"Transmigration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... adepti were reproached by the Church, gave to most of the languages of Europe a revolting word, modified from the name 'Bulgarian.' The origin of the earlier Bohemian Hussite sects, with their strange devil-worship and doctrine of transmigration, was manifestly Oriental. At a later date the very name of the mystic Jacob Boehme—Jacob the Bohemian—indicates some secret alliance with Slavonian associations; and if the connection of the name with strange Oriental speculations be obscure, that of the teachings of 'the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to shew upon occasion all the little Learning he has picked up, told us yesterday at the Club, that he thought there might be a great deal said for the Transmigration of Souls, and that the Eastern Parts of the World believed in that Doctrine to this day. Sir Paul Rycaut, [1] says he, gives us an Account of several well-disposed Mahometans that purchase the Freedom of any little Bird they see ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... what she called "beet-masters to the new," and was far advanced in the 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 ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... quotation may apply to references to the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls in Shakespeare's earlier plays and other Elizabethan literature; and little can be based upon the "Et tu, Brute" quotation, as Ben Jonson may have drawn it from the same source ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... prayer, in which they all joined willingly. On telling a Ghadamsee I ate some Thob, he said, "Ah, that's forbidden; the Thob was formerly a human being, before it had its present shape. Don't you see its hands are still human?" The notion of the transmigration of souls lingers in these parts, but it is a doctrine not generally received. I observed this man afterwards fattening his sheep with date-stones, broken into small pieces. Almost every family, however small, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... 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
... William Brekespere, 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 ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... life than he was, consoled themselves with the old country proverb, 'Ah, well, we shall live till we die, if the pigs don't eat us, and then we shall go acorning'—a clear survival of the belief in transmigration, for he who is eaten by a pig becomes a pig, and goeth forth with swine ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... it to the midwife, who they 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. ...
— 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
... Cherry, 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 ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Many Indians believe in the transmigration of souls, and some of them profess to remember previous ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... The modern doctrine of the Correlation and Homogenity of all Forces clearly proves that they are not many, but one—"a dynamic self-identity masked by transmigration."—Martineau's "Essays," pp. 134-144.] ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... 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 not mean that both body ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... holding with Plato, that such heroical souls, who have wanted but little of true greatness, are hereafter by some strait discipline brought to a better mind; perhaps, as many ancients have held with the Indian Gymnosophists, by transmigration into the bodies of those animals whom they have resembled in their passions; and indeed, if Sir Thomas Stukely's soul should now animate the body of a lion, all I can say is that he would be a very valiant and royal lion; and also doubtless become in due time heartily ashamed ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... of Beaumont and Fletcher's play of "The Scornful Lady," Morecraft, an usurer, turns a cutter, or, as we now say, a buck. Dryden seems to allude to Ravenscroft's play of "The Citizen turned Gentleman," a transmigration somewhat resembling that of cutting Morecraft. This play was now acting by the Duke's company in Dorset Gardens, which, from its situation, says Mr Malone, was much frequented by citizens, as ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... recurrence of historic ideas is one of their most striking features. The explanations offered for it have been various. The ancient doctrines of an exact repetition of events in the cycles of nature, and of the transmigration of souls, drew much support from it; and the modern modification of the latter theory as set forth by Wordsworth and Lessing, are distinctly derived from the same source. Rightly elucidated, the philosophical historian will find in it an invaluable clue to the unravelment of the ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... Timeball on the ballastoffice is down. Dunsink time. Fascinating little book that is of sir Robert Ball's. Parallax. I never exactly understood. There's a priest. Could ask him. Par it's Greek: parallel, parallax. Met him pike hoses she called it till I told her about the transmigration. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... 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 ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... 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 Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... 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
