Reincarnation and Karma in the Timaeus
Trans. Thomas Taylor (paragraph breaks added by me)
"But as the human nature is twofold, he showed them that the more excellent kind was that which afterwards would be called man. And as souls are from necessity engrafted in bodies, and as something accedes to and something departs from such bodies, he declared to them that, in the first place, one connate sense produced by violent passions was necessary to all; and, in the second place, love mingled with pleasure and grief. That after these, fear and anger were necessary, with whatever else is either consequent to these, or naturally discordant from a contrary nature.
That such souls as subdue these would live justly, but such as are vanquished by them unjustly. And again, that he who lived well during the proper time of his life, should, again, returning to the habitation of his kindred star, enjoy a blessed life. But that he whose conduct was depraved, should in his second generation be changed into the nature of a woman. That both these, at the expiration of a thousand years, should return to the allotment and choice of a second life; each soul receiving a life agreeable to its choice. That in this election the human soul should pass into the life of a brute: and that in case the inclination to evil should not even then cease, but the defilement of vice remain according to a similitude of the mode of generation, then the soul should be changed into the nature of a brute correspondent to its disposition. And that it should not be freed from the allotment of labours, till, following the revolution of the same and similar nature contained in its essence, it vanquishes those abundantly turbulent affections, tumultuous and irrational, adhering to it afterwards from fire, water, air, and earth, and returns to the frist and best disposition of its nature."
"But as the human nature is twofold, he showed them that the more excellent kind was that which afterwards would be called man. And as souls are from necessity engrafted in bodies, and as something accedes to and something departs from such bodies, he declared to them that, in the first place, one connate sense produced by violent passions was necessary to all; and, in the second place, love mingled with pleasure and grief. That after these, fear and anger were necessary, with whatever else is either consequent to these, or naturally discordant from a contrary nature.
That such souls as subdue these would live justly, but such as are vanquished by them unjustly. And again, that he who lived well during the proper time of his life, should, again, returning to the habitation of his kindred star, enjoy a blessed life. But that he whose conduct was depraved, should in his second generation be changed into the nature of a woman. That both these, at the expiration of a thousand years, should return to the allotment and choice of a second life; each soul receiving a life agreeable to its choice. That in this election the human soul should pass into the life of a brute: and that in case the inclination to evil should not even then cease, but the defilement of vice remain according to a similitude of the mode of generation, then the soul should be changed into the nature of a brute correspondent to its disposition. And that it should not be freed from the allotment of labours, till, following the revolution of the same and similar nature contained in its essence, it vanquishes those abundantly turbulent affections, tumultuous and irrational, adhering to it afterwards from fire, water, air, and earth, and returns to the frist and best disposition of its nature."
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