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PLANCHETTE.
In Germany, Kant, Schelling, and Jul. Muller, used the doc¬
trine of the metempsychosis to explain the beginning and root
of sin in humanity. Herder, Lessing, Schubert, and Lichten¬
berg seem to have favored it. Van Helmont, the younger, who
died in 1699, taught it in Holland.
Herder has some remarkable dialogues on the subject of
metempsychosis ; and, though the vein of them is tentative
rather than dogmatic, it is easy to see the drift of his medita¬
tions. We quote a few passages : —
u In nature every thing is related; morals and physics, like
body and spirit. Morality is only a more beautiful $hy$iqttc of
the spirit. Our future destination is a new link in the chain
of our being, which connects itself with the present link most
minutely and by the most subtile progression, as our earth is
connected with the sun, and the moon with our earth. . . .