Chapter XXXI.—Further Exposure of Transmigration, Its Inextricable Embarrassment.

Again, if this recovery of life from the dead take place at all, individuals must of course resume their own individuality. Therefore the souls which animated each several body must needs have returned separately to their several bodies. Now, whenever two, or three, or five souls are re-enclosed (as they constantly are) in one womb, it will not amount in such cases to life from the dead, because there is not the separate restitution which individuals ought to have; although at this rate, (no doubt,) the law of the primeval creation is signally kept,227    Signatur. Rigaltius reads “singulatur,” after the Codex Agobard., as meaning, “The single origin of the human race is in principle maintained,” etc. by the production still of several souls out of only one! Then, again, if souls depart at different ages of human life, how is it that they come back again at one uniform age? For all men are imbued with an infant soul at their birth. But how happens it that a man who dies in old age returns to life as an infant? If the soul, whilst disembodied, decreases thus by retrogression of its age, how much more reasonable would it be, that it should resume its life with a richer progress in all attainments of life after the lapse of a thousand years! At all events, it should return with the age it had attained at its death, that it might resume the precise life which it had relinquished. But even if, at this rate, they should reappear the same evermore in their revolving cycles, it would be proper for them to bring back with them, if not the selfsame forms of body, at least their original peculiarities of character, taste, and disposition, because it would be hardly possible228    Temere. for them to be regarded as the same, if they were deficient in those characteristics by means of which their identity should be proved. (You, however, meet me with this question): How can you possibly know, you ask, whether all is not a secret process? may not the work of a thousand years take from you the power of recognition, since they return unknown to you? But I am quite certain that such is not the case, for you yourself present Pythagoras to me as (the restored) Euphorbus. Now look at Euphorbus: he was evidently possessed of a military and warlike soul, as is proved by the very renown of the sacred shields. As for Pythagoras, however, he was such a recluse, and so unwarlike, that he shrank from the military exploits of which Greece was then so full, and preferred to devote himself, in the quiet retreat of Italy, to the study of geometry, and astrology, and music—the very opposite to Euphorbus in taste and disposition.  Then, again, the Pyrrhus (whom he represented) spent his time in catching fish; but Pythagoras, on the contrary, would never touch fish, abstaining from even the taste of them as from animal food. Moreover, Æthalides and Hermotimus had included the bean amongst the common esculents at meals, while Pythagoras taught his disciples not even to pass through a plot which was cultivated with beans. I ask, then, how the same souls are resumed, which can offer no proof of their identity, either by their disposition, or habits, or living? And now, after all, (we find that) only four souls are mentioned as recovering life229    Recensentur. out of all the multitudes of Greece. But limiting ourselves merely to Greece, as if no transmigrations of souls and resumptions of bodies occurred, and that every day, in every nation, and amongst all ages, ranks, and sexes, how is it that Pythagoras alone experiences these changes into one personality and another? Why should not I too undergo them? Or if it be a privilege monopolized by philosophers—and Greek philosophers only, as if Scythians and Indians had no philosophers—how is it that Epicurus had no recollection that he had been once another man, nor Chrysippus, nor Zeno, nor indeed Plato himself, whom we might perhaps have supposed to have been Nestor, from his honeyed eloquence?

CAPUT XXXI.

Jam vero si ex mortuis vivi, utique singuli ex singulis. Singulorum ergo corporum animas, ut singulas 0701A in singula corpora reverti oportuerat. Porro si et binae et trinae et quinae usque uno utero resumuntur, non erunt ex mortuis vivi, quia non singuli ex singulis. Et hoc autem modo primordii forma singulatur, cum et nunc plures animae de una proferuntur. Item, cum varia aetate decedant animae, cur una revertuntur? omnes enim ab infantia imbuuntur. Quale est autem ut senex defunctus, infans revertatur? si decrescit foris anima retrograda aetate, quanto magis erat ut progressior reverteretur mille post annis? Certe vel coaetanea suae mortis, ut aevum quod reliquisset, iterum recepisset. Sed etsi eaedem semper revolverentur, licet non corporum quoque formas easdem, tamen vel ingeniorum et studiorum et adfectionum pristinas proprietates secum 0701B referre deberent; quoniam temere eaedem haberentur, carentes iis per quae eaedem probarentur. Unde scias, inquis, an ita quidem fiat occulte, sed conditio milliarii aevi interimat facultatem recensendi, quia ignotae tibi revertuntur? Atquin scio non ita fieri, cum Pythagoram, Euphorbum mihi opponis. Ecce enim Euphorbum militarem et bellicam animam satis constat vel de ipsa gloria clypeorum consecratorum; Pythagoram vero tam residem et imbellem, ut praelia tunc Graeciae vitans, Italiae maluerit quietem, geometricae et astrologiae et musicae devotus, alienus studio et adfectu Euphorbi. Sed et Pyrrhus ille fallendis piscibus agebat; Pythagoras contra nec edendis, 0701C ut animalibus abstinens. Aethalides autem et 0702A Hermotimus fabam quoque in pabulis communibus inruerat; Pythagoras vero ne per fabalia quidem transeundum discipulis suis tradidit. Quomodo ergo eaedem animae recuperantur, quae nec ingeniis, nec institutis jam, nec victibus eaedem probabuntur? Jam nunc, de tanto Graeciae censu quatuor solae animae recensentur. Sed et quid utique de solo Graeciae censu, ut non ex omni gente, ex omni aetate ac dignitate, ex omni denique sexu, et μετεμψυχώσεις μετενσωματώσεις quotidie existant, cur solus Pythagoras alium atque alium se recognoscat, non et ego? aut si privilegium philosophorum est, et utique graecorum, quasi non et scythae et indi philosophentur, cur neminem se retro meminit Epicurus, neminem Chrysippus, neminem Zeno, ne ipse quidem Plato, quem forsitan 0702B Nestorem credidissemus, ob mella facundiae?