On the other hand, a highly moral life results in one being reborn in a higher plane, either as an aristocrat, a king„ or a priest, or even as a godling. By incessant and unrelaxing, endeavor; in every new birth a soul may, however. finally reach emancipation, and become pure and one with God. no longer to be reborn. In this sys tem the length of the series of rebirths depends wholly upon the individual, who works out his own salvation by his own acts. As Buddhism denies the existence of a soul. metempsychosis. in India is confined to Hinduism. But Buddhism had an analogous belief in the transmigration of char aeter-entities, also conditioned by nets. ending. if at all, in Nirvana. itheonscious existence or ex tinction of personality resulting from extinction of desire, volition. the animating principle in Buddhistic psychology. The Egyptian system • puts a term of years to the series of rebirths. Further, the soul at the end of this series of three thousand years returns to its first cor poral environment. an idea not found in India. Again, what was sporadic in India. namely, the termination of the series by divine favor, is cus tomary, according to the Egyptian doctrine. But the third difference between the two systems is most important. In Egypt, namely. metempsycho sis i; not the fate of the good. but of the sinful, the good being united with Osiris. and even this is only very generally true, for the sinful are simply deprived of union with the good, while (Well the good may• if they will. continue on the
round of existence,. or if they prefer may lire in Elysium. So, too, in the Greek system, the Elysian fields are the reward of the good, hut transmigration is here the necessary eonsequence of sin. Moreover, both in India and in Ureece the whole system of metempsychosis was crossed Icy the belief in hell. and amalgamated with it rather roughly. In India. for example. the soul first expiates its sins in hell and then enters upon rebirth. Boman writers adopted the Greek idea, but it seems to have taken little hold on the people either in (lreeee or in Rome.
Metempsychosis has always had an attraction • for some minds. It. has even been attributed in a refilled form to Christ, and the Church fathers were not uninfluenced by it. just as the Jewish rabbis adopted it in holding that Adam was re incarnated as David. It has been held by Chris tian sects at various times since the Neo•Pla tonists' doctrine was received by the Gnostics, but always in the form of a belief that a man's soul has preexisted in the son) of some previous man; seldom in the form of Hindu belief, that an ani mal as well as a man may receive the soul of a man that has just died. Consult: Hopkins, Re ligions of India (Boston, 1895) ; Wiedermano, The Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the Immortal ity of the Xoul ( London. 1S95) ; Zeller, Grundriss der acsehichte der griechisehen Philosophic (4th ed.. Leipzig. 1893); Jevons, Introduction to the llistory of Religion (London, 1890).