“Thus a devil, after having been a cat or a goat, may pass, not by choice, but by constraint, into the embryo of a bird, a fish or a butterfly. Happy are those who make a lucky hit and become household pets, instead of beasts of burden or of slaughter. The lottery of destiny bars them the right of voluntary choosing.” The doctrine of transmigration, continues our author, “which Pythagoras taught of yore and some Indian sages hold to-day, is untenable in its application to men and contrary to religion, but it fits admirably into the system already set forth concerning the nature of beasts, and shocks neither our faith nor our reason.” Furthermore, it explains why “all species of animals produce many more eggs or embryos than are necessary to propagate their kind and to provide for a normal increase.” Of the millions of germs, of which “great creating nature” is so prolific, comparatively few ever develop into living creatures; only those which are vivified by a devil are evolved into complete organisms; the others perish. This seeming superfluity and waste can be most easily reconciled with the careful economy and wise frugality of nature by viewing it as a manifestation of the bountiful and beneficent providence of God in preventing “any lack of occupation or abode on the part of the devils,” which are being constantly disembodied and re-embodied. “This accounts for the prodigious clouds of locusts and countless hosts of caterpillars, which suddenly desolate our fields and gardens. The cause of these astonishing multiplications has been sought in cold, heat, rain and wind, but the real reason is that, at the time of their appearance, extraordinary quantities of animals have died or their embryos been destroyed, so that the devils that animated them were compelled to avail themselves at once of whatever species they found most ready to receive them, which would naturally be the superabundant eggs of insects.” The more profoundly this subject is investigated, he concludes, and the more light our observations and researches throw upon it from all sides, the more probable does the hypothesis here suggested in explanation of the puzzling phenomena of animal life and intelligence appear.
