METAMORPHOSES. 75 



pared for its final consummation. 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 was 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 butter- 

 fly, the representative of the soul, is prepared in the 

 larva for its future state of glory ; and if it be not de- 

 stroyed 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 re- 

 pose 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 : 



Noil v' accorgete voi, che aoi siam' vermi 

 Nati a forinar l' angelica farfalla^ ? 



The Egyptian fable, as it is supposed to be, of Cu- 

 pid 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 



^ Do you not perceive that we arc caterpillars, born to form the an- 

 gelic butterfly ? 



" It is worthy of remark, that in the north and west of England the 

 moths that fly into candles are called seniles (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 in Germany call them 

 ghosts (geistchen). 



