This eschatological doctrine had in reality nothing in common with morality. If an uninterrupted chain unites the existence of all species, if life propagates itself fatally from man to the lower beings, this necessity seems to exclude all hope of posthumous reward. In order to bring the need of a retribution in after life into agreement with the belief in the fatal circle of migrations, it was stated that the good entered the souls of peaceful and tame animals, the wicked those of wild beasts. This is why Alexander of Abonotichos predicted to a devotee that he would be in after life first a camel, then a horse, and end by being a great prophet like himself.[443] Hermes Trismegistus even claimed to know that the just became eagles among birds, lions among quadrupeds, dragons among reptiles, dolphins among fish.[444] But the lot even of these privileged souls might not seem very enviable. The moralists, therefore, relaxed the rigour of the system and exempted noble spirits from bestial degradation. All souls were no longer condemned to dwell in the bodies of animals, but only those whose low inclinations had assimilated them to brutes. They inhabited the species which best conformed to their instincts. Thus debauchees became hogs in another life; cowards and sluggards, fish; the light-minded and frivolous, birds.[445] The pagan theologians ingeniously and laboriously interpreted the story of Circe’s changing the companions of Ulysses into beasts as an allegory of metempsychosis. _Circe_ became the _circle_ of the reincarnations which were undergone by those who emptied the magic cup of pleasure, and whence the wise Ulysses escaped, thanks to Hermes, that is, to reason which instructed him.[446]