Pythagoras — "The soul of man is immortal and that it changes into other kinds of animals."
The soul of man is immortal and that it changes into other kinds of animals.
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More from Pythagoras
"None can be free who is a slave to, and ruled by, his passions."
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About Pythagoras (c. 570-495 BCE)
Greek philosopher and mathematician whose school in Croton combined geometry (the Pythagorean theorem), number-mysticism, and a religious-vegetarian way of life. Closely associated with Thales of Miletus (earlier pre-Socratic and the first philosopher). For an intellectual contrast, see Heraclitus, pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of flux — Heraclitus called Pythagoras 'the chief of swindlers' — among the founding insults of the philosophical-rivalry tradition. Their 'all is flux' vs 'all is number' poles still organize the philosophy of mathematics today (Platonist vs anti-realist).
Details
A core tenet of metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, central to Pythagorean thought and a reason for vegetarianism.
Date: c. 570 – c. 495 BC
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Every person has a soul that never dies. When the body stops working, the soul doesn't vanish, it simply moves into a new living creature and starts another life. That creature might be another human or an animal, and the cycle keeps repeating. Death is not an ending but a transfer, and the being you are today may have lived many previous lives in very different bodies.
Relevance to Pythagoras
Pythagoras founded a secretive brotherhood in southern Italy that treated the soul's transmigration as a central teaching. Followers ate no meat and avoided harming animals because any creature might house a former friend's soul. He claimed to remember his own past lives. Though remembered today for geometry and number theory, his community blended mathematics, music, ritual purity, and this reincarnation doctrine into one complete way of living.
The era
In the sixth century BCE, Greek thinkers were breaking from Homeric views of a gloomy, shadowy afterlife in Hades. Mystery cults like the Orphics promoted similar ideas of a divine soul cycling through bodies, and Pythagoras likely drew on Egyptian and Eastern influences during his travels. This was a period when philosophy, religion, and early science were undivided, so a mathematician teaching reincarnation was perfectly ordinary rather than contradictory.
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