"Transmigration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in which the chief objects were to discharge some arrear of ceremonious debt, or to ventilate old velvets, or to apricate and refresh old gouty systems and old traditions of feudal ostentation, which both alike suffered and grew smoke-dried under too rigorous a seclusion. By a great transmigration, festal assemblages had assumed their proper station, and had unfolded their capacities, as true auxiliaries to the same general functions of intellect—otherwise expressing themselves and feeding themselves through literature, through ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... who had cultivated electric force within himself to such an extent that he was able to use it as a healing power. There seemed to me to be really nothing extraordinary in it. The only part of Cellini's narration I did not credit was the soul-transmigration he professed to have experienced; and I put that down to the over-excitement of his imagination at the time of his first interview with Heliobas. But I kept this thought to myself. In any case, I resolved to go to Paris. The great desire of my life was to be in perfect health, and ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... Totemism is a kind of worship rendered to animals and vegetables considered as allied and related to man. The worship of animals and plants is found as a survival in all ancient societies and is the origin of the belief in the transmigration of souls. Totemism seems to have been as widespread as the animism from which it is derived, and has been closely intertwined in the development of religious beliefs. Totemism in a modified form is found in the Old Testament where animals ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... the Acheron of promotion is gaping before him; he falls into a Commissionership; still deeper into an officiating seat on the Board of Revenue. Facilis est descensus, etc. Nothing will save him now; transmigration has set in; the gates of Simla fly open; it is all over. Let us pray that his halo may ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... propagated from the parents, nor mixed with gross matter, but the infused breath of God, immediately proceeding from Him; not passing from one to another as was the opinion of Pythagoras, who held a belief in transmigration of the soul; but that the soul is given to every infant by infusion, is the most received and orthodox opinion. And the learned do likewise agree that this is done when the infant is perfected in the womb, which happens about the twenty-fourth day after conception; especially ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... In this three-tiered universe, transmigration of souls was still the basic fact but methods of obtaining release were now much clearer. A man was born, died and then was born again. If he acted well, did his duty and worked ceaselessly for good, he followed what was known as the path of dharma or righteousness. This ensured that ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... Don't Laugh, Things sacred to the Sun, Three Tribes, The Story of, Thunder, bird, described, brings the rain, steals women, Tobacco, Indians', songs, Tobacco thief punished, Tongues for Medicine Lodge, Touchwood Hills, Training of children, Transmigration of souls, Trapping wolves, Treachery, penalty for, Treatment of dead enemies, of women, Trial by jumping, Trivett, Rev. S., Tsin-ik-tsis'-tso-yiks, Ts[)i]-st[i]ks, T[)u]is-kis't[i]ks, Turtles, Two Medicine (Lodge ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... the south of China, probably." He seemed to be talking to himself. "There's a considerable sprinkling of the belief down there, I've heard. It's an uncanny business—this transmigration of souls—" ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls—a doctrine to which the foregoing considerations are for the most part easy corollaries—crops up no matter in what direction we allow our thoughts to wander. And we meet instances of transmigration of body as well as of soul. I do ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... and that without reference to conduct in the mortal life. When I heard of the Persian's Realm of Light, his Paradise across the bridge Chinevat, where only the good go, the thought haunted me; insomuch that in the day, as in the night, I brooded over the comparative ideas Eternal Transmigration and Eternal Life in Heaven. If, as my teacher taught, God was just, why was there no distinction between the good and the bad? At length it became clear to me, a certainty, a corollary of the law to ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... many wild ideas he had imbibed from his long association with the Indians, was faith in their belief in the transmigration of souls. He used so to worry his brain for hours cogitating upon this intricate problem concerning a future state, that he actually pretended to know exactly the animal whose place he was destined ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... They (the Chepewyans) have some faint notion of transmigration of the soul; so that if a child be born with teeth, they instantly imagine, from its premature appearance, that it bears a resemblance to some person who had lived to an advanced age, and that he has assumed a renovated life, with ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... taught the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which he probably derived from the Egyptians; and he professed to preserve a distinct remembrance of several states of existence through which his soul had passed. It is related of him that on one occasion, seeing a dog beaten, he interceded in ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... ever more terrible than that of the Druids. Besides the severe penalties, which it was in the power of the ecclesiastics to inflict in this world, they inculcated the eternal transmigration of souls; and thereby extended their authority as far as the fears of their timorous votaries. They practised their rites in dark groves or other secret recesses [g]; and in order to throw a greater mystery over their religion, they communicated their ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... souls of the righteous, or those who had lived what they called "the contemplative life," would be permitted to enter immediately after death. But, for the souls of sinners, they invented a system of expiatory punishments which, known as the Metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, taught that they would be compelled to successively animate the bodies of beasts, birds, fishes, etc., for a thousand years before being