dailyTangents.com
Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary
1764
CONTENTS ... Index
* Preface
* Adultery
* Advocate
* Ancients and Moderns
* Animals
* Antiquity
* Arts
* Astrology
* Atheism
* Authority
* Authors
* Banishment
* Bankruptcy
* Beauty
* Bishop
* Books
* Bouleverd
* Bourges
* Brahmins
* Character
* Charlatan
* Civil Laws
* Climate
* Common Sense
* Concatenation of Events
* Contradictions
* Corn
* Cromwell
* Customs
* Democracy
* Destiny
* Devout
* Ecclesiastical Ministry
* Emblem
* English Theatre, on the
* Envy
* Equality
* Expiation
* Extreme
* Ezourveidam
* Faith
* False Minds
* Fatherland
* Final Causes
* Fraud
* Free-will
* French
* Friendship
* God
* Helvetia
* History
* Ignorance
* Impious
* Joan of Arc
* Kissing
* Languages
* Laws
* Liberty
* Library
* Limits of the Human Mind
* Local Crimes
* Love
* Luxury
* Man
* Man in the Iron Mask
* Marriage
* Master
* Men of Letters
* Metamorphosis
* Milton, on the Reproach of Plagiarism Against
* Mohammedans
* Mountain
* Nakedness
* Natural Law
* Nature
* Necessary
* New Novelties
* Philosopher
* Power, Omnipotence
* Prayers
* Précis of Ancient Philosophy
* Prejudices
* Rare
* Reason
* Religion
* Sect
* Self-esteem
* Soul
* States, Governments
* Superstition
* Tears
* Theist
* Tolerance
* Truth
* Tyranny
* Virtue
* Why?
* Declaration of Admirers, Questioners and Doubters
... LINKS & RESOURCES
METAMORPHOSIS, METEMPSYCHOSIS
Is it not very natural that all the metamorphoses with which the world
is covered should have made people imagine in the Orient, where
everything has been imagined, that our souls passed from one body to
another? An almost imperceptible speck becomes a worm, this worm becomes
a butterfly; an acorn transforms itself into an oak; an egg into a bird;
water becomes cloud and thunder; wood is changed into fire and ash;
everything in nature appears, in fine, metamorphosed. Soon people
attributed to souls, which were regarded as light figures, what they saw
in more gross bodies. The idea of metempsychosis is perhaps the most
ancient dogma of the known universe, and it still reigns in a large part
of India and China.
