Morgana, halo, mirage, rainbow, &c., and may also include the aurora borealis ; and igneous meteors are such phenomena as light- ning, aerolites, shooting stars, &c. Most of these are described in this work under their own names. In common language, the term meteor is applied only to those bodies which, as globes of fire or as shooting stars, are occa- sionally seen darting through the heavens at unknown distances from the earth, and in un- determined paths. Sometimes exploding and projecting upon the earth fragments of stone called meteoric iron, they are proved to be solid bodies in a state of intense heat, and are then known as aerolites or meteorolites. In ancient times these bodies were witnessed in different parts of the earth, and their appear- ance was chronicled as among the most won- derful natural exhibitions. The Chinese rec- ords of such phenomena extend back to 644 B. C. ; and from the 7th century B. C. to A. D. 333, 16 falls of aerolites are recorded in the astronomical annals of the Chinese. By the Greeks and Romans, in the same period accounts are preserved of only four such falls. Humboldt says that it is remarkable that the Ionian school, in accordance with the present opinion, early assumed the cosmical origin of meteoric stones. Anaxagoras of Clazomense held that the meteors are masses torn away from the earth by the violence of the rotation ; and that between the earth and the moon there revolve other dark bodies, which can produce eclipses of the moon. Diogenes of Apollonia, as recorded by Stobasus, also taught that dark masses of stone move with the vis- ible stars and remain unseen by us, Plutarch in the life of Lysander (cap. xii.) expressly declares that falling stars " are really heavenly bodies, which from some relaxation of the rapidity of their motion, or by some irregular concussion, are loosened and fall, not so much upon the habitable part of the globe as into the ocean, which is the reason that their sub- stance is seldom seen." The nature and move- ments of the meteoric bodies which fall upon the earth have already been considered under AEROLITE. But some of the most extraordi- nary meteoric displays, of the nature of fire balls or bolides, and of shooting stars, unac- companied by falls of stone, may properly be noticed in this place. The bolis is the fiery body from which aerolites are precipitated upon th'e earth; but many such bodies pass across the heavens, and sometimes explode and disappear, leaving behind no vestiges of their solid materials. They appear singly at irreg-