... the circumstance to my father, he informed me, to my astonishment and delight, that if the head of the mongrel Fiddle had been placed on the Stradivari, date 1710, from the Goding collection, it was now, as the effect of recent transmigration, on its own ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... passed the doctrine on to the Greeks. Its origin was in the words of Satan in Eden, "Ye shall not surely die." The pagans had their nether world of spirits, or their transmigration of souls with its ceaseless round from body to body, and the Roman Catholics their purgatory with its purifying fires. From these sources and not from the Word of God, the traditional view has come into modern Christendom, representing the Lord as unable ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... than any to be found in Ovid, and a transmigration of soul far beyond those imagined by the philosophers of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... reads Schubert's History of the Soul, and lives, for the most part, in the clouds of the Middle Ages. To him the spirit-world is still open. He believes in the transmigration of souls; and I dare say is now followingthe spirit of some departed friend, who has taken ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Meaning the "small vehicle, or conveyance." There are in Buddhism the triyana, or "three different means of salvation, i.e. of conveyance across the samsara, or sea of transmigration, to the shores of nirvana. Afterwards the term was used to designate the different phases of development through which the Buddhist dogma passed, known as the mahayana, hinayana, and madhyamayana." ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... whole 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 which is engraved with the name of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... 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
... kingdom of letters; Far happier than many a literary hack, He bore only paper-mill rags on his back (For It makes a vast difference which side the mill One expends on the paper his labor and skill); 130 So, when his soul waited a new transmigration, And Destiny balanced 'twixt this and that station, Not having much time to expend upon bothers, Remembering he'd had some connection with authors, And considering his four legs had grown paralytic,— She set him on two, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Cohen—who had 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 ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... 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 is there a hospital for invalid animals in ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... plant by itself demonstrates that the 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 where he has hidden his ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... 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 by Christ! Cautiously eliminating the Christian admixtures, the following ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the Souls Postexistence, if I may so call it; and that as Simonides describes Brutes entering into the Composition of Women, others have represented human Souls as entering into Brutes. This is commonly termed the Doctrine of Transmigration, which supposes that human Souls, upon their leaving the Body, become the Souls of such Kinds of Brutes as they most resemble in their Manners; or to give an Account of it as Mr. Dryden has described it in his Translation ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... forty-two judges of the dead pronounce sentence on the worth of the soul after it has been weighed by the goddess of truth and Thoth, who holds the office of writer in heaven, she could hope to meet her dear ones again, but only in case her unjustified soul were not obliged to enter on the career of transmigration through the bodies of different animals, and her body, to whom the soul had been entrusted, remained in a state of preservation. This, "if" filled her with a feverish restlessness. The doctrine that the well-being of the soul depended on the preservation of the earthly part of every ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... has been perfect sincerity, perfect intelligence, a desire to hear although not always to listen, and an unaffected eagerness to meet concessions. You have, with Burly, none of the dangers that attend debate with Spring-Heel'd Jack; who may at any moment turn his powers of transmigration on yourself, create for you a view you never held, and then furiously fall on you for holding it. These, at least, are my two favourites, and both are loud, copious, intolerant talkers. This argues that I myself am in the ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... enormous 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. The process is industrious, it is fascinating, and the whole ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... One changes one's sky but not one's soul.], is an old observation; I passed this afternoon in confirming the truth of it among the English traders settled here: whose conversation, manners, ideas, and language, were so truly Londonish, so little changed by transmigration, that I thought some enchantment had suddenly operated, and carried me to drink tea in the regions ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... 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 ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... 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, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... 