The Summary of Physics Restored

182Just as the individual parts of the Universe were potentially present in chaos as matter, and were afterwards actually separated and brought forth, so the individual beings of things are potentially present in the whole material World before they come into the light. From it they are to flow in their own time and order and eventually emerge into actuality. When they perish, however, they fall back into the universal mass from which they came, like rivers into the sea. Each nature returns to its own region, to enter Nature’s workshop again and again and be sent back beneath her anvil for new work. Perhaps this was the Pythagoreans’ transmigration of souls, rejected long ago because it was not understood.