permitted to ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... a Mule)—Ver. 7. She would seem here to allude to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. It may possibly have been a notion, that as the human soul took the form of a Butterfly, the souls of animals appeared in the shapes of ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... were not often the same as those of the community. There were still, however, about a dozen free republics, most of them with aristocratic government, and it was in these that reforming movements met with most approval and support. A convenient belief in the doctrine of the transmigration of souls satisfied the unfortunate that their woes were the natural result of their own deeds in a former birth, and, though unavoidable now, might be escaped in a future state of existence by present good conduct. While hoping for a better fate in their next birth, the poor turned ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... never truly relish'd myself before. Give me your ears. Breeches Pythagorical, by reason of their transmigration into several shapes. ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... Suddenly he raised his voice to a high nasal drawl that rang out like a jackdaw's: 'That is very true; and, in this matter of Death you may read in Socrates' Apology. Nevertheless we may believe that if Death be a transmigration from one place into another, there is certainly amendment in going whither so many great men have already passed, and to be subtracted from the way of so many judges ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... of London, some time merchant, Goldsmith and alderman, the Commonwele attendant, With Margaryt his Dawter, late wyff of Suttoon, And Thomas, hur Sonn, yet livyn undyr Goddy's tuitioon. The tenth of July he made his transmigration. She disissyd in the yer of Grase of Chryst's Incarnation, A Thowsand Four hundryd Threescor and oon. God assoyl their Sowls whose Bodys lye ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... them. The Abbe Faillon affirms, that some of La Salle's men, refusing to follow him, returned to La Chine, and that the place then received its name, in derision of the young adventurer's dream of a westward passage to China. [Footnote: Dollier de Casson alludes to this as "cette transmigration celebre qui se fit de la Chine dans ces quartiers."] As for himself, the only distinct record of his movements is that contained in an unpublished paper, entitled, "Histoire de Monsieur de la Salle." It is an account of his explorations, ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... partial extinction by being merged in the Supreme, not to be confounded with Pari-nirwna or absolute annihilation. In the former also, dying gives birth to a new being, the embodiment of karma (deeds), good and evil, done in the countless ages of transmigration. ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... generals in the decline of that empire, and against the Alans, Vandals, Goths, and other barbarians. Des Fontaines, (Diss. p. 118,) and after him Dom Morice. demonstrates that Brittany was an independent state before the year 421. The third transmigration of Britons hither was completed at several intervals while the Saxons invaded and conquered Britain, where Hengist first landed in 470. Brittany was subjected to the Romans during four centuries: ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... years' limit, it goes to Paradise without physical dissolution. I have questioned many Chinese concerning these fox-women, but have never been able to get any very definite information. One Chinaman, however, assured me that his brother had actually seen the transmigration from fox to woman take place. The man's name I have forgotten, but I will call him Ching Kang. Well, Ching Kang was one day threading his way through a lovely valley of the Tapa-ling mountains, when he came upon a silver (i.e. white) ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... most fundamental contentions and teachings. Indeed, modern Hinduism is largely a blending of the Brahmanism of old with its supplanter, Buddhism. The abundant sacrifices which Brahmanism offered were entirely abolished in deference to Buddhistic sensibilities. The doctrine of transmigration, through Buddhism, received new emphasis; and kindness to all living creatures was extolled to a supreme virtue. As a climax to this attitude of conciliation Hinduism finally adopted the Buddha as the ninth incarnation of Vishnu. Thus, by ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... indicated in their main phases; but here, the deliberate omission of certain points which had long to remain incomprehensible—and consequently dangerous—to the masses, makes obscure, and at times absurd, certain aspects of transmigration. I have heard a great Teacher clearly explain these points to some of the most enlightened of the Hindu members of the Theosophical Society, but I do not feel authorised to repeat these explanations, and so will leave this portion of the subject ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... early Vedic period many of the corruptions of later times were unknown. There was no distinct doctrine of caste, no transmigration, no mist of pantheism, no idol-worship, no widow-burning, and no authorized infanticide. The abominable tyranny which was subsequently imposed upon woman was unknown; the low superstitions of the aboriginal tribes had not been adopted; nor, on the other hand, had ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... peri archon] I. 7, belong to the number of the angels. This is a genuinely Greek idea. The doctrine of the preexistence of human souls was probably set forth by Clement in the Hypotyposes. The theory of the transmigration of souls was probably found there also (Phot. Biblioth. 