his disciples spread it through Greece and Italy. Pythagoras says:
"All has soul; all is soul wandering in the organic world, and obeying
eternal will or law."

In Dryden's Ovid we read:--

"Death has no power the immortal soul to slay,
That, when its present body turns to clay,
Seeks a fresh home, and with unlessened might
Inspires another frame with life and light."

It was the keynote of Plato's philosophy. Plato says: "Soul is older
than body. Souls are continually born over again into this life." The
idea of Reincarnation was spread widely in Greece and Italy by
Pythagoras, Empedocles, Plato, Virgil and Ovid. It was known to the
Neo-Platonists, Plotinus and Proclus. Plotinus says: "The soul leaving
the body becomes that power which it has most developed. Let us fly
then from here below and rise to the intellectual world, that we may
not fall into a purely sensible life by allowing ourselves to follow
sensible images...." It was the fundamental principle of the religion
of the Persian Magi. Alexander the Great accepted this idea after
coming in contact with the Hindu philosophers. Julius Caesar found
that the Gauls had some belief regarding the pre-existence of the
human soul. The Druids of old Gaul believed that the souls of men
transmigrate into those bodies whose habits and characters they most
resemble. Celts and Britons were impressed with this idea. It was a
favorite theme of the Arab philosophers and many Mahomedan Sufis. The
Jews adopted it after the Babylonian captivity. Philo of Alexandria,
who was a contemporary of Christ, preached amongst the Hebrews the
Platonic idea of the pre-existence and rebirth of human souls. Philo