INSECT EMBLEMS. 33 



A similar coincidence of names between the emblematic 

 insect and the immortal principle has been observed to exist 

 in modern times. * In the north and west of England the 

 moths which fly into the candles are called Saules, perhaps 

 from the old notion that the souls of the dead fly about at 

 night in search of light ; and perhaps for the same reason the 

 common people in Germany call them ghosts (geistchen). 

 When life and immortality were brought to light by the 

 Gospel, the insect type by which, in the midst of Pagan 

 obscurity, they had been dimly shadowed forth, acquired fresh 

 illumination. Employed by the Fathers of the Church, the 

 beautiful symbol of the Butterfly shone on their ponderous 

 pages like a beam of sun-light, falling through a painted 

 window on the gloom of a cloister. So great, indeed, was the 

 value attached to this insect emblem by writers for the Church, 

 in the time of Reaumur, that they absolutely fought for it 

 with that great and good naturalist, because, with his newly 

 acquired light on its natural history, he saw reason to dispute 

 the entire fitness of insect transformation to represent the 

 mystery of human resurrection. And certainly, when it 

 came to be ascertained, by the experiments of Reaumur and 

 others, that a caterpillar is not in fact a simple but a com- 

 pound animal, containing within it the rudiments of the future 

 butterfly in all its parts, it ceased to be an exact parallel of 

 the usual idea of the resurrection namely, that of a decayed 



* By Kirby, and Spence. 