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 man, and thus have a chance ultimately ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... in all sorts of supernatural things-in the doctrine of transmigration, second-sight, and every other impossible ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... strict accountant then that she is now, and balanced her debit and credit columns with the same relentless accuracy. The "liver" of the last century has become, we are told, the "nerves" of to-day; which transmigration should be a bond of sympathy between the new woman and that unchangeable article, man. We have warmer spirits and a higher vitality than our home-keeping great-grandmothers ever had. We are seldom hysterical, and we never faint. If we are gay, our gayeties involve less exposure ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... instance, buried their dead in Varuna's "house of clay", while a growing proportion cremated their dead and worshipped Agni, the fire god. At the close of the Vedic period there were fresh invasions into middle India, and the "late comers" introduced new beliefs, including the doctrines of the Transmigration of Souls and of the Ages of the Universe. Goddesses also rose into prominence, and the Vedic gods became minor deities, and subject to Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. These "late comers" had undoubtedly ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... former state of being, which was granted him. From, Aethalides he became Euphorbus, who slew Patroclus at the siege of Troy. He then appeared as Hermotimus, then Pyrrhus, a fisherman of Delos, and finally Pythagoras. He said that a period of time was interposed between each transmigration, during which he visited the seat of departed souls; and he professed to relate a part of the wonders he had seen. [64] He is said to have eaten sparingly and in secret, and in all respects to have given himself out for a being not subject to the ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... you yet. When a judge, and a Republican at that, finds it hard to vindicate his party's doings, and finds statistics overwhelmingly against his party's policy on moral questions, he will look for better things in better places. At this period of his political transmigration I believe a man is more to be pitied for misplaced confidence than blamed for tardy understanding. No, father, not a statistic to-night, unless you compel me to ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... in spirits and shades. Such a complex elaboration takes time, since it involves a previous creation of powers, spirits or the shades of men; these lead to the belief in independent spirits of various origin, which people the heavens and all parts of the world. Hence arose the belief in transmigration, the necessary prelude to the theory of the incarnation, which was ultimately constituted by fetishism. The comparative study of languages shows that including the Aryan and Semitic races, the belief in spirits was developed in all peoples, and in all of them we also find a belief ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... 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 ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... concerning Hades, wherein the souls of all men are confined until a proper season, which God hath determined, when he will make a resurrection of all men from the dead, not procuring a transmigration of souls from one body to another, but raising again those very bodies, which you Greeks, seeing to be dissolved, do not believe [their resurrection]. But learn not to disbelieve it; for while you believe that the soul is created, and yet is ...
— An Extract out of Josephus's Discourse to The Greeks Concerning Hades • Flavius Josephus
... 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 or fewer of the propositions ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... above all the philosophic lawgivers of antiquity for their care in impressing the doctrine of the soul's immortality on the minds of their people, as an operative and leading principle. This doctrine was inculcated on the scheme of Transmigration, which some imagine them to have derived from Pythagoras. But it is by no means necessary to resort to any particular teacher for an opinion which owes its birth to the weak struggles of unenlightened reason, and to mistakes natural to the human mind. The ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the material creation. It follows that all action tending to the reproduction of animal life is to be avoided, so that marriage was strongly discouraged. To the earlier views was added the doctrine of metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls, which, acting as a means of reward and retribution, seemed fully to account for man's sufferings. These views together explain the avoidance as food by the Cathari of everything which was the result of animal propagation, and also the severity of ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... were 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 Wasps ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... An essay of transmigration, in defence of Pythagoras: or, Adiscourse of natural philosophy. London, for T.Basset, ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... 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, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... distributed independently of merit. With Greek and Semite and Indian the conscience of man revolted against the moral indifference of nature. Instead of bringing in a verdict of guilty, they attempted reconciliation in various ways. Indian speculation invented or elaborated the theory of transmigration, in which the Karma or soul-character passed from individual to individual, the algebraic sums of happiness in the whole chain being proportional to merit. The Stoics were metaphysicians and imagined an immanent, omnipotent, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... faint memories of last year as though a century had lived and perished since then, seeing confusedly in their own lives the lives of others, and other existences in their own, until identity is almost gone in the endless transmigration of their souls from the shadow in one dream-tale to the wraith of themselves that dreams the next. So, in that hour, Unorna drifted through the changing scenes that a