From Herman Melville's Moby Dick

a reference to reincarnation

Herman Melville apparently believed in reincarnation -- or at least one of his characters did. The following reference to reincarnation appears in Moby Dick, presented as a musing by the narrator:

'Oh! The metempsychosis! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage -- and foolish as I am, taught thee, a green and simple boy, how to slice a rope!'

Note: Metempsychosis an older term for reincarnation. What this passage says in modern English is this: Pythagoras, the ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher, had reincarnated in the time when Captain Ahab was chasing Moby Dick, the Great White Whale. Only now, the soul that was Pythagoras had to start all over again as inexperienced cabin boy aboard the ship, where the narrator of this story taught him such simple things as how to splice a rope.

(Melville, Herman, Moby Dick, Watermille Classic edition, Watermille Press, Mahwah, NJ, 1985. p. 395)

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