purified state through repeated trials." This is the theory of the
Zohar, which says: "All souls are subject to transmigration; and men
do not know the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He! They do not know
that they are brought before the tribunal both before they enter into
this world and after they leave it; they are ignorant of the many
transmigrations and secret probations which they have to undergo, and
of the number of souls and spirits which enter into this world and
which do not return to the palace of the Heavenly King. Men do not
know how the souls revolve like a stone which is thrown from a
sling. But the time is at hand when these mysteries will be
disclosed." (Zohar, II, 99 _b_.)

Like many of the Church Fathers the Cabalists used as their main
argument in favor of the doctrine of metempsychosis the justice of
God. But for the belief in metempsychosis, they maintained, the
question why God often permits the wicked to lead a happy life while
many righteous are miserable would be unanswerable. Then too the
infliction of pain upon children would be an act of cruelty unless it
is imposed in punishment of sin committed by the soul in a previous
state. Isaac Abravanel sees in the commandment of the Levirate a proof
of the doctrine of metempsychosis for which he gives the following
reasons: (1) God in His mercy willed that another trial should be
given to the soul, which having yielded to the sanguine temperament of
the body had committed a capital sin, such as murder, adultery, etc.;
(2) it is only just that when a man dies young a chance should be
given to his soul to execute in another body the good deeds which it
had not time to perform in the first body; (3) the soul of the wicked
sometimes passes into another body in order to receive its deserved
punishment here below instead of in the other world where it would be
much more severe. (Commentary on Deuteronomy, XXV, 5.)