word had power to call up, scarce able, and wholly unwilling, to distinguish between ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... to say that he had received as a gift from Mercury the perpetual transmigration of his soul, so that it was constantly transmigrating and passing into all sorts ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... My transmigration from London to Lausanne could not be effected without interrupting the course of my historical labours, and a full twelvemonth was lost before I could resume the thread of regular and daily industry. In the fifth and sixth volumes the revolutions of the empire and the world are ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... "surrender of being," the "final redemption into that wondrous realm from which we wander farthest when we try to take it by force." For this realm he chooses death and night as symbols, but what he means to imply is the nirvana of Buddhistic philosophy, the final deliverance of the soul from transmigration. Such love as that of Tristan and Isolde presented itself to Wagner as ceaseless struggle and endless contradiction, and for this problem nirvana alone offers a happy outcome; it ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... and 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
... especially in the Orphic Mysteries, where it was a secret doctrine ([Greek: aporretos logos], Plat. Phaedr. 62) that "we men are here in a kind of prison," or in a tomb ([Greek: sema tines to soma einai tes psyches, os tethammenes en to paronti], Plat. Crat. 400). They also believed in transmigration of souls, and in a [Greek: kuklos tes geneseos] (rota fati et generationis). The "Orphic life," or rules of conduct enjoined upon these mystics, comprised asceticism, and, in particular, abstinence from flesh; and laid great stress on "following of God" ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... 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
... term for this transmigration, used by Pythagoreans and others, is [Greek: metangismos], the pouring of water from one vessel ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... 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
... actual—the soul is prior to 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 ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... that Jesus could have meant that John was the same individual as Elijah; nor could the people have so understood His words, since the false doctrine of transmigration or reincarnation of spirits was repudiated by the Jews.[790] The seeming difficulty is removed when we consider that, as the name appears in the New Testament, "Elias" is used for "Elijah,"[791] with ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... annihilated? It admits that the idea of personality which has deluded us through life may not be instantaneously extinguished at death, but may be lost by slow degrees. On this is founded the doctrine of transmigration. But at length reunion with the universal Intellect takes place, Nirwana is reached, oblivion is attained, a state that has no relation to matter, space, or time, the state into which the departed flame of the extinguished taper has gone, the state in which we were before we were born. This is ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... to represent these attributes: they believe in ten Avators, or incarnation of the Deity, nine of 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 ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... partial extinction by being merged in the Supreme, not to be confounded with Pari-nirwana 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
... destroy the very root from which arises the misery of this life. To accomplish this end, they will never be afraid of sacrificing their lives...." There follow, just as is usual with us, entangled arguments about self-sacrifice and kindness, about the transmigration of souls and about much else—all this for the sole purpose of concealing the simple and clear commandment of Buddha: not to kill. Further it is said: "The hand that is raised to strike and the eye that is fixed to take aim do not belong to the individual, ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy
... examples are renewed in every successive age. Thus, within these walls, the valor of WASHINGTON attracts the regard of CONDE; his modesty is applauded by TURENNE; his philosophy draws him to the bosom of CATINAT. A people who admit the ancient dogma of a transmigration of souls will often confess that the soul of Catinat dwells ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... 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 him ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Complexity of Egyptian polytheism Egyptian deities The worship of the sun The priestly caste of Egypt Power of the priests Future rewards and punishments Morals of the Egyptians Functions of the priests Egyptian ritual of worship Transmigration of souls Animal worship Effect of Egyptian polytheism on the Jews Assyrian deities Phoenician deities Worship of the sun Oblations and sacrifices Idolatry the sequence of polytheism Religion of the Persians Character of the early Iranians Comparative ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... blue sky, and that the 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 wander ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... 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 ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... 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 ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... prayer, personifying the omnipresent power of prayer, was adored. Thirty-three gods in all were invoked. The bodies of the dead were consumed on the funeral-pile. The soul survived the body, but the later doctrine of transmigration was unknown. All the attributes of sovereign power and majesty were collected in Varuna. No one can fathom him, but he sees and knows all. He is the upholder of order; just, yet the dispenser of grace, and merciful to the penitent. