Chapter Nineteen: Refuting the Views of the Adherents of Metempsychosis in Their Entirety

his instrument, or the body, of an ass or a camel that perishes under the load (1).

[41] Chapter Nineteen

On the refutation of all the opinions of the proponents (2) of metempsychosis (tanāsukh)

We say: we have shown by decisive demonstrations that the existence of souls (nufūs) is with the existence of their bodies (3). So when a human body comes to be, it merits a soul to be emanated upon it; and were another, transmigrating soul to indwell it, there would be found two souls in one body — and that is impossible, since none of us is aware of more than his own soul. Therefore metempsychosis is impossible.

And I (4) say: if transference were possible for souls, then either the soul's remaining without a body to pass into is possible, or it is not possible. The first is void (5), since it would then cease from its acts for some time, and there is nothing left idle in nature. And the second is likewise void, since it would follow that the bodies which perish must correspond to those which come to be — and the voidness of this is evident in the case of the Flood (6).

We say: if our souls had been in bodies before these bodies, it would follow for us that we should remember our former acts, and that because the soul is by nature remembering, especially [42] of a thing it has frequented much; yet we see in ourselves nothing that would indicate any part of these

— Notes —

[36] 1) In the original: bi-al-jamal.

[36] 2) Dropped in the original: ahl.

[36] 3) In section seventeen.

[36] 4) In the original: anā.

[36] 5) Dropped in the original: bāṭil.

[36] 6) Thus in the original.