74 METAMORPHOSES. 



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' «ccorgete vol, che noi siam' vcrmi 

 Nati a formar 1' angelica farfalla a ? 



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

 and Psyche, seems built upon this foundation. " Psyche," 

 savs an iny-enious and learned writer, " means in Greek 

 the human soul; and it means also a butterfly 15 , of which 

 apparently 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 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 c . 



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 



a Do you not perceive that we are caterpillars, born to form the 

 angelic butterfly ? 



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

 the moths that fly into candles are called sanies (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. Ger- 

 many call them ghosts (geistchcn). 



ISares's Essays, i. 101-?. 