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... wife; therefore he could not have been a prophet sent by God. Akbar disbelieved the story of his night-journey to heaven. Meantime Akbar was eagerly learning the mysteries of other religions. He entertained Brahmans, Sufis, Parsis, and Christian fathers. He believed in the transmigration of the soul, in the supreme spirit, in the ecstatic reunion of the soul with God, in the deity of fire and the sun. He leaned toward Christianity; he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... replace him by somebody else the day after. So profoundly unimportant to them is their social identity, that they bandy it about with almost farcical freedom. Perhaps it is fitting that there should be some slight preparation in this world for a future transmigration of souls. Still one fails to conceive that the practice can be devoid of disadvantages even to its beneficiaries. To foreigners it proves disastrously perplexing. For if you chance upon a man whom you have not ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... individual 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, may become fit for his final absorption into the ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... question here. I may, however, mention that I have found very well 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 us back ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... approach to Tartarus, describing by the way its rulers and its horrors. Finally, they reach Elysium and gain entrance (645-757). The search among the shades of the Blessed for Anchises, and the meeting between father and son (758-828). Anchises explains the mystery of the Transmigration of Souls, and the book closes with the revelation to AEneas of the future greatness of Rome, whose heroes, from the days of the kings to the times of Augustus, pass in procession before him (829-1071). He is then dismissed ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... short, what I am not: what I am, and have been for many years, is next to be explained. Here it will not be improper to remind Sylvia, that there was formerly such a philosopher as Pythagoras, who, amongst other doctrines, taught the transmigration of souls, which, if she sincerely believes, she will not be much startled ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... Man Dying on a Cross Lagniappe Hail Mary! The Death of Columbine Pierrot Laughs The Transmigration of ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... Had atomic transmigration attempted to draw the shells back into the Time sphere to which they really belonged? Sutter was a logical man, and even as this thought came his mind rejected it. It must be Travail. He had taken a sample shell from the basket and even now perhaps was dickering with the officials of the Federal ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... of recognition in heaven," said Mr. Dempster. "Now, eternal existence without complete identity is not to me desirable. That our beloved ones no longer have the warm personal interest in us which they felt in life—that they are perhaps merged in the perfection of God, or undergoing transmigration out of one form of intelligence to another, without any recollection of what happened in a former state, is not consoling to the yearning human heart that never can forget, and with all the sufferings which memory may bring, ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... to follow, and hesitated to advance. Krishna insisted that it was unnecessary for him to lament, setting forth his reasons in what is known as the Bhagavat-gita, the divine song, in which he said it was no sin to slay a foe, since death is but a transmigration from one form to another. The soul can never cease to be; who then can destroy it? Therefore, when Arjuna slew his cousins he would merely remove their offensive bodies; their souls, unable to be destroyed, ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... 20th, 1414, lingering for a few days after a paralytic stroke, as stated in the story. His age was 61. The mantle of this cleverest man of his day—clever for evil—descended, a hundred years later, upon Stephen Gardiner. Any believer in transmigration could feel no doubt that the soul of the one man ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... himself could their quarrels compose; Till at length he determined that every bard Should (each in his turn) be patiently heard. First, one who believed he excell'd in translation,[1] Founds his claim on the doctrine of man's transmigration: "Since the soul of great Milton was given to me, I hope the convention will quickly agree."— "Agree;" quoth Apollo: "from whence is this fool? Is he just come from reading Pythagoras at school? Begone, sir, you've got your subscriptions in ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Some, however, there still are, so thoroughly corrupted, that they are not fit to be intrusted with human bodies, and these are made into brute animals, lions, tigers, cats, dogs, monkeys, etc. This is what the ancients called Metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls; a doctrine which is still held by the natives of India, who scruple to destroy the life even of the most insignificant animal, not knowing but it may be one of their ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... to his hand, if so be he might mould and purify it, Buddha was a liberator and reformer in respect to what had gone before. Let us take, for example, the doctrine of metempsychosis, or, as it is commonly called, the "transmigration of souls." No doubt, there is a great deal connected with this doctrine in the Buddhist books that cannot but appear to us puerile and shocking; but still, we do not well, we do not justly, if, as do so many, we fasten such strange fancies ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... 