Here, however, we touch on another form of metempsychosis. The ancients make a distinction between the doctrine of reincarnation or “reincorporation” (translating exactly the Greek word μετενσωμάτωσις), and rebirth or palingenesis (παλιγγενεσία). This latter word is not here taken in the Stoic sense of the eternal return of things, a series of cosmic cycles in which the same phenomena are exactly reproduced.[450] It is used to designate a transmigration separated by intervals, a process which is not continuous. In the first kind of metempsychosis there is, properly speaking, no rebirth, for the soul does not leave the earth, but there unceasingly accomplishes its circular journey through the living world. On the contrary, according to the second theory, it does not immediately resume possession of a body. It remains disincarnate for a long period of years—for Virgil as for Plato the number is one thousand—and thus leads a double existence of which its passages to this world take up only the lesser part. It is not even fatally constrained to redescend to the earth: if it has kept itself free from all corporeal defilement, it will soar to heaven and dwell there for ever. But if, during his sojourn on the earth, man has given himself up to the pleasures of the senses, his soul becomes attached to his body. At first it cannot separate itself from the corpse, around which it circles, plaintively regretting the joys it has lost. It desires again to enter the flesh which was the instrument of its voluptuousness; it seeks a dwelling which will allow it to continue the sensual habits which have become its second nature. And so, when the time is accomplished, it is seized with an irresistible love for the body in which it is to enclose itself again; a fascination, like a magic charm, draws it to this object of its desires, which is to cause its misery. The fatality driving it to incarnation and suffering is not here an inevitable law of the universe but an inner necessity, a destiny which it has made for itself. The cosmic _Ananke_ has become psychic.