ZJ$ ON THE TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS. 



this migration was directed by certain laws that had 

 relation to the life that had been led in the world, it 

 was perfectly adapted to work upon the morals of man- 

 kind. This therefore was eagerly laid hold of ; and 

 now it was taught in the temples as an article of faith 

 that the fouls of the wicked muft always be turned into 

 the bodies of fuch contemptible animals as they bore 

 the greateft: likenefs to, and that they are fo long to do 

 penance in the form of thefe brutes, and to wander 

 about from one body to another, till they are fully pu- 

 rified from their vices. 



When men begin to reflect upon things, they con- 

 stantly fir ft lay hold on that which they ought to take 

 laft : the notions implanted in them by education, fo- 

 ciety and religion, they confider as irrefragable princi- 

 ples, and then endeavour to make experiences fuit them ; 

 whereas, they ought, on the contrary, to reduce them 

 to a confiffcency with experiences. This is what we ftill 

 do every day, this is what the antients did, and it is 

 done by all the people that are ftruggling to rife above 

 barbarifm. Hence the philofophy of the people is al- 

 ways built on old popular and religious ideas ; and the 

 nearer it is to its origin, fo many more marks of fable 

 $nd religious ideas does it bear upon it. As therefore 

 the nations, with whom the migration of fouls has been 

 already long believed, find their rerledtions on the world 

 and God begin to expand ; fo they ftrive to bring even 

 thefe into conneclion with their notions of the origin of 

 the world. Hence various fyftcms now gradually arife, 

 and among them alfo this, that God is the common 

 fpul of the world ; that all fouls are part of the divine 

 being ; that they cannot, by rcafon of their tranfgref- 



fionSj 