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 ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... famous account of how Rhampsonitis lost his treasures and failed to find the robber until he offered him a free pardon; having found him he said the Egyptians excelled all the world in wisdom, and the robber all the Egyptians. The Pyramids are described; transmigration is discussed and emphasis is laid upon the growing popularity of Greek mercenaries. The book closes with the brilliant reign of Amasis, who made overtures to the Greek oracles, allied himself with Samos and permitted the foundation of an important ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... a style of playing on the piano which was correct and hard. Her spiritualism (Madame Dambreuse believed in the transmigration of souls into the stars) did not prevent her from taking the utmost care of her cash-box. She was haughty towards her servants; her eyes remained dry at the sight of the rags of the poor. In the expressions of which she habitually made use a candid egoism manifested itself: "What ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... of Heaven and at the Confucian Temple. But backed by Confucianism it denounces the slaughter for food of the ox which tills the soil. Some lines of doggerel to this effect, based upon the Buddhist doctrine of the transmigration of souls and put into the mouth of an ox, have been rendered ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... 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 ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... lives. 'Mamma has such strong prejudices,' Cecily remarked, as she reluctantly gave up the idea; and I waited to see whether the graceless Tottenham would unmurmuringly take down the Bakewells. How strong must be the sentiment that turns a man into a boa-constrictor without a pang of transmigration! But no, this time he was faithful to the principles of his pre-Cecilian existence. 'They are rather Boojums,' he declared. 'You would think so, too, if you knew them better. It is that kind of excellent person that makes ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... presuppose they know it; as for my part, I neither know what it is, nor what they do in the other world. Death is, peradventure, an indifferent thing; peradventure, a thing to be desired. 'Tis nevertheless to be believed, if it be a transmigration from one place to another, that it is a bettering of one's condition to go and live with so many great persons deceased, and to be exempt from having any more to do with unjust and corrupt judges; if it be an annihilation of our being, 'tis yet ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Bunny, whether you're a believer in transmigration of souls. I have often thought it easier to believe than lots of other things, and I have been pretty near believing in it myself since I had my being on that villa of Tiberius. The brute who had it in my day, if he isn't still running it with a whole skin, was or is as cold-blooded ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... 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 ill-conditioned beasts, to expiate in them their past transgressions; ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... "Our Lady." On reaching the thousand 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) fox crouching on the bank of a stream in such a peculiar attitude ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... of transmigration will hardly fail, after they have read this story, to think that the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe is once more ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... remarked that all systems of religion which held the doctrine of metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls, should be considered as believing in a middle state of purgation, since they maintained the necessity of the soul's further purification, after death, before it was permitted to ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... of previous births has taken full possession of the Hindu mind, as accounting for the character and events of the present birth. This belief in transmigration has a very hurtful effect on the people, as it leads them, when suffering for their conduct, to attribute their sufferings to births of which they do not profess to have any remembrance, instead of ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... likely indeed! Woman is a changeable thing, as our Virgil informed us at school; but her change par excellence is from the fairy you woo to the brownie you wed. It is not that she has been a hypocrite,—it is that she is a transmigration. You marry a girl for her accomplishments. She paints charmingly, or plays like Saint Cecilia. Clap a ring on her finger, and she never draws again,—except perhaps your caricature on the back of a letter,—and never opens a piano after the honeymoon. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 he left me without awaiting any ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... 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, but of ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... attire, and for a short time I was left alone to my own reflections. What is to be the result of all this? thought I. Is there to be no end of my assumption of the clothes and titles of other people,—this continual transmigration before death? Yet how much more has it depended upon ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... some 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
