58 



METAMOEPHOSES. 



insects and those of the body of man is only general, yet it is 

 much more complete with respect to his soul. He first 

 appears in his frail body — a child of the earth, a crawling 

 worm, his soul being in a course of training and preparation 

 for a more perfect and glorious existence. Its course being 

 finished, it casts off the earthly body, and goes into a hidden 

 state of being in Hades, where it rests from its works, and is 

 prepared for its final consummation. The time for this being 

 arrived, it comes forth clothed with a glorious body, not like 

 its former, though germinating from it, for though " it is 

 sown an animal body, it shall be raised a spiritual body^'' 

 endowed with augmented powers, faculties, and privileges 

 commensurate to its new and happy state. And here the 

 parallel holds perfectly between the insect and the man. 

 The butterfly, the representative of the soul, is prepared in 

 the larva for its future state of glory ; and if it be not de- 

 stroyed by the ichneumons and other enemies to which it is 

 exposed, symbolical of the vices that 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' accorgete voi, che noi siam' vermi, 

 Nati a formar 1' angelica farfalla ? i 



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 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 



1 Do you not perceive that we are caterpillars, born to form the angelic but- 

 terfly ? 



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

 that fly into candles are called saules (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 Germany call them ghosts (geistchen). 



