Instead of the metempsychosis, Christianity teaches the doctrine of original sin, which shows both similarity and contrast to it. Christianity also looks upon life and sorrow as expiation of guilt, although the guilt of another individual, with whom, nevertheless, we have to consider ourselves as identical in being. There is as much reason for the direct discernment of this identity in exoteric Buddhism through its acceptance of metempsychosis, as for Christianity, while protesting against it, to found its dogma on empirical knowledge, which is entirely absent in the doctrine of metempsychosis. Truth lies between; for we see in children something more than the repetition of the parents, and yet we cannot deny the law of heredity. The aim of this essay will be to show these two truths as combined in their result.
An exhaustive treatment of the emanation system of the Neo-Platonists, the theory of special creation, or the "traduction" system of generation, is beyond the sphere of our investigations.
The word Re-birth is to be met with in important places in the New Testament, as in John iii. 3-8; but we have to understand by it only the transformation of man into his essence, therefore the negation of the will to live, without reference to the doctrine of the metempsychosis. When it is said, "except a man be born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God", this sentence, which expressly speaks not of being born according to "the flesh", but of being born according to "the spirit", does not refer to what Buddha designates as the circle of Re-birth, but to what he terms freedom from death and Re-birth: it is not Samsâra, but Nirvâna. Jürgen Bona Meyer directs attention to the zealous polemic which the fathers of the Church, especially Tertullian, Augustine, Hermias, and Eneas Gaza, carried on against the belief in the migration of the soul. In his remarks on "Die Idee der Seelenwanderung" he mentions Gregory of Nyssa, and quotes his opinion, that metempsychosis can only be understood on that hypothesis which raises the true individuality of each being, and causes all to merge in one universal substance. It must be added that Tertullian objected to this doctrine, that if it were true, we should have kept the remembrance of our former condition. He might have been answered (considered from the secondary nature of the intellect), that we are also unable to remember our embryonic existence. He came to the supposition that all souls were derived from the soul which God breathed into Adam, and that the soul passes, at conception, from the parent to the child. He considered Adam's soul expressly as the source or "matrix" of all souls. We have yet to add to the names mentioned by Meyer those of Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianz, Hieronymus, and Cyril of Alexandria. Origen, who was especially repudiated by the above-named fathers of the Church as an upholder of the doctrine of metempsychosis and the pre-existence of the soul, nevertheless found his defenders both in the Western and Eastern Churches, especially in the latter; among others, Nemesius, Bishop of Emisa, in Syria (about 380), Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemaeus (about 410), and the sacred poet Prudentius (about 405). It remains uncertain whether Origen asserted, as affirmed by Photius, that the soul of the Saviour had been the soul of Adam, but it appears certain that he accepted metempsychosis. Either he came across it through Plato, or his other theories became premises for this conclusion. He did not loudly and unreservedly confess to it, and he found himself obliged to reject the reproach; but that he spoke of the possibility of the human soul sinking into an animal body must be allowed by those who, like Delitzsch, Slochl, and W. Mõller, put in question his adherence to the doctrine of metempsychosis.
It seems to me that he early accepted it in order to allay the doubts of eternal justice, evoked by the daily experience of the serious inequality in the destiny of mankind from birth. He expresses his conviction of the original equality and perfect purity of all, and yet continues, "The greater portion of these spiritual beings have nevertheless sinned". The souls that fell the lowest became "daemons", others men, in which form upon earth they experience the purification of their being. After various Re-births as men they become angels, and at last attain to the sphere of ethereal bodies, where they receive enlightenment, from beings who have kept their primitive purity or reattained it, in the truth yet hidden from them, so that at last they obtain perfect blessedness in heaven.
Pressed by the opposition against the doctrine of Re-birth on earth, he accepted various grades among the angels. The doctrine of purgatory may be said to have had its origin with him, putting him in a position to make concessions to his adversaries and to remain silent later on the doctrine of metempsychosis, given out at first according to Plato. Yet the seed scattered by him sprouted forth plentifully, so that Justinian in the year 538 called together a Synod in Constantinople only for the object of rooting up this heresy. The Council ordered that: "Whoever shall support the mythical presentation of the pre-existence of the soul, and the consequently wonderful opinion of its return, let him be Anathema".