... warms 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 previous ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... corridor lighted by pink electricity, 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 chairs and tables ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... clairvoyance, than in that singular adaptation of another person's senses, which is a common phenomenon of the simple forms of mesmerism. If it is credible that a person in a mesmeric sleep can taste the sourness of the vinegar on another person's palate, I am ready to go the whole length of the transmigration of senses. But after all, except from hearing so much, I am as ignorant as you are, in my own experience. One of my sisters was thrown into a sort of swoon, and could not open her eyelids, though she heard what passed, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... own sake, that this country is constantly gaining stronger claims on my affection and regard; for am I not born a dweller by our inglorious southern streams and downs? If, however, there be such a thing as transmigration hereafter, let me hope that I shall come out at last as a ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... and he would never allow one to be killed if he could help it, for he claimed for them that they were the souls of drowned sailors, hence their love of ships and their habit of leaving them when they became unseaworthy. He was a firm believer in the transmigration of souls, some idea of which he had, no doubt, picked up in Eastern ports, and gave his shivering auditors to understand that his arrangements for his own immediate ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... real danger of attack by one of these ferocious, manlike beasts was quite sufficient. She no longer believed in the weird soul transmigration that the therns had taught her before she was rescued from their clutches by John Carter; but she well knew the horrid fate that awaited her should one of the terrible beasts chance to spy ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Kor yonder, when the living looked upon the dead, and dead and living were the same? And do you remember what Ayesha swore, that she would come again—yes, to this world; and how could that be except by re-birth, or, what is the same thing, by the transmigration ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... from some old people at Ecton, I remember, struck you as something extraordinary, from its similarity to what you knew of mine. "Had he died on the same day," you said, "one might have supposed a transmigration." ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... all things are the partial and temporary manifestations. All animated beings are divided into classes, that have each of them in their power the means of sanctification, so as to obtain, after death, transmigration into a higher class, until, at last, they enjoy plenitude of being by absorption into the eternal soul of Buddha. This doctrine, simple enough when explained by the superior class of Buddhists, is overlaid with superstitions for the vulgar; and it is this double character of Buddhism, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... of Alexandria of the 2nd century, who believed in the transmigration of the soul and its final emancipation from all external bonds and obligations, by means of concentrated meditation on the divine unity, and a life in conformity therewith; was the founder of a ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of Elysium there flowed a gentle, silent stream, called Lethe (oblivion), whose waters had the effect of dispelling care, and producing utter forgetfulness of former events. According to the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls, it was supposed that after the shades had inhabited Elysium for a thousand years they were destined to animate other bodies on {134} earth, and before leaving Elysium they drank of the river ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... good at first, but its members ultimately became greedy of gain and dishonest, and the Society in the lifetime of its founder was subjected to persecution and dispersed by angry mobs. Pythagoras possessed a prodigious mind. He is best known for his teaching in reference to the transmigration of souls, but he was also a great mathematician and astronomer. He taught that "number is the essence of everything," and his philosophy recognized that the universe is governed by law. God he represented by the figure 1, matter by the figure 2, and the universe by the combination 12, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... lady would point out, is the name of a Royal house; but what that signified, and what her business way, no one knew; only that Mrs. Stuart got postal orders every Monday morning, kept a parrot, believed in the transmigration of souls, and could read the future in tea leaves. Dirty lodging-house wallpaper she was behind ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... 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 belief, as a state of reward for heroes. (See the passage at the beginning ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... heard amongst Europeans a very curious explanation of this refusal of Buddhists to take life. 