Our souls hold our essence, our past, present maybe even future. This thought comforts me, in that when I cease with this husk, my essence will move on, like a flowing river, a growing bud, or to a new born babe.
Robert Burton in the Anatomy of Melancholy (1628) writes, "The Pythagoreans defend metempsychosis and palingenesia, that souls go from one body to another."