From the time of this Council, the belief in pre-existence is not to be found within the Christian Church, and that of metempsychosis very rarely among the external sects. This can be explained by the fact that the doctrine is irreconcilable with the conception of original sin, as it became paramount in the Romish Church after the victory of Augustinianism over Pelagianism. That view of the doctrine of metempsychosis as laid down by the (Ecumenical Council was also kept to by the Inquisition when it burnt Giordano Bruno in 1592, principally for this heresy, in spite of his only trying to blend the doctrine of metempsychosis with the Christian opinions. J. B. Meyer writes thus concerning him: "G. Bruno joined the idea of spatial soul-wandering on the other side with that of the wandering of being on this side. He explained the wandering of the soul not as an accidental change of habitation, but as self-prepared and measured by the present life, and as retributively higher or lower in consequence. When, even now, the faces of some people remind us of horses, dogs, or swine, it is an echo from their past, or a signal of their future condition; others wander again in human bodies, others ascend to higher stars". But Bruno had a much deeper comprehension of the doctrine than Meyer shows. I will only mention the following verses of the second dialogue, "The Cause, the Principle, and the One".
"O thou being, quaking before the icy dawn of death,
Does the Styx affright thee, the darkness, of void name,
The welcome theme of poets ; the perils of imagined worlds ?
Know when the flaming heat, when of age the lingering weakness
Has given the body to dust, it knows neither sorrows nor pains.
Never shall die the soul, but rather the earlier dwelling
Exchange for newer habitation, and live and work therein.
All must change, but nought is destroyed".
In Germany, Von Helmont the younger, a follower of the doctrine of metempsychosis, was also attacked on its account by the Inquisition.
Father Grueber compares the doctrine of metempsychosis to purgatory. The two truly serve the same object, as they place a transition between the threat of eternal damnation and the promise of heavenly blessedness. This transition was obtained through the doctrine of purgatory (which Pope Gregory I. incorporated into the Church), and through the esoteric doctrine of the Hindus, in defiance of science, but in unanswerable agreement with the judgments of empirical knowledge. If we ask ourselves why this doctrine should have been so entirely suppressed, and at last only regarded as ridiculous, we must not forget that those who defended it did not obtain their instruction at the source, but that the doctrine came to them very much disfigured. The conception of the soul as intellect, an opinion particularly put forward in the writings of Plato, in distinction to the esoteric doctrine of the Hindus, had also the same tendency. Therefore the dogma of original sin was more important, not only to the people, but also to philosophy, than the involved meaning of a doctrine full of the deepest significance, it is true, but arbitrarily seized and torn up from its natural abode.
Western philosophy had other tasks to perform before Oriental wisdom could inspire it, instead of intoxicating. It accomplished these tasks when it attained independently, through Kant, to the separation of the ideal and the real, to the discrimination of the appearance and the thing in itself, which knowledge must have preceded the doctrine of the metempsychosis also in India. Thus only could the soil become fruitful for the Indian wisdom.
Kant in his essay "Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht", proceeding from the recognition of teleology in Nature, writes as follows: "All the natural talents of a creature are intended to unfold themselves completely and suitably". He does not conceal from himself that in the observation of the course of human life, the fulfilment of this axiom cannot be literally accepted, and defends this contradiction with the explanation, "That with man such talents as have for object the use of his reason can only become perfectly unfolded in the species, not in the individual". If I am asked why Kant did not arrive at the doctrine of Palingenesis in a logical manner -- a thoroughly reasonable question -- I know of no other answer than this: through the misuse that he makes of the abstract idea of species. Knowledge such as the following passages testify would otherwise have led Kant to the idea of Re-birth. He says: "It would need an immeasurably long life for a man to learn how to make a perfect use of all his natural qualities ; or if, as is truly the case, Nature appoints him but a short term of life, it would require an unending series of generations for the one to hand over its enlightenment to the other, in order that the germ in our species may at last arrive at that degree of development which shall be perfectly adapted to the fulfilment of its design". Kant found and himself expressed the insufficiency of his explanation, inasmuch as he still finds it strange that the earlier generations only appear, for the sake of the latter, to push forward the arduous process. His incomparable insight led him straight to the truth, his hand touched the veil, but he omitted to raise it, and satisfied himself with an abstract idea. I cannot read his following remarks without impatience, and am unable to resist a feeling of disappointment. "How it may be with the dwellers on other planets and their nature, we know not. . . . Perhaps in these every individual may fully attain his appointed design in life. With us it is otherwise; (and therefore) only the species can hope for it".
