Chapter Eighteen: Setting Out the Views of the Adherents of Metempsychosis

namely that they are un(1)created. As for the Greeks among the people of the Church, they rejected these two opinions, I mean the eternity of souls (nufūs) and their coming after the bodies (2), and said rather that all of them came to be together. And this opinion is the soundest of all the opinions, and it is this that we shall expound (3) with further proofs and demonstrations.

Chapter Eighteen

On setting forth the opinions of the proponents of metempsychosis (tanāsukh)

A group said: souls came to be eternal, before the bodies; and when [39] the longing for the company of matter (hayūlā) arose in them, they united with it as with an instrument and fulfilled their appetites; and whenever weariness at contact with the bodies befalls (4) them, they pass over (5) to their first abode.

And others said: when the soul unites with a body, and the temperament of that body inclines toward the working of the virtues and has no longing for corporeal things, it longs for what is more excellent than these; and when this body dissolves, it seeks to pass over to a body of greater virtues (6) than the first, and thus it ascends by degrees from one body to another until its essence and all its attributes are perfected, and thereupon it passes over to the world of the separate intellects. But if the body with which it has united is one of many bodily appetites, it too becomes enamoured of that body's appetites; and when this body is ruined, it passes over to one that has a greater longing for base things, and likewise to another greater than that, until it unites with the bodies of animals and passes from them into the plant, and from it (1) into the inanimate — as Saint Ghrīghūriyūs al-Nīṣī related, where he reproved (2) this foul opinion, saying: “A certain man put on the body of a woman, and after it that of a bird, and after it a plant, and then at last took on the body of water.”

[40] And others said: just as the virtuous soul, when it passes from body to body, ascends and attains delight among the separate intellects, so likewise the soul base in its conduct sinks from rank to rank in baseness of conduct until it reaches the abiding station with the devils and the satans; and there is its everlastingness, unto the ages of ages.

And others said: when the wicked soul passes from one body to another baser than it, and from that to one baser still, it comes at the last of the matter to sheer nonexistence.

And others said: the passage of souls from the bodies of men into animals, and the reverse, is possible; but into the plant and the minerals and the inanimate, that is not possible.

And others said: when the soul unites with a human body, then if it acquires the virtues through it, it desires delight in another body greater than the first — and that is from the Creator, exalted be He; but if it reverses the matter, it deserves one baser than the first, I mean such as the body of a thief (3) whose hand has been cut off and who deserves to be killed for the baseness of his acts, and to be flogged, and to have cut off

— Notes —

[34] 1) Dropped in the original: ghayr.

[34] 2) In the original: ʻan qidam al-abdān.

[34] 3) In the original: wa-ilayhi nashraḥ.

[34] 4) In the original: wa-lammā yaqaʻ.

[34] 5) In the original: fa-ʻinda dhālika tantaqil.

[34] 6) In the original: faḍāʼilan.

[35] 1) In the original: wa-minhā.

[35] 2) He means “fannada”.

[35] 3) In the original: sāyiq.