METEMPSYCHOSIS, formed from meta, beyond, and psychē, I animate or enliven, in the ancient philosophy, signified the passage or transmigration of the soul of a man after death into the body of some other animal. Pythagoras and his followers held, that after death men's souls passed into other bodies of different kinds, according to the manner of life which they had led. If they had been
vicious, they were imprisoned in the bodies of miserable beasts, there to do penance for several ages, at the expiration of which they returned again to animate human forms. But if they lived virtuously, the body of some happier brute, or even of a human creature, was destined to be their new habitation. What led Pythagoras into this opinion was, the persuasion which he had that the soul was not of a perishable nature, and from which he concluded that it must remove into some other body upon its abandoning its actual habitation. Lucan treats this doctrine as a kind of officious lie, contrived to mitigate the apprehension of death, by persuading men that they had changed their lodging, and only ceased to live in order to begin a new life. Reuchlin denies this doctrine, and maintains that the metempsychosis of Pythagoras implied nothing more than a similitude of manners, desires, and studies, which formerly existed in some person deceased, and were subsequently revived in another. Thus, when it was said that Euphorbus was revived in Pythagoras, no more was meant than that the martial virtue which had shone in Euphorbus at the time of the Trojan war, was now in some measure revived in Pythagoras, by reason of the great respect he bore to the athleta. For those people, wondering how a philosopher should be so much taken with men of the sword, he palliated the matter by saying that the soul of Euphorbus, meaning thereby his genius, disposition, and inclinations, were revived in him; and this gave occasion to the report that the soul of Euphorbus, who perished in the Trojan war, had transmigrated into Pythagoras. Ficinus asserts that what Plato said of the migration of a human soul into a brute, is allegorically said, and to be understood, only of those manners, affections, and habits which have degenerated into a beastly nature by vice. Serranus, though he allows some force to this interpretation, yet rather inclines to understand the metempsychosis as meaning a resurrection. Pythagoras is said to have borrowed the notion of a metempsychosis from the Egyptians; but others maintain that he received it from the ancient Brahmins. It is still retained amongst the Banians and other idolaters of India and China, and forms the principal foundation of their religion; indeed, so bigoted are they to this tenet, that they not only forbear eating any thing which has life, but many of them even refuse to defend themselves against wild beasts. They burn no wood, lest some little animalecule should be consumed in it; and are so very charitable, that they will redeem from the hands of strangers any animals which they find ready to be killed.