text of _De
Principiis_, omitted all that referred to this question, that the
conspiracy of silence might be preserved on the matter of Origenian
transmigration.

At the close of his article "_Origen on Reincarnation_," in the
_Theosophical Review_, February, 1906, G. R. S. Mead says:

"It therefore follows that those who have claimed Origen as a believer
in reincarnation--and many have done so, confounding reincarnation
with pre-existence--have been mistaken. Origen himself answers in no
uncertain tones, and stigmatises the belief as a false doctrine,
utterly opposed to Scripture and the teaching of the Church."

Others affirm that Saint Justin Martyr believed in rebirths and even
in the transmigration of human souls into animal bodies. In his book
_Against Heresies_, volume 2, chapter 33, the _Absurdity of the
Doctrine of the Transmigration of Souls_ is dealt with; and in the
following chapter, the pre-existence of the soul is denied! Is this
another instance, like the one just mentioned, of tampering with the
writings of this Father of the Church?[195]

At times an author gives two contradictory opinions on the same
subject. In Tertullian's _Apology for the Christians_, for instance,
we find the following:

"If you can find it reasonable to believe the transmigration of human
souls from body to body, why should you think it incredible for the
soul to return to the substance it first inhabited?[196] For this is
our notion of a resurrection, to be that again after death which we
were before, for according to the Pythagorean doctrine these souls now
are not the same they were, because they cannot be what they were not
without ceasing to be what they were.... I think it of more
consequence to establish this doctrine of the resurrection; and we
propose it as more consonant with reason and the dignity of human
nature to believe that man will be remade man, each person the person
he was, a human being a human being; in other words, that the soul
shall be habited with the same qualities it was invested with in its
former union, though the man may receive some alteration in his
form.... The light which daily departs rises again with its original
splendour, and darkness succeeds by equal turns; the stars which leave
the world, revive; the seasons, when they have finished their course,
renew it again; the fruits are consumed and bloom afresh; and that
which we sow is not quickened except it die, and by that dissolution
r