Whoever wishes to establish that the perfection of man is not manifested in the continual progress recognised in history, but that the teleology of Nature and the moral tendency of the world are to be found in the gradual refinement of the Individual Will, as it presses forward from re-birth to re-birth, let him take Kant's work, the "Idee zu einer Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht". Kant's own objections to his supposition afford the best answer to the proposition in question. If I should indulge in aimless speculation on the system of coincidences, which wanders as chance in the events of life, one such coincidence is worth notice -- the publication of Kant's principal work simultaneously with the publication of the first results of the investigation of Indian learning. As regularly as food is provided for the nourishment of the body so is the necessary sustenance provided for the growth of philosophy.
As far, however, as the doctrine of Palingenesis is concerned, it was at first quite isolated, and only considered from the standpoint of ethics, the characteristic which also predominates with Lessing. I have selected from this writer a fragment for consideration from his essay on the "Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts", where he says "that more than five senses may be possible for the human race". In speaking of Palingenesis he further remarks, "This system is certainly the oldest of all philosophical systems, for it is properly nothing but the system of the pre-existence of the soul and metempsychosis, which not only Pythagoras and Plato, but already, before them, the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Persians, in brief, that which all the wise of the Orient had accepted. And this should at once plead in its favour. The first and oldest opinion is always the most probable in speculative things, because it occurred in the beginning to the healthy understanding of mankind. This ancient, and, as I believe, only probable system is negatived on two points only. First ------" Here the fragment ends. I must also mention his "Philosophische Gespräche über die unmittelbare Bekanntmachung der Religion und über einige unzulängliche Beweisarten derselben" (Philosophical Words on the Direct Revelation of Religion and some Insufficient Proofs of the same). At the conclusion of this writing, the question why Providence has not destined all men to the same perfection gives occasion to the following remark: "What if, from the unanswerableness of the question, I conclude that the object of the question is vain? What if I say that man, or each soul while appearing as man, fully attains to the same cultivation of his faculties ? Is it then settled that my soul only appears once as a man ? Is it absolutely entirely unthinkable, that, on my way to perfection, I may pass more than once through the veil of humanity ? Perhaps this wandering of the soul through various human bodies was at the beginning a right system? Perhaps this new system was none other than quite the oldest". From a letter of Lessing's to Campe, December 1779, it is evident that Lessing was prevented by illness from carrying out this sketch to its completion.
As far as concerns the doctrine being the oldest system, I have already expressed my views. What two things in Lessing's opinion mitigate against it, will not presumptuously try to discover. To show that the doctrine gave him consolation and support in life, I will give but one example. On the 10th of January 1778 he wrote to Eschenberg as follows: "My wife is dead; I have now also received this experience: I rejoice that there cannot remain many such experiences for me to make, and I am at rest". Lessing's essay, "The Education of the Human Race", which he published a year before his death, has been called his "religious will". This document is clear and striking. Let us enter into the inheritance! We cannot more highly honor the testator than when we learn to understand what he has written in the last paragraphs of his testament. Here is what is said: --
"But why should not each individual man have existed more than once on this earth?"
Is this hypothesis then so ridiculous, because it is the most ancient, because it occurred to the mind of man before it was weakened and destroyed by scholastic sophistry ?
" Why should I not have already once passed through here those stages towards perfection which only bring temporal reward and punishment ?" And why not another time through all those stages the accomplishment of which helps us so powerfully in the prospect of eternal reward ?" Why should I not return as often as I am sent to obtain new knowledge, new faculties ? Do I the first time take so much away that nothing remains to repay the trouble of return ? ""Why not? Or is it that I forget that I have already lived? Well for me that I do forget. The remembrance of my former condition would only cause me to make a bad use of the present. And what I now forget, have I then forgotten it for ever ?
" Or is it because in that way too much time would be lost for me? Lost! and what have I then to lose ? Is not the whole of eternity mine ? "
I will pause here to draw attention directly to these passages, for it is the object of this treatise to defend the substance of these last paragraphs of Lessing's essay. It is sufficient to mention Herder's treatise on "Palingenesis" (of the return), and his essay on the "Migration of the Soul". Like Lessing, he treats of the "Hypothesis of the Atonement' but rejects the whole doctrine as an "illusion of the mind" (sic). As these essays only confirm the stricture of Schiller of being the "tone of a Catholic prelate", and do not display Herder's otherwise highly valuable conceptions, it is useless to seek in them for any useful thoughts; they must be placed unread with Herder's writings against Kant. Dr. Alb. Wittstock, in his essay on "Lessing's Education of the Human Race as a Scholastic System", says that Mendelssohn, in his treatise on "The Evidences of Metaphysical Science", had already prior to Lessing mentioned which were the qualities that might be possessed by the soul before its entrance into this life.
