the
metempsychosis of Plato, but agreeably to another and higher order of
things."

The teaching of Origen is not easy to set forth clearly, for he is
very reticent about many things, and employs a language to which
present-day philosophy cannot always find the key; still, the teaching
seems full and complete. It comprises pre-existence and even those
special associations of certain human souls with animal souls, which
we have just spoken of and which form one of the chief mysteries of
metempsychosis.

In the following words he explains the existence of souls in previous
worlds:

"The soul has neither beginning nor end....

"Rational creatures existed undoubtedly from the very beginning in
those (ages) which are invisible and eternal. And if this is so, then
there has been a descent from a higher to a lower condition on the
part not only of those souls who have deserved the change, by the
variety of their movements, but also on that of those who, in order to
serve the whole world, were brought down from those higher and
invisible spheres to these lower and visible ones, although against
their will. 'For the creature was made subject to vanity, not
willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope'
(_Rom._, chap. 8, v. 20); so that both sun and moon and stars and
angels might discharge their duly to the world, and to those souls
who, on account of their excessive mental defects, stood in need of
bodies of a grosser and more solid nature; and for the sake of those
for whom this arrangement was necessary, this visible world was also
called into being.

"This arrangement of things, then, which God afterwards appointed not
being understood by some, who failed to perceive that it was owing to
preceding causes originating in free will, that this variety of
arrangement had been instituted by God, they have concluded that all
things in this world are directed either by fortuitous movements or by
a necessary fate, and that nothing is in the power of our own
will."[209]

"Is it not rational that souls should be introduced into bodies, in
accordance with their merits and previous deeds, and that those who
have used their bodies in doing the utmost possible good should have a
right to bodies endowed with qualities superior to the bodies of
others?"[210]

All souls will arrive at the same goal;[211] it is the will of souls
that makes of them angels, men or demons, and their fall can be of
such a nature