INSECTS IN THEIR TERFECT STATE. 137 



resurrection after death, they called the Butterfly 

 by the same name as the soul, and no doubt looked 

 upon the issue of the beautiful insect from the sar- 

 cophagus of the dead caterpillar as one among many 

 other extraordinary evidences of a future state after 

 death. In their personification of the soul, or human 

 spirit — among a series of divinities founded on a 

 system of embodying in divine forms the human 

 passions and aspirations, and even the general 

 powers of nature — they gave to the divinity repre- 

 senting the soul, the wings of a Butterfly ; thus 

 carrying out the popular feeling ; and the deified 

 personage also bore the same name of the "soul." 

 In the exquisite story of Psyche we may trace, also, 

 the poetic theory of a spirit gradually purified by 

 passions and misfortunes for the eventual enjoyment 

 of true and pure happiness. 



Sir Humphry Davy, in his " Salmonia," a little 

 volume full of beautiful reflections, has a remark- 

 able passage on this subject, in which he refers to 

 the poetical view of the Greeks, and afterwards goes 

 on to dilate, in his own vein, on the transformations 

 of insects as remarkable evidences of the truth of 

 our belief in a future state for Man. " If," he 

 reasons, " an insect, recently a sordid worm, and 

 buried with no sign of life in the earth, should in 