It is, however, necessary to guard against bringing forward such statements as direct support for the doctrine of Palingenesis. Mendelssohn was throughout opposed to it. Compare his arbitrary work of the "Phaedo" with the original, the arguments of which, as he says, " he has arranged according to the taste of his time". Just those places which treat of the doctrine of Palingenesis have been either smoothed over or totally changed, while the idea of Re-birth is inferred as the continuity of matter. It is far more justifiable to refer to Charles Bonnet's important work on this subject, "Idées sur I'état future des êtres vivants, ou Palingenesie Philosophique", because he really considered the doctrine before Lessing.
It is but of late years that the Germans have interested themselves in the investigations of Indian philosophy; general interest was only evoked after 1789, especially through George Forster, who had been in India, then through Görres, Kreuzer, Schlegel, Herder, and others. Sanscrit was studied, and the Romantists raved about India. A still further advance was soon made. Frank Bopp published the first useful reading-book in the Sanscrit language. Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and other Germans considerably advanced the knowledge of Sanscrit, and must claim equal acknowledgment with the English and French, for whom Renaud exclusively claims all merit.
The remarks of Lichteriberg are interesting in the characteristic which he gives of himself. He says: "I cannot escape from the thought that I died before I was born, and return through death again into the prenatal condition. In many respects it is a happiness that this idea cannot be distinctly realised. If man could find out every secret of Nature, it would yet be very much against the interest of Nature could he prove it. To die, and again to live with the remembrance of a former existence, is only to swoon; to wake again with other faculties which must again be cultivated, that is to be re-born". Elsewhere also, in relation to the letters of Eulers, he refers to the doctrine. "This agrees with my idea of the migration of the soul. I think, or more properly I perceive, herewith much that I am not in a position to express, because it is not ordinarily human, and therefore our speech is not made for it. God grant that it may not cause me madness. I perceive so much, that, if I should write on it, the world would take me for a fool; therefore am I silent".
Induced by Lessing's writings, J. G. Schlosser, in 1783, published conversations on the Migration of the Soul. He answered the question as to "Where the journey ends at last?" with the words, "In the bosom of God". He again repeated this thought in the dedication to Bodmer in these stanzas :--
"Sage wohm, wo
Wirst du hin wandeln
Seele des Weisen !
Seele des Dichters !
Wenn du einst wandelst ?
Wirst du schon ruh'n im
Schosze der Gottheit,
Oder noch wandeln
Einen der Sõhne
Künftiger Zeiten,
Wieder zum Weisen
Wieder zum Dichter
Neu zu beleben ?
Ach, wenn du wandelst,
Seele des Weisen!
Seele des Dichters !
Werde du künftig,
Werde mein Vater !
[Say whither and where
Shalt thou wander away
Soul of the wise!
Soul of the poet!
If thou dost wander?
Wilt thou repose
In the bosom of God,
Or yet again wander
As one of the sons
Of the future of time,
Again as the wise,
Again as the poet,
Anew to arise?
Ah if thus thou shalt wander,
Soul of the wise,
Soul of the poet,
Become in the future,
Become thou my father.]
I refrain from citing some pertinent statements of the philosophers after Kant on the subject of metempsychosis, as they are not peculiar to their theories. I will only quote the following passage from Fichte's "Anthropologie" : -- "The constant incoming of fresh individual spirits (Genien) in the human sphere is like the process of a spiritual generatio oequivoca. The parents are not the generators, in the complete sense. They offer the organic material, and not only this, but at the same time the inner sensitive nature, which shows itself in temperament, in peculiar disposition, in determined specifications of inclination, and the like". We must be careful not to suppose that the doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul stands in direct connection with the knowledge of Re-birth. The polemic treatises against the doctrine of pre-existence often encroach on metempsychosis, as, for example, Bertram in his essay, "A Slight Examination of the Opinion of Pre-existence, or the Former State of the Human Soul in Organic Bodies"; while the writings which bring forward proofs for pre-existence, partly through timidity, partly through contempt, avoid the question, and only a few follow on from the doctrine of pre-existence to that of the migration of the soul. This occurs with Kant, Schelling, Benecke, Julius Müller, Ruckert, Ernesti, Fichte, and others, without their being able to offer us anything important on the idea of Re-birth.