109). In the Adumbrat., which has been preserved to us, the former doctrine is, however, contested and is not found in the ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... were other physical impossibilities, too. A sub-commissary of the Intendence, an agreeable and cultivated bachelor in kerseymere breeches, Hessian boots, and a blue coat embroidered with silver lace, who affected to believe in the transmigration of souls, suggested that the two had met perhaps in some previous existence. The feud was in the forgotten past. It might have been something quite inconceivable in the present state of their being; but their souls remembered the animosity, and manifested an instinctive antagonism. He developed ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... broughtest man into this world, by giving him a helper fit for him here; so, whether it be thy will to continue me long thus, or to dismiss me by death, be pleased to afford me the helps fit for both conditions, either for my weak stay here, or my final transmigration from hence. And if thou mayst receive glory by that way (and by all ways thou mayst receive glory), glorify thyself in preserving this body from such infections as might withhold those who would come, or endanger them who do come; and preserve this soul in the faculties thereof from all such distempers ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... often be repeated, for man is either risen too high or too far fallen to live well in the sole company of animals and flowers. What sociologists call the consciousness of kind is as vital to man as the consciousness of self; and to pine for adoption into an alien kind is vain on this side transmigration. ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... fear; 60 Of that great portraiture so true A copy pencil never drew. My Muse her song had ended here, But both their Genii straight appear, Joy and amazement her did strike: Two twins she never saw so like. 'Twas taught by wise Pythagoras, One soul might through more bodies pass. Seeing such transmigration there, She thought it not a fable here. 70 Such a resemblance of all parts, Life, death, age, fortune, nature, arts; Then lights her torch at theirs, to tell, And show the world this parallel: Fix'd and contemplative their looks, Still turning over Nature's books; ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... road to it is the milky way—a notion, by the way, which Beausobre and others have traced in the remains of the Manicheans, and other Eastern philosophers. The Americans believe in the existence of souls distinct from bodies, and many of them in the transmigration of souls. According to Loskiel, they declare, 'that Indians cannot die eternally; for even Indian corn is vivified, and rises again.' The general opinion among them is, that the souls of the good alone go to a place abounding in all earthly pleasures, while the wicked ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... overwhelms him, is made by the bardic clan as miserable, as desolate as his youth was joyous. Again, Finn lives to be an old man, but the immortal was in him, and either he has been born again in several re-incarnations (for the Irish held from time to time the doctrine of the transmigration of souls), or he sleeps, like Barbarossa, in a secret cavern, with all his men around him, and beside him the mighty horn of the Fianna, which, when the day of fate and freedom comes, will awaken ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... to replace poor old Rosebud by a second husband. The last whom we shall enumerate, although not the least, was a very remarkable character of that day, being no other than Cooke, the Pythagorean, from the county of Waterford. He held, of course, the doctrines of Pythagoras, and believed in the transmigration of souls. He lived upon a vegetable diet, and wore no clothing which had been taken or made from the wool or skins of animals, because he knew that they! must have been killed before these exuviae could be applied ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... of my readers were equally guilty with myself, and that their deeds would look no better in print. The next year I sometimes caught a mess of fish for my dinner, and once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which ravaged my beanfield—effect his transmigration, as a Tartar would say—and devour him, partly for experiment's sake; but tho it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, I saw that the longest use would not make that a good practise, however it might ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... this frame we look upon, hath been upon our trenchers; in brief, we have devoured ourselves. I cannot believe the wisdom of Pythagoras did ever positively, and in a literal sense, affirm his metempsychosis, or impossible transmigration of the souls of men into beasts. Of all metamorphoses or transmigrations, I believe only one, that is of Lot's wife; for that of Nabuchodonosor proceeded not so far. In all others I conceive there is no further verity than is ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... European poets have faintly indicated the woman's armpit as a centre of sexual attraction, it is among Eastern poets that we may find the idea more directly and naturally expressed. Thus, in a Chinese drama ("The Transmigration of Yo-Chow," Mercure de France, No. 8, 1901) we find a learned young doctor addressing the following ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Egypt that Pythagoras owed his favourite doctrine of the Metempsychosis or transmigration of souls.(340) The Egyptians believed, that at the death of men their souls transmigrated into other human bodies; and that, if they had been vicious, they were imprisoned in the bodies of unclean or ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... going on; and 'I' have no more permanence than the flame. 'I' only appear to be there as long as the process of life goes on. And as the flame only continues so long as there is something for it to feed on, so the process of transmigration or re-birth continues only so long as the thirst for being continues: the escape from re-birth is conditional on the extinction of that thirst or desire; and the disciple who has succeeded in putting off lust and desire has attained to deliverance from ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... understanding, mind and will"), and Ishwara emanating from It, the Jainas and the Buddhists believe in no Creator of the Universe, but teach only the existence of Swabhawati, a plastic, infinite, self-created principle in Nature. Still they firmly believe, as do all Indian sects, in the transmigration of souls. Their fear, lest, by killing an animal or an insect, they may, perchance, destroy the life of an ancestor, develops their love and care for every living creature to an almost incredible extent. Not only ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... 45. l. 13. In some former life committed. The soul, in its transmigration, expiates the sins committed in a former state of being. This necessary corollary from the doctrine of the metempsychosis appear to have prevailed among the pharisaic Jews in the time of our Saviour: "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... man that," he continued. "It is a pity he should be a priest of so absurd a faith. Do you know anything about Buddhism? The Buddhists believe in the transmigration of souls (the doctrine of the metempsychosis, as it is called). In that respect they are like the followers of Brahma. It is doubtful, indeed, which is the older faith of the two—whether Brahminism is a corruption of Buddhism, ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... January 6, old style, just four years to a day before I was born. The account we received of his life and character from some old people at Ecton, I remember, struck you as something extraordinary. "Had he died on the same day," you said, "one might have supposed a transmigration." ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... treasuring them up in the shape of {21} mummies in shaft-like passages and mortuary chambers. Through this belief, the priests, who, as judges of the dead, possessed the power of giving up the bodies of the sinful to corruption, and by this means occasioning the transmigration of their souls into the bodies of animals, obtained immense authority. Notwithstanding the magnificence of their architectural productions, and the vast technical skill and dexterity in sculpture and mechanical appliances which they display, the Egyptians have produced but little in literature ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... meditating subject has to be ascertained no less than the nature of the object of meditation and of the mode of meditation. The question then arises whether the meditating Self is to be viewed as the knowing, doing, and enjoying Self, subject to transmigration; or as that Self which Prajpati describes (Ch. Up. VIII, 1), viz. a Self free from all sin and imperfection.—Some hold the former view, on the ground that the meditating Self is within a body. For as long as the Self dwells within a body, it is a knower, doer, enjoyer, and ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... the way, "Week! week!" was the feeble response. Did we get deep in poetry, romance, or metaphysics, through the most brilliant quotation, the sublimest climax, the most acute distinction, came in "Week! week! week!" I began to feel as if the old story of transmigration were true, and the souls of half a dozen quaint and ancient satirists had got into the turkeys. I could not endure it! Was I to be squeaked out of all my wisdom, and knowledge, and device, after this fashion? Never! I began, too, to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... which I am now dealing, Rossetti read aloud a fragment of a story written about the period of Hand and Soul. It was to be entitled St. Agnes of Intercession, and it dealt in a mystic way with the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. He constantly expressed his intention of finishing the story, and said that, although in its existing condition it was fully as long as the companion story, it would require twice as much more to complete it. During the time of our stay at Birchington, at the beginning of ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... example, with respect to the Gadarene miracle, it is one question whether, at a certain time and place, a raving madman became sane, and a herd of swine rushed into the lake of Tiberias; and quite another, whether the cause of these occurrences was the transmigration of certain devils from the man into the pigs. And again, it is one question whether Jesus made a long oration on a certain occasion, mentioned in the first Gospel; altogether another, whether more ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... was echoed through the whole country, and the transmigration of the Pandour Trenck, from earth to heaven, by St. Francis, proclaimed. The clue to this labyrinth of miracles, known only to me, is truly as follows:—He possessed the secret of what is called the aqua tofana, and had determined on death. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... omnipotence of the Godhead, metempsychosis, or the doctrine and the transmigration of soul —not into the bodies of animals, as it obtained and still obtains in the East, but into those of other human beings—the eternal duration of existing substances, material and spiritual, consequently the immortality of the human ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... positivism most emphatically repudiates. In the first place, so far from being based on exact thought, Buddhism takes for its very foundation four great mysteries, that are explicitly beyond the reach either of proof or reason; and of these the foremost and most intelligible is the transmigration and renewal of the existence of the individual. It is by this mystical doctrine, and by this alone, that Buddhism gains a hold on the common heart of man. This is the great fulcrum of its lever. Then further—and this is more important still—whereas the doctrine of Western ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... country]. The lock was opened with the assistance of many people united, and they carried in the corpse and the chest of food. A priest came up to me, and began to console me, saying, "Man is born one day, and one day dies; such is the [mode of] transmigration in this world; now these, thy wife, thy son, thy wealth, and forty days' food are placed here; take them, and remain here until the great idol is favourable to thee." In my wrath I wished to curse the idol, the inhabitants of that place, and their manners and customs, and to inflict blows and ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... thou wert formed, heaven did a man begin; But the brute soul, by chance, was shuffled in. In woods and wilds thy monarchy maintain, Where valiant beasts, by force and rapine, reign. In life's next scene, if transmigration be, Some bear, or lion, is reserved ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... to the Indians," said Pownal, in a low tone, "whenever I hear them spoken of. It appears to me, sometimes," continued he, smiling, "as if I were a sort of relation. Were I a believer in the transmigration of souls, I should think I had been, in some ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... in transmigration of souls, a quiet man who seldom volunteered remarks on any subject, stepped forward and began seriously to ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... edifices, from which the smoke of burning flesh ascends continually. Cremation, with the Hindu, takes the place of burial. The ashes are collected and are preserved in a tomb. To die in Benares, and to have a temple for a tomb, is the surest passport to happiness in a future state, since the transmigration of souls into higher or lower forms is an essential doctrine ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... referred to the dangers of the climb, but also to a mysterious menace of tupapaus, or