In the later Jewish philosophy, the Kabbalists took up the doctrine of migration, the gilgul or 'rolling on' of souls, and maintained it by that characteristic method of Biblical interpretation which it is good to hold up from time to time for a warning to the mystical interpreters of our own day. The soul of Adam passed into David, and shall pass into the Messiah, for are not these initials in the very name of Ad(a)m, and does not Ezekiel say that 'my servant David shall be their prince for ever.' Cain's soul passed into Jethro, and Abel's into Moses, and therefore it was that Jethro gave Moses his daughter to wife. Souls migrate into beasts and birds and vermin, for is not Jehovah 'the lord of the spirits of all flesh'? and he who has done one sin beyond his good works shall pass into a brute. He who gives a Jew unclean meat to eat, his soul shall enter into a leaf, blown to and fro by the wind; 'for ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth;' and he who speaks ill words, his soul shall pass into a dumb stone, as did Nabal's, 'and he became a stone.'[1] Within the range of Christian influence the Manichæans appear as the most remarkable exponents of the metempsychosis. We hear of their ideas of sinners' souls transmigrating into beasts, the viler according to their crimes; that he who kills a fowl or rat will become a fowl or rat himself; that souls can pass into plants rooted in the ground, which thus have not only life but sense; that the souls of reapers pass into beans and barley, to be cut down in their turn, and thus the elect were careful to explain to the bread when they ate it, that it was not they who reaped the corn it was made of; that the souls of the auditors, that is, the spiritually low commonalty who lived a married life, would pass into melons and cucumbers, to finish their purification by being eaten by the elect. But these details come to us from the accounts of bitter theological adversaries, and
- ↑ Eisenmenger, part ii. p. 23, &c.
Pindar. Olymp. ii. antistr. 4; Ovid. Metam. xv. 160; Lucian. Somn. 17, &c. Philostr. Vit. Apollon. Tyan. See also Meyer's Conversations-Lexicon, art. 'Seelenwanderung.' For re-birth in old Scandinavia, see Helgakvidha, iii., in 'Edda.'
