For men of old it was characteristic that alongside the impressions they received in earthly life through the senses (which in any case were far less intense than they are to-day), they remembered experiences of a purely supersensible kind, which gave them assurance that before the soul was knit together with a physical body it had existed in a cosmic state purely spiritual in nature. The moment in history when this kind of memory disappeared is that of the transition from the philosophy of Plato to that of Aristotle. Whereas Plato was convinced by clear knowledge that the soul possesses characteristics implanted in it before conception, Aristotle recognized a bodiless state of the soul only in the life after death. For him the beginning of the soul's existence was identical with that of the body.