ghosts. I had seen a canoe with the head of an eel carved in wood, and had heard often a hesitant reference to a legend of metempsychosis, of a human and eel transmigration. The chief, after much persuasion, said that the clans of Mataiea had always believed they were descended directly from eels; that an eel of Lake Vaihiria had been the progenitor of all the people of the valley. A vahine of another clan had been overcome by the eel's sorcery, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... elevated world; certainly not the final repose of the just or the steps of the throne of God, but it is as if you were walking in the bazaars of Paradise—one of those Buddhist Paradises where the souls of the moderately pure find temporary rest from the whirl of transmigration, where the very lotus flowers are golden and the leaves of the trees are golden bells that tinkle in ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... most widespread among the Chinese is Buddhism (which was imported from India), though ancestor worship is still universal. Women are the principal worshipers, yet the Chinese believe that women have no souls. The belief in transmigration of souls is implicit, and this is used to keep woman in a most degraded condition. If a woman is obedient to her husband and his relatives, and is the mother of sons, she may hope to return to this world, in the future, as a ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... 43. The perpetual mutability of the forms of matter seems to have struck the philosophers of great antiquity; the system of transmigration taught by Pythagoras, in which the souls of men were supposed after death to animate the bodies of a variety of animals, appears to have arisen from this source. He had observed the perpetual changes of organic ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... appear among us every Day in the critical Juncture of their Transmigration, just when they have so much of the Man left as to be known by their Names, and enough of the Devil taken up to settle their Characters? This Easiness of the Devil's access to these People, and the great Convenience it is to ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... and phraseology of the transmigration theory are merely temporary forms in which a deep thought clothes itself: at any rate, they are not necessary adjuncts of the thought; nor do they preclude sympathy with the following condensed statement ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... are the guiding principles of mankind. All have felt and recognized that loftiest of all truths, the communion of the living and the dead, and have given it various names designating the same mysterious verity: the Christians know it as revival of merit, the Buddhists as reincarnation, or transmigration of souls, and the Japanese as Shintoism, or ancestor-worship. The last are more fully convinced than any other nation that the dead do not cease to live and that they direct all our actions, are exalted by our virtues ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... remembered this statement, questioned other Bacchantes about these things, and heard the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul confirmed. Hence, during many a solitary ride, while the cart rolled slowly along, she pondered over the thought that Juliane's soul had lived again in foolish Julie. How? Why? She did not rack her brains on those points. What had been a fancy, slowly became a fixed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... innocent eyes demurely to his face. "You are so kind. I am deeply interested just now In the Japanese conception of the transmigration of souls." ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... Among the glowing embers red. A Fiery Furnace, to his mind, Hygiene and Luxury combined. He was, if I may put it so, A Saurian Abednigo. He loved to climb with nimble ease The branches of the Gas-log Trees Where oft on chilly winter nights He rose to dizzy Fahrenheits. Believers in Soul Transmigration See in him the Re-incarnation Of those Sad Plagues of summer, who Ask, "Is it ...
— The Mythological Zoo • Oliver Herford
... though their distinct and successive dominions were severally swept from the earth, yet their lives,—the diabolical principles by which they had been actuated survived; and these passed, by a kind of transmigration, into the body of the fourth beast. This transition of animating principles or imperial policy of inveterate hostility to the kingdom of God, we think, is plainly indicated by the three features of this beast of the sea, the "leopard, bear ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... century. After the introduction and triumph of Christianity in Britain, for several centuries the two systems of thought and ritual mutually influenced each other, corrupting and corrupted.4 A striking example in point is this. The notion of a punitive and remedial transmigration belonged to Druidism. Now, Taliesin, a famous Welsh bard of the sixth century, locates this purifying metempsychosis in the Hell of Christianity, whence the soul gradually rises again to felicity, the way for it having been opened ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... creed of the first water. Who bids for this handsome article? What gentleman says Superhumanity? Harmony of the Universe! Transmigration ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... great transmigration of 300,000 Calmucks, or Torgouts, happened in the year 1771. The original narrative of Kien-long, the reigning emperor of China, which was intended for the inscription of a column, has been translated by the missionaries of Pekin, (Memoires sur la Chine, tom. i. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... facetious lawyer conversing on the subject of the transmigration of souls, the judge said, "If you and I were turned into a horse and an ass, which of them would you prefer to be?"—"The ass, to be sure," replied the lawyer.—"Why?"—"Because," replied the lawyer, "I have heard of an ass being a judge, ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... Australians they carefully refrain from mentioning the name of anyone who is dead, and like them, believe in the transmigration of souls—after death they become Malays (the first strangers they had come in contact with) in precisely the same way as in New South Wales, etc. "When black fellow die, ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... follies of folk-lore, let us take the case of the transmigration of stories, and the alleged unity of their source. Story after story the scientific mythologists have cut out of its place in history, and pinned side by side with similar stories in their museum of fables. ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... confused belief in all things being on one level has thus introduced vegetables into the dominion of myth. As far as possessing souls is concerned, Mr. Tylor has proved that plants are as well equipped as men or beasts or minerals.(1) In India the doctrine of transmigration widely and clearly recognises the idea of trees or smaller plants being animated by human souls. In the well-known ancient Egyptian story of "The Two Brothers,"(2) the life of the younger is practically merged in that of the acacia tree ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... distinctly acknowledged, the conception of the human soul became more developed. The succession, or alternation of life and death, had occurred to Heracleitus. The Eleatic Parmenides had stumbled upon the modern thesis, that 'thought and being are the same.' The Eastern belief in transmigration defined the sense of individuality; and some, like Empedocles, fancied that the blood which they had shed in another state of being was crying against them, and that for thirty thousand years they were to be 'fugitives ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... sorts of supernatural things-in the doctrine of transmigration, second-sight, and every ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... sacrifice, though it doubtless came in play. But still less does it appear probable that, as is often said, aversion to beast-sacrifice is due to the doctrine of karma, and re-birth in animal form. The karma notion begins to appear in the Brahmanas, but not in the sams[a]ra shape of transmigration. It was surely not because the Hindu was afraid of eating his deceased grandmother that he first abstained from meat. For, long after the doctrine of karma and sams[a]ra[47] is established, animal sacrifices ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... peregrinations on earth he would hang a bottle on the wall at night and jump into it, emerging on the following morning. He frequently returned to earth, and at times tried to bring about the transmigration of others. ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... you that there is in the Veda no trace of metempsychosis or that transmigration of souls from human to animal bodies which is generally supposed to be a distinguishing feature of Indian religion. Instead of this, we find what is really the sine qua non of all real religion, a belief in immortality, and in personal immortality. Without a belief in personal immortality, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... then said lightly: "Do you suppose, Doc, that woman's mummy is in existence? I should like to find it. I've an idea she left some hieroglyphic message for me on her mummy-case, and doesn't propose to let me rest easy until I find and translate it. Now, if I believed in transmigration of souls—do you see any mark of Antony about me? Say, though, just imagine the spirit of Marcus Antonius in a rubber apron, making an analysis of oleomargarine! But here we are; good-bye," and ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... made his "barrel" in ready-made clothing, felt in no position to contradict him when he stated his belief in the theory of transmigration as expounded by Pythagoras, and expressed the opinion that by chance the soul of Cleopatra might be occupying the graceful body of the club cat. Abe was not acquainted with the doctrine of Pythagoras, though he had heard somewhere that the lady was a huzzy; so he ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... horror of the Druidical groves is again alluded to in Book III., lines 462-489. Dean Merivale remarks (chapter li.) on this passage, that in the despair of another life which pervaded Paganism at the time, the Roman was exasperated at the Druids' assertion of the transmigration of souls. But the passage seems also to betray a lingering suspicion that the doctrine may in some shape be true, however horrible were the rites and sacrifices. The reality of a future life was a part of Lucan's ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... tells us that the Druids taught the doctrine of transmigration of souls, and that their course of education included astronomy, geography, physics, and theology. The attributes of their chief God corresponded, in his view, with those of the Roman Mercury. Of the minor divinities, one, like ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... in saying that they are all of Oriental origin. Pythagoras borrowed from thence his kindred theory of the metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls. But he was more consistent than modern philosophers; he recognised a downward development as well as an upward, and made morality and immorality the crisis and turning-point of change—a bold lion developed into a brave warrior, a drunken ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... are taken up to God, he says, and live forever,[254] communing alone with the Alone.[255] The unrighteous souls, Philo sometimes suggests, in accordance with current Pythagorean ideas, are reincarnated according to a system of transmigration within the human species ([Greek: palengenesia]).[256] Yet the sinner suffers his full doom on earth. The true Hades is the life of the wicked man who has not repented, exposed to vengeance, with uncleansed guilt, obnoxious to every curse.[257] And ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... My transmigration was disappointing as an experience. It was nothing more than going to sleep and dreaming about circles—orange circles, yellow circles, with a thousand others of graduated shades between, and so on through the spectrum till you pass absolute ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... of prey, or any of the Picus family even. Does it signify nothing? I gaze into the eyes of the Gazelle,—eyes that will admit of no epithet or comparison,—and the old question of preexistence and transmigration rises afresh in my mind, and something like a dim recognition of kinship passes. I turn this Thrush in my hand,—I remember its strange ways, the curious look it gave me, its ineffable music, its freedom, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... a healthy mind in a maggoty universe really after all worth it? Are there not soporific dreams and sweet deliriums more soothing than Reason? If Transmigration can make clear the dark Problem of Evil; if Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy can free us from the dominion of Death; if the belief that Bacon wrote Shakespeare gives a peace that the world cannot give, why pedantically reject such kindly solace? Why ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... far as regarded private rights —those of traffic and barter as well as those of inheritance.