The soul, in the exercise of her operations, being necessarily in submission to the body which she animates; and all souls flowing from the immense reservoir called universal soul, it follows that the portion of the fire ether which animates a man, might as well animate an ox, a lion, an eagle, a whale, or any other beast. Fate caused that she would animate a man, and such a man; but when the soul will be disengaged from this first body, and will return to her source, she will be able to pass into the body of another animal; and her activity will be lesser or greater, in ratio of the organization of the new body into which she will pass. All the great work of nature being reduced to successive organizations and destructions, in which the same matter is ten thousand times used under ten thousand forms, the subtle matter of the soul, carried in that current, brings life to all the moulds which open to receive her. Thus the same water flown from a same reservoir, enters the various pipes which are opened, rolls on and empties either as a fountain, or as a cascade, according to the forms of the orifices of the pipes; then it congregates, evaporates, and forms clouds which brings it back down to the earth, to experience again an infinity of modifications. It is the same of the fluid of the soul spread in the various canals of the animal organization, flowing from the bright mass of which the ethereal substance is composed; thence being carried to the earth by the generating force distributed among the animals, continually ascending and descending in the universe, and circulating within new bodies diversely organized. Such was the basis of Metempsychosis, which became one of the most powerful political engines in the hands of the ancient rulers, legislators and mystagogues. Pythagoras brought this doctrine from the Orient to Greece, and to Italy. This philosopher, and Empedocles after him, taught that the souls of the criminals, when death separated them from the bodies they animated, passed into the bodies of beasts in order to suffer, under those divers forms the punishment of their wickedness, until they might recover, by expiation, their native purity. So this transmigration of the souls was a punishment of the gods. The Stoicians held this doctrine; and the emperor Marcus-Aurelius, in the ninth book of his Works, said: "The spiritus, or breath, which animates us, passes from one body into another." To give the reader a general idea of what was the belief of the ancients, and of their philosophers, in regard to Metempsychosis, we take from the tenth and last book of the Republic of Plato the following lengthy but instructive extract:--