i 9 4 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



smallest. Such as it was, Transmigration was a direct 

 evolution of the more savage belief in Transformation, 

 as we have seen that belief exemplified in the present 

 chapter. 



Far in the west the Celts are reported to have held 

 the dogma of Transmigration of Souls. This report, 

 coming to us from writers imbued with Greco- Roman 

 philosophy, who interpreted according to the wont of 

 classical antiquity the religions of barbarous races in 

 the terms of their own, has been understood to imply 

 an elaborate philosophical system such as those of 

 Pythngoras and Buddha. Indeed more than one of the 

 writers in question expressly identifies the teaching of 

 the Druids about the soul with that of Pythagoras. 

 That the Celts had imbibed Buddhist theories we 

 cannot suppose. The doctrines of the Samian 

 philosopher may have penetrated into Gaul by com- 

 mercial routes or by contact with Greek colonies. But 

 no classical author ventures to ascribe such an origin 

 to the Druidic teaching. On the contrary, it is derived 

 by Caesar from Britain, where it was furthest removed 

 from foreign influences. Our direct information con- 

 cerning Druidism supplied from classical sources is 

 of the most meagre and fragmentary description. 

 Supplemented by modern archaeological investigation of 

 prehistoric burial mounds, it leads to the conclusion 

 that the religion of the ancient Britons and Gauls was 

 of the same general character as other barbarous cults. 

 The belief in Transmigration was held concurrently 

 with the belief in another world, a world of the dead 

 where debts incurred in this world were paid and 

 where those who sacrificed themselves on the funeral 

 piles of their relatives lived with them just as they had 