(34) Presumably about the same time the full right of free migration allowed to the Latin communities hitherto established—the title of every one of their burgesses to gain by transmigration to Rome full burgess-rights there—was, for the Latin colonies of later erection, restricted to those persons who had attained to the highest office of the community in their native home; these alone were allowed to exchange their colonial burgess-rights ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... bright and calm night, when falling stars made people think of unknown metamorphoses and the transmigration of souls, who knows whether tall cavalry soldiers in their cuirasses and sitting as motionless as statues on their horses, had watched by the dead man's coffin, which was resting, covered with wreaths, under the porch of the heroes, every stone of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... well-sized Newfoundland dogs, and hurrying nimbly along, with a speed that betokened a wholesome remembrance of a good many hard thrashings in the past and a reasonable dread of similar ones in the future. If I held the doctrine of transmigration, I should be firmly persuaded that the souls of parish beadles, drunken captains, and other petty tyrants, shifted quarters into the bodies of Jamaica negroes' donkeys. One patriotic black woman, whose donkey was rather refractory, relieved her mind by exclaiming, in a tone of infinite disgust, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the body, the intelligible and unseen to the visible and corporeal. There is the same distinction between knowledge and opinion which occurs in the Theaetetus and Republic, the same enmity to the poets, the same combination of music and gymnastics. The doctrine of transmigration is still held by him, as in the Phaedrus and Republic; and the soul has a view of the heavens in a prior state of being. The ideas also remain, but they have become types in nature, forms of men, animals, birds, fishes. And the attribution of evil to physical causes accords ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... preserved ears of maize in tombs, which, judging from their construction, belong to a period anterior to the dynasty of the Incas; and these were fragments of two kinds of maize which do not now grow in Peru. If I believed in the transmigration and settlement of Asiatic races on the west coast of America, I should consider it highly probable that maize, cotton, and the banana, had been brought from Asia to the great west coast. But the supposed epoch of this alleged immigration must carry ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... pretend to say, from knowing the circumstances of the parents, strangle the child without the knowledge of the mother, telling her that the infant was still-born. Others have ascribed the practice to a belief in the metempsycosis, or transmigration of souls into other bodies, that the parents, seeing their children must be doomed to poverty, think it is better at once to let the soul escape in search of a more happy asylum, than to linger in one condemned to want and wretchedness. No degree ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... of open-work socks in the presence of the fair sex. And yet—the lady in this case was to all appearances soundly and securely asleep; the mouse, on the other hand, seemed to be trying to crowd a Wanderjahr into a few strenuous minutes. If there is any truth in the theory of transmigration, this particular mouse must certainly have been in a former state a member of the Alpine Club. Sometimes in its eagerness it lost its footing and slipped for half an inch or so; and then, in fright, or more ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... at the reflection for ever, I should not have recognized either my form or visage. I thought my soul had undergone a real transmigration, and not carried to its new body a particle of the original one. What appeared the most singular was, that I did not seem even to myself at all a ridiculous or outre figure; so admirably had the skill of Mr. Jonson been employed. ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... help and cheer hidden in a simple little story? Was it, as I like to think, God-given, a treasure sent from above? Or would you rather think it an inheritance from some ancestor, a writer, a teller of tales? Or perhaps you believe in the transmigration of souls, and think that the spirit of some AEsop of old, who spoke in parables, had entered the frail crippled body of our little Lib, and spoke through her pinched pale lips. I leave you your theories, ...
— Story-Tell Lib • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... much more effective way of transmigration by the kind assistance of the ant who colonizes the scalebug as well for its wax as it colonizes the Aphis for its honey. Birds on their feathers and the gardener himself on his ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... Trismegistus, and half a dozen old philosophers. I have got a beautiful cage made, in which I keep these extraordinary creatures, and feed them with bread and honey, as they seem to believe in a kind of doctrine of transmigration, and will not touch flesh. Hermes Trismegistus especially is a most antique looking being, with a beard half a yard long, covered with a robe of golden embroidery, and prates like a parrot. He will cut a very ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... which have taken place for the punishment of tyrants, or removing some great natural calamity; and the tenth is to take place at the dissolution of the universe. Several of the Avators inculcate the transmigration of souls, and the ninth of them, which forbids the sacrifices of animals, gave rise to the religion of Gauda Boodma, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... while looking up a quotation for Felix in Southey's Doctor, lit on his quaint theory of the human soul having previously migrated through successive stages of vegetable and animal life, and still retaining something characteristic from each transmigration. Her brothers were a good deal tickled with the idea; and Lance exclaimed, 'I know who must have been rhubarb, queen-wasp, and ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... history of a velvet cloak belonging to the late Milnwood, which had first been converted to a velvet doublet, and then into a pair of breeches, and appeared each time as good as new, when Morton interrupted her account of its