74 METAMORPHOSES. 



traverse the fields of air, their food is the nectar of flowers, and love 

 begins his blissful reign ; — ^who that witnesses this interesting scene can 

 help seeing in it a lively representation of man in his threefold state of 

 existence, and more especially of that happy day, when, at the call of 

 the great Sun of Righteousness, all that are in the grave shall come forth, 

 . the sea shall give up her dead, and death being swallowed up of life, the 

 nations of the blessed shall live and love to the ages of eternity ? 



But although the analogy between the different states of insects and 

 those of the body of man is only general, yet it is much more complete 

 with respect to his soul. He first appears in his frail body — a child of the 

 earth, a crawling worm, his soul being in a course of training and prepara- 

 tion for a more perfect and glorious existence. Its course being finished, 

 it casts off the earthly body, and goes into a hidden state of being in 

 Hades, where it rests from its works, and is prepared for its final consum- 

 mation. The time for this being arrived, it comes forth clothed with a 

 glorious body, not like its former, though germinating from it, for though 

 " it is sown an animal body, it shall be raised a spiritual body," endowed 

 with augmented powers, faculties, and privileges commensurate to its new 

 and happy state. And here the parallel holds perfectly between the 

 insect and the man. The butterfly, the representative of the soul, is pre- 

 pared in the larva for its future state of glory ; and if it be not destroyed 

 by the ichneumons and other enemies to which it is exposed, symbolical 

 of the vices that destroy the spiritual life of the soul, it will come to its 

 state of repose in the pupa, which is its Hades ; and at length, when it 

 assumes the imago, break forth with new powers and beauty to its final 

 glory and the reign of love. So that in this view of the subject well 

 might the Italian poet exclaim : 



Non v' accorgete voi, che noi siam' vermi, 

 Nati a formar 1' angelica larfalla?' 



The Egyptian fable, as it is supposed to be, of Cupid and Psyche, 

 seems built upon this foundation. " Psyche," says an ingenious and 

 learned writer, " means in Greek the human soul ; and it means also a 

 butterfly^, of which apparently strange double sense the undoubted reason 

 is, that a butterfly was a very ancient symbol of the soul — from the prev- 

 alence of this symbol, and the consequent coincidence of the names, it 

 happened that the Greek sculptors frequently represented Psyche as sub- 

 ject to Cupid in the shape of a butterfly ; and that even when she appears 

 in their works under the human form, we find her decorated with the light 

 and filmy wings of that gay insect."^ 



The following beautiful little poem falls in so exactly with the subject 

 I have been discussing, that I cannot resist the temptation I feel to copy 

 it for you, especially as I am not aware that it has appeared any where 

 but in a newspaper : — 



1 Do you not perceive that we are caterpillars, born to form the angelic butterfly ? 



* It is worthy of remark, that in the north and west of England the moths that fly into 

 candles are called saules (souls), perhaps from the old notion that the souls of the dead fly 

 about at night, in search of light. For the same reason, probably, the common people ia 

 Germany call them ghosts (geistchen). 



» Nate's Essays, i. 101, 102. 



