7 Soul and Mind he soul is much older than philosophy In many places and in many cultures human beings have imagined themselves surviving death, and the ancient equivalents of the world ‘soul’ Wrst appear as an expression for whatever in us is immortal Once philosophy began, the possibility of an afterlife and the nature of the soul came to be one of its central concerns, straddling the boundary between religion and science T Pythagoras’ Metempsychosis Pythagoras, often venerated as the Wrst of philosophers, was also renowned as a champion of survival after death He did not, however, believe as many others have done that at death the soul entered a diVerent and shadowy world; he believed that it returned to the world we all live in, but it did so as the soul of a diVerent body He himself claimed to have inherited his soul from a distinguished line of spiritual ancestors, and reported that he could remember Wghting, some centuries earlier, as a hero at the siege of Troy Such transmigration (which need not continue for ever) was quite diVerent from the blessed immortality of the gods, altogether exempt from death (D.L 45) Souls could transmigrate in this way, according to Pythagoras, not only between one human and another, but also across species He once stopped a man whipping a puppy because he claimed to have recognized in its whimper the voice of a dead friend (D.L 36) Shakespeare was struck by this doctrine, and refers to it several times Malvolio, catechized about Pythagoras in Twelfth Night, tells us that his belief was