Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 3.djvu/320

of the Greeks undeniably follows from the ninth book of Plato's "Laws" (pp. 38 and 42, ed. Bip.) Nemesius indeed (De nat. hom., c. 2) says: "(Greek characters)" (Communiter igitur omnes Græci, qui animam immortalem statuerunt, eam de uno corpore in aliud transferri censuerunt.) The "Edda" also, especially in the "Völuspa," teaches metempsychosis. Not less was it the foundation of the religion of the Druids (Cæs. de bello Gall, vi.; A. Pictet, Le mystère des Bardes de l'ile de Bretagne, 1856). Even a Mohammedan sect in Hindostan, the Bohrahs, of which Colebrooke gives a full account in the "Asiatic Researches," vol. vii. p. 336 sqq., believes in metempsychosis, and accordingly refrains from all animal food. Also among American Indians and negro tribes, nay, even among the natives of Australia, traces of this belief are found, as appears from a minute description given in the Times of 29th January 1841 of the execution of two Australian savages for arson and murder. It is said there: "The younger of the two prisoners met his end with a dogged and a determined spirit, as it appeared, of revenge; the only intelligible expressions made use of conveyed an impression that he would rise up a 'white fellow,' which it was considered strengthened his resolution." Also in a book by Ungewitter, "Der Welttheil Australien," it is related that the Papuas in Australia regarded the whites as their own relations who had returned to the world. According to all this, the belief in metempsychosis presents itself as the natural conviction of man, whenever he reflects at all in an unprejudiced manner. It would really be that which Kant falsely asserts of his three pretended Ideas of the reason, a philosopheme natural to human reason, which proceeds from its forms; and when it is not found it must have been displaced by positive religious doctrines coming from a different source. I have also remarked that it is at once obvious to every one who hears of it for the first time. Let any one only