The Soul of the Butterfly

THE soul of the butterfly, which will become a finished, matured form is as much concealed while it creeps upon the earth in the shape of a caterpillar, as when lying dormant in its chrysalis―it is as blind, but it has some senses through which outer impressions are conveyed to it. 

Let the chrysalis answer to the dormant state, in which, for a longer or shorter space of time, the soul must lie in its transition stage toward its new birth.

For not instantly are the interlacings which bind the soul to its earthly frame ever broken.

Now the caterpillar can move about in search of food to supply the elements from which the new or true form will be built through the metamorphoses going on within it—

Our caterpillar can feel.

It is covered all over with bristling hairs which are like papilla to convey intelligence of every touch to its perception, but approach it, menace it with a stick, it does not stir unless one of those feelers are touched, touched either by the object or by an unusually strong wave of air.

And it curls up the same in the damp or in the rain.

When it has become a butterfly, menace him again with your stick.

Does it wait for you to touch it with it?

It can see now as well as feel.

As it wings its flight through the palpitating ether, does life seem the same to him flooded with the warm sunlight, with leafy retreats and multitudinous sounds, as when deaf and blind it crawled in the damp mould?

Yet it is the same world, only it now is alive to it all—it has new powers and is free to use them to their fullest extent—

It lives upon a higher plane than does his fellow-worm.

It would not be possible now for it to feel existence as it once did in its old shell!

And if it could, through any one of those feelers made to sense outward things, communicate with his brother caterpillar—

Do you suppose the caterpillar could at all comprehend what a different life it was sensed outside of his shell prison?

Does this figure convey a comprehensible fact to your mind?