OLD OPINIONS. 47 



nomena can furnish a more vivid poetical illustration of 

 that belief in a life beyond the grave,, which has prevailed 

 in all ages of the world^s history. In Christian poetry 

 too we have several instances of the adoption of this 

 simile^ but some writers have been inclined to make 

 use of it rather as an argument than as an illustration, 

 a mistake which must be attributed to their ignorance 

 of the nature of proof. A still more ludicrous appli- 

 cation of the same phsenomenon to matters with which 

 it has nothing to do, is to be found amongst the 

 writings of some of the old alchemists, in which the 

 metamorphosis of the butterfly is gravely put forward 

 as an argument in support of the possible transmu- 

 tation of metals ! 



Of the true nature of the change, most of the older 

 writers were in a state of the most blissful ignorance, 

 and some of their assumptions are particularly absurd. 

 Thus, for instance, Mouffet tells us that the head of 

 the caterpillar becomes the tail of the chrysalis, a 

 statement which has been occasionally copied into 

 books up to a very recent period. And Godart states 

 that the feet of the caterpillar are converted into the 

 back of the chrysalis. 



Aristotle, and after him Harvey, held that the 

 caterpillar was a sort of embryo, and that the chrysalis 

 was in reality a perfect egg, and this view appears not 

 to be wholly destitute of supporters in the present 

 day. It appears to arise from attributing too much 

 weight to the slight analogy which may be supposed 

 to exist between the exclusion of an insect from the 

 pupa-case, and that of a bird or other animal from the 

 shell ; but it must be borne in mind that the insect 

 comes forth in a perfectly mature state, and in no 

 other group of animals do we find the young escaping 