transmigration to bid ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... parental roof again; and at night, when the brother and sister were asleep in the garret, each one of them would wake the other when they heard Black Marianne down stairs, running to and fro and muttering to herself. But Damie's transmigration to Black Marianne's was the cause of new trouble. Damie was exceedingly discontented at having been compelled to learn a miserable trade that was fit only for a cripple. He wanted to be a mason, and although Amrei was very much ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... well here. Many sought the mysteries. I have been unusually successful in Riverbank." He stopped short and looked at Philo Gubb suspiciously. "You don't believe in transmigration, ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... the poet's conception of such a divinity? It varies, of course. There is the occasional belief, just mentioned, in the transmigration of genius, but that goes back, in the end, to the belief that all genius is a memory of pre-existence; that is, dropping (or varying) the myth, that the soul of the poet is not chained to the physical world, but has the power of discerning ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... meditated deeply on the 'way of life of Pythagoras' (Rep.) and his followers. Slight traces of Pythagoreanism are to be found in the mystical number of the State, in the number which expresses the interval between the king and the tyrant, in the doctrine of transmigration, in the music of the spheres, as well as in the great though secondary importance ascribed to ...
— The Republic • Plato
... as these, and there were many such, threw an air of mystery round the sweeps, and produced for them some of those good effects which animals derive from the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. No one (except the masters) thought of ill-treating a sweep, because no one knew who he might be, or what nobleman's or gentleman's son he might turn out. Chimney-sweeping was, by many believers in the marvellous, considered as a sort of probationary term, at an earlier ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... civilisation Its features in Ceylon The various forms elsewhere Points that distinguish it from Brahmanism Buddhist theory of human perfection Its treatment of caste Its respect for other religions Anecdote, illustrative of (note) Its cosmogony Its doctrine of "necessity" Transmigration Illustration from Lucan (note) The priesthood and its attributes Buddhist morals Prohibition to take life Form of worship Brahmanical corruptions Failure of Buddhism as a sustaining faith Its moral influence over the people Demon-worship Trees dedicated to demons (note) Devil priests and their ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... is so complex and so dominant, that the animal is too merely an animal to him. To Indians the idea of the transmigration of the soul from animal to man, and man to animal, does not seem strange, and so from our scriptures pity for all sentient creatures has not been banished as a ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... personality will be entirely absorbed in his essence, the human being lost in the Deity. Five laws of virtue must be observed, ten kinds of sin avoided; and the Buddhist expects that transgressions will be punished by the transmigration of his soul into some inferior creature, whence he will rise by successive stages into another trial as a man, and gradually improving by the help of contemplation, and of a sublime state of annihilation of all self-consciousness, ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... much better. But all this is conjecture: who knows that I have not hit on the very plan he adopted? Perhaps the whole race of paradoxers on hopeless subjects are Michael's subordinates, condemned to transmigration after transmigration, until their ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... certain about: not quite so confident, however, regarding another doctrine, fascinating as he finds it, which seemed to afford an explanation of this leading psychological fact of an antecedent knowledge within us—the doctrine namely of metempsychosis, of the transmigration of souls through various forms of the bodily life, [66] under a law of moral retribution, somewhat oracularly suggested in the ancient poets, by Hesiod and Pindar, but a matter of formal consciousness with the Pythagoreans, and at last inseparably ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... cross one another exactly in a point; and that it may do the like also with all the Rays that, coming from a lateral point, fall upon any other Hemisphere; for if so, there were to be hoped a perfection of Dioptricks, and a transmigration into heaven, even whil'st we remain here upon earth in the flesh, and a descending or penetrating into the center and innermost recesses of the earth, and all earthly bodies; nay, it would open not onely a cranney, but a large window ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... reluctant fingers? Oh, could slavery exist long if it did not sit on a commercial throne? I have read somewhere, if I remember aright, of a Hindoo being loth to cut a tree because being a believer in the transmigration of souls, he thought the soul of his father had passed into it ... Oh, friend, beneath the most delicate preparations of the cane can you not see the stinging lash and clotted whip? I have reason to be thankful that I ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... is hostile to God and man, and it must be expiated by death in the most terrible tortures. Metamorphosis is a common art amongst Mpongwe magicians: this vulgar materialism, of which Ovid sang, must not be confounded with the poetical Hindu metempsychosis or transmigration of souls which explains empirically certain physiological mysteries. Here the adept naturally becomes a gorilla or a leopard, as he would be a lion in South Africa, a hyena in Abyssinia and the Somali country, and a loup-garou ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... and then up pink stairs. A pink door stopped him at last. It might have hid mysterious and questionable things, but it said laconically 'Push,' and he courageously pushed... He was in a kind of boudoir thickly populated with tables and chairs. The swift transmigration from the blatant street to a drawing-room had a startling effect on him: it caused him to whip off his hat as though his hat had been red hot. Except for two tall elegant creatures who stood together at the other end of the boudoir, the ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett |
