The following quotations give us true representations of Pythagoras' ideas on pre-existence and rebirth. Souls cannot die. They leave a former home, And in new bodies dwell and from them roam. Nothing can perish, all things change below, For spirits through all forms may come and go. * * * * * Thus through a thousand shapes, the soul shall go And thus fulfil its destiny below. Death has no power th' immortal soul to slay; That, when its present body turns to clay, Seeks a fresh home and with unminish'd might Inspires another frame with life and light. So I myself (well I the past recall).... Pythagoras regarded rebirth as a gradual process of purification and taught that the soul by reason of nobility of character gained by struggles upon earth was destined to be exalted eventually into far higher modes of life. "Imagination," he explained: is the remembrance of precedent spiritual, mental, and physical states, while fancy is the disorderly production of the material brain. Man is perfected first by conversing with gods, which he can do only when he abstains from evil and strives to resemble divine natures; secondly, by doing good to others, which is an imitation of the gods; thirdly, by leaving the mortal body. By our separation from the Deity, we lost the wings which raised us towards celestial beings and were thus precipitated into the region of death where all evils dwell. By putting away earthly passions and devoting ourselves to virtue, our wings will be renewed and we shall rise to that existence where we shall find the true good without any admixture of evil. The soul of man being between spirits who always contemplate the Divine Essence and those who are incapable of contemplating it, can raise itself to the one, or sink itself to the other. Every quality which a man acquires originates a good or bad spirit, which abides by him in this world and after death remains with him as a companion. Pythagoras taught that man is a microcosm, a compendium of the universe, with a triple nature, composed of (1) an immortal spirit, the Spiritual Soul, intuitive perception, the _Nous_, a portion of the Deity; (2) a human intelligence, the Human Soul, the rational principle, the _Phren_; and (3) the sensitive irrational nature, the Animal Soul, the seat of the passions and desires, the _Thymos_. The Nous and the Thymos, he stated, are common to man and the lower animals, but the Phren, which in its higher aspect is immortal, is peculiar to man. The immortal mind of man is as much more excellent than his sensitive irrational nature as the sun is more excellent than the stars. The physical body is but a temporary garment of the soul, into which "the Nous enters from without." "The sense perceptions are deceptive." The principle of life is about the heart, but the principle of reason and intelligence in the head.