TRANSMIGRATION, in comparative religions, metempsychosis; the doctrine of the passage of the soul from one body into another. It appears among many savage races in the form of the belief that ancestral souls return, imparting their own likeness to their descendants and kindred, and Tylor thinks that this notion may have been extended so as to take in the idea of rebirth in bodies of animals. In this form the belief has no ethical value. Transmigration first ap pears as a factor in the gradual purifica tion of the spiritual part of man, and its return to God, the source and origin of all things, in the religion of the ancient people of India, whence it passed to the Egyptians, and, according to Herodotus, from them to the Greeks. It was one of the characteristic doctrines of Pythag oras, and Pindar the Pythagorean lets the soul return to bliss after passing three unblemished lives on earth. Plato in the dream of Er deals with the condi tion and treatment of departed souls; and extends the period of the return of souls to God to 10,000 years, during which time they inhabit the bodies of men and animals. Vergil, Persius and
Horace allude to it, and Ovid sets forth the philosophy and pre-existences of Pythagoras. Traces of it appear in the "Apocrypha," and that at least some Jews held it in the time of Jesus seems indicated in the disciples' question (John ix: 2). St. Jerome alludes to the exist ence of a belief in transmigration among the Gnostics, and Origen adopted this belief as the only means of explaining some Scriptural difficulties, such as the struggle of Jacob and Esau before birth (Gen. xxv: 22), and the selection of Jere miah (Jer. i: 5). In modern times Les sing held it and taught it, and it formed part of the system of Swedenborg.