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Updated: June 2, 2025
"Respecting the real nature of the present state, the missionaries perceived that the Hindoos laboured under the most fatal misapprehensions; that they believed the good or evil actions of this birth were not produced as the volitions of their own wills, but arose from, and were the unavoidable results of, the actions of the past birth; that their present actions would inevitably give rise to the whole complexion of their characters and conduct in the following birth; and that thus they were doomed to interminable transmigrations, to float as some light substance upon the bosom of an irresistible torrent...
I said just now that the Horse eventually died and became converted into the same inorganic substances from whence all but an inappreciable fraction of its substance demonstrably originated, so that the actual wanderings of matter are as remarkable as the transmigrations of the soul fabled by Indian tradition.
The greatest grief and shame were felt by the family of those deprived of the right of sepulture, for they believed that thereby he was excluded from the mansions of the blessed, and that in the course of the transmigrations through which his spirit would pass before it again returned to a human form, it might be condemned to inhabit the body of an unclean animal.
No, it is not mere curiosity that inspires the wish to know whether or not the stars are inhabited by living organisms, by consciousnesses akin to our own, and a profound longing enters into that dream that our souls shall pass from star to star through the vast spaces of the heavens, in an infinite series of transmigrations.
The idea that re-birth and remission of sin may be followed by adoption and heirship, and joint heirship with the Son of the Infinite, belongs to the Christian faith alone; and the hope and inspiration of such a heritage, seen in contrast with the endless and disheartening prospects of countless transmigrations, are beyond the power of language to describe.
In the present it can hardly remain; but before its final settlement it may be obliged to pass, as one of our poets says, "through great varieties of untried being," and in all its transmigrations to be purified by fire and blood.
He who sees that actions are performed by Prakriti alone, and that the soul is not an actor, perceives the truth." Such is Hindu pantheism. Yet this most inconsistent system charges man with guilt. It represents his inexorable fate as pursuing him through endless transmigrations, holding over him the lash of retribution, while it exacts the very last farthing.
I inquired of the High Lama, who spoke a little Hindustani. "Luxury, pride, and envy," he replied. "Do you ever expect to become a saint?" I asked him. "Yes, I hope so; but it takes five hundred transmigrations of an uncontaminated soul before one can be a saint." Then, as if waking to a sudden thought, he seized my hand impulsively and spread my fingers apart.
We will venture, however, to say, that any person who wishes to form a just notion of the extent and variety of Addison's powers, will do well to read at one sitting the following papers, the two Visits to the Abbey, the Visit to the Exchange, the Journal of the Retired Citizen, the Vision of Mirza, the Transmigrations of Pug the Monkey, and the Death of Sir Roger de Coverley.
The inexorable fate in this tale which brings one after another of the family to die in the same spot is not due to Greek influence, though it seems akin to that. In the irrepressible transmigrations of Bata, and the successive risks of the Doomed Prince, the same ideas are seen working in the Egyptian mind.
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