BUTTERFLY A SYMBOL OF THE SOUL. 151 



into poetic compositions. Long ere the Italian poet 

 had dared to designate the insect as "V angeUca 

 farfalla," the ancients had found in its transform- 

 ations a symbol of the vague and shadowy ideas they 

 entertained of the life of man here, of his repose in 

 the tomb, and of the probability of a more glorious 

 state of being hereafter. 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 ap- 

 parently strange double sense, the undoubted reason 

 is, that a butterfly was a very ancient symbol of the 

 soul. From the prevalence of this symbol, and the 

 consequent coincidence of the names, it happened 

 that the Greek sculptors frequently represented 

 Psyche as subject to Cupid, in the shape of a butter- 

 fly ; 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 existence of the butterfly is so associated with 

 pleasing ideas, and apparently so removed from 

 aught that is irksome, that in Tliomson's "Castle 

 of Indolence," we find the Wizard, in the very first 

 verse of his "syren melody," brings forward the con- 

 dition of this insect, as contrasted with that of man: — 

 * Nare's Essays, i. 101, quoted by Kirby and Spence, iv. 74, 