'Buddhists,' they say, 'believe in the transmigration of souls. They believe that when a man dies his soul may go into a beast. You could not expect him to kill a bull, when perchance his grandfather's soul might inhabit there.' This is their explanation, this is the way they put two and two together to make five. They know that Buddhists ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... the Sage, l. 417. It is probable, that the perpetual transmigration of matter from one body to another, of all vegetables and animals, during their lives, as well as after their deaths, was observed by Pythagoras; which he afterwards applied to the soul, or spirit of animation, and taught, that it passed from one ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... let us try Adventrous work, yet to thy power and mine Not unagreeable, to found a path Over this Maine from Hell to that new World Where Satan now prevailes, a Monument Of merit high to all th' infernal Host, Easing thir passage hence, for intercourse, 260 Or transmigration, as thir lot shall lead. Nor can I miss the way, so strongly drawn By this new felt attraction and instinct. Whom thus the meager Shadow answerd soon. Goe whither Fate and inclination strong Leads ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... these notions in the somewhat gross but only intelligible form in which the mind can readily grasp them, viz., in the dogma of the transmigration of souls, according to which a man's good deeds and bad follow him like his shadow from one existence to another, and in this life he expiates the sins or enjoys the ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... 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; ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... 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 ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... if it is not so, if one must be sacrificed, do not hesitate a moment as to which it shall be. If a peach does not become sweetmeat, it will become something, it will not stay a withered, unsightly peach; but for souls there is no transmigration out of fables. Once a soul, forever a soul,—mean or mighty, shrivelled or full, it is for you to say. Money, land, luxury, so far as they are money, land, and luxury, are worthless. It is only as fast and as far as they are turned into life ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Initiation to manhood. Their canoes, weapons, and huts. Dress of the women. Food of the natives. Mode of fishing. Capture of the turtle and dugong described. Yams and mode of culture. Edible roots, fruits, etc. No recognised chieftainship. Laws regarding property in land. Belief in transmigration of souls. Their traditions. Diseases and modes of ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... was a mass of confusion, wherein the instinctive notions of the human race concerning the origin and destiny of the world and of mankind were mingled with the oriental dreams of metempsychosis—that pretended transmigration, at successive periods, of immortal souls into divers creatures. This confusion was worse confounded by traditions borrowed from the mythologies of the East and the North, by shadowy remnants of a symbolical worship paid to the material forces of nature, and by barbaric ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... bird-like looking gentleman who faces the title-page of his Dictionary may be undergoing some metempsychosis, but the student of American literature will at any time have little difficulty in rescuing his personality from unseemly transmigration, and, by the aid of historical glasses, may discover that the Dictionary maker, far from being either the arid, bloodless being which his work supposes, or the reckless disturber of philological peace which his enemies aver, was an exceedingly vigilant, determined American school-master, ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... highest Self the nature of the 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 so on, and ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... 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 the irony of history, Gautama, ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... wing, as all nightingales do.' Said I: 'What upon earth do you mean?' She replied: 'Why of course I mean when I was a nightingale, before I grew to be a human being. Didn't you hear Mr. Hargrove last week reading from that curious book, in which so many queer things were told about transmigration, and how the soul of a musical child came from the nightingale, the sweetest of singers? And don't you recollect Mr. Lindsay said that Plato believed it; and that Plotinus taught that people who lead pure lives and yet love music to excess, go into the bodies ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... long time, happiness and content prevailed; but they afterwards revolted, and many gave up their allegiance. The rebels were cast down from on high into the pit of darkness. Hereupon succeeded the transmigration of souls; every animal and every plant was animated by one of the fallen angels, and the remarkable amiability of the Hindoos towards animals is owing to this belief. They look upon them as their fellow-creatures, and will not put any of ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... regularly every day. She would hang about for hours outside the cellar door for the purpose of sneaking in on the first opportunity and lapping up the drippings from the beer-cask. I do not mention this habit of hers in praise of the species, but merely to show how almost human some of them are. If the transmigration of souls is a fact, this animal was certainly qualifying most rapidly for a Christian, for her vanity was only second to her love of drink. Whenever she caught a particularly big rat, she would bring it up into the room where we were all sitting, lay the corpse down in the midst of ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... intelligence, refined and humanised. The oak-grove of Dodona, the seat of their most venerable oracle, did but perpetuate the fancy that the sounds of the wind in the trees may be, for certain prepared and chosen ears, intelligible voices; they could believe in the transmigration of souls into mulberry and laurel, mint and hyacinth; and the dainty Metamorphoses of Ovid [12] are but a fossilised form of one morsel here and there, from a whole world of transformation, with which their nimble fancy was perpetually playing. "Together ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater |
