James Carville, a strategist for Bill Clinton, famously quipped that he wanted to be reincarnated as the bond market so he could " intimidate everybody" .
Whether you believe that you're going somewhere or getting reincarnated or will just cease to exist, you're going to have to face your own mortality at some point.
So we'd say to ourselves, wouldn't we, somehow Napoleon has been reborn or reincarnated, taking over, by some sort of process of possession, the body of the former David Smith, but now it's Napoleon.