body, moving like them around the central fire.

[71]

By analogy with this conception of the universe as the realisation of
God, so also the body, whether [72] of man or of any creature, is the
realisation for the time being of a soul. Without the body and the
life of the body, that soul were a blind and fleeting ghost. Of such
unrealised souls there are many in various degrees and states; the
whole air indeed is full of spirits, who are the causes of dreams and
omens.

[73]

Thus the change and flux that are visible in all else are visible also
in the relations of soul and body. Multitudes of fleeting ghosts or
spirits are continually seeking realisation through union with bodies,
passing at birth into this one and that, and at death issuing forth
again into the void. Like wax which takes now one impression now
another, yet remains in itself ever the same, so souls vary in the
outward {28} [74] form that envelops and realises them. In this bodily
life, the Pythagoreans are elsewhere described as saying, we are as it
were in bonds or in a prison, whence we may not justly go forth till
the Lord calls us. This idea Cicero mistranslated with a truly Roman
fitness: according to him they taught that in this life we are as
sentinels at our post, who may not quit it till our Commander orders.

On the one hand, therefore, the union of soul with body was necessary
for the realisation of the former ((Greek) _soma, body_, being as it
were (Greek) _sema, expression_), even as the reality of God was not in
the Odd or Eternal Unity, but in the Odd-Even, the Unity in
Multiplicity. On the other hand this union implied a certain loss or
degradation. In other words, in so far as the soul became realised it
also became corporealised, subject to the influence of passion and [75]
change. In a sense therefore the soul as realised was double; in
itself it partook of the eternal reason, as associated with body it
belonged to the realm of unreason.

This disruption of the soul into two the Pythagoreans naturally
developed in time into a threefold division, _pure thought_,
_perception_, and _desire_; or even more nearly approaching the
Platonic division (see below, p. 169), they divided it into _reason_,
_passion_, and _desire_. But the later developments were largely
influenced by Platonic and other doctrines, and need not be further
followed here.

{29} [78] Music had great attractions for Pythagoras, not only for its
soo