The  doctrine  of  metempsychosis,  which  underlies
all  Buddhistic  teaching,  and  which  was  incorporated
from  Buddhism  into  the  later  Taoism,  makes  life  de-
sirable or  undesirable,  according  to  one's  present  lot
and  one's  balance  of  merit  or  demerit.  The  wheel
of  transmigration  ceaselessly  turning  in  Hades  with
its  six  ranks  or  spokes — insects,  fish,  birds,  animals,
poor  men,  and  mandarins — renders  the  death-bed  a
place  of  curious  and  awful  dread.  Yet  this  is  the
firm  belief  of  almost  every  man,  woman,  and  child  in
China — even  of  the  learned  Confucianist,  who,  w4th
his  exaltation  of  filial  piety,  sometimes  yields  before
Buddha's  reason  for  not  eating  flesh,  viz.,  that  in  so
doing  one  might  very  likely  eat  an  ancestor,  reborn
in  animal  form.
