vieille croyance a fait le tour du monde, et était tellement répandue dans la haute antiquité, qu’un docte Anglican l’avait jugée sans père, sans mère, et sans généalogie_” (_Ths. Burnet, dans Beausobre, Hist. du Manichéisme_, ii. p. 391). Taught already in the "Vedas," as in all the sacred books of India, metempsychosis is well known to be the kernel of Brahmanism and Buddhism. It accordingly prevails at the present day in the whole of non‐Mohammedan Asia, thus among more than half of the whole human race, as the firmest conviction, and with an incredibly strong practical influence. It was also the belief of the Egyptians (Herod., ii. 123), from whom it was received with enthusiasm by Orpheus. Pythagoras, and Plato: the Pythagoreans, however, specially retained it. That it was also taught in the mysteries of the Greeks undeniably follows from the ninth book of Plato’s “Laws” (pp. 38 and 42, ed. Bip.) Nemesius indeed (_De nat. hom._, c. 2) says: “Κοινη μεν οὐν παντες Ἑλληνες, οἱ την ψυχην αθανατον αποφηναμενοι, την μετενσωματωσιν δογματιζουσι.” (_Communiter igitur omnes Græci, qui animam immortalem statuerunt, eam de uno corpore in aliud transferri censuerunt._) The “Edda” also, especially in the “Völuspá,” teaches metempsychosis. Not less was it the foundation of the religion of the Druids (_Cæs. de bello Gall._, vi.; _A. Pictet, Le mystère des Bardes de l’ile de Bretagne_, 1856). Even a Mohammedan sect in Hindostan, the Bohrahs, of which Colebrooke gives a full account in the “Asiatic Researches,” vol. vii. p. 336 _sqq._, believes in metempsychosis, and accordingly refrains from all animal food. Also among American Indians and negro tribes, nay, even among the natives of Australia, traces of this belief are found, as appears from a minute description given in the _Times_ of 29th January 1841 of the execution of two Australian savages for arson and murder. It is said there: “The younger of the two prisoners met his end with a dogged and a determined spirit, as it appeared, of revenge; the only intelligible expressions made use of conveyed an impression that he would rise up a ‘white fellow,’ which it was considered strengthened his resolution.” Also in a book by Ungewitter, “_Der Welttheil Australien_,” it is related that the Papuas in Australia regarded the whites as their own relations who had returned to the world. According to all this, the belief in metempsychosis presents itself as the natural conviction of man, whenever he reflects at all in an unprejudiced manner. It would really be that which Kant falsely asserts of his three pretended Ideas of the reason, a philosopheme natural to human reason, which proceeds from its forms; and when it is not found it must have been displaced by positive religious doctrines coming from a different source. I have also remarked that it is at once obvious to every one who hears of it for the first time. Let any one only observe how earnestly Lessing