When the body was dissolved, however, the soul entered that of some animal that instant born; and profane commentators have, on this creed, presumed to explain the sacred story of the “banishment and savage life of Nebuchadnezzar.” At the end of 30,000 years, it again entered that of a man; and it is likely that their object in embalming was, to have the soul _re-enter the same body_ from choice and habit. Simonides, four hundred years after the siege of Troy, ungallantly reversed this doctrine, deciding that “the souls of women were formed of the principles and elements of brutes.” The Pythagorean system was, if not more courteous, at least more just. “Thus all things are but altered, nothing dies; And here and there th’ embodied spirit flies. By time, or force, or sickness, dispossess’d, And lodges, where it lights, in bird or beast; Or hunts without, till ready limbs it find, And actuates those according to their kind. From tenement to tenement is toss’d, The soul is still the same, the figure only lost.” This is from Dryden’s translation of Chaucer. And Burton’s record is as follows: “The Pythagoreans defend _Metempsychosis_ and _Palingenesia_, that souls go from one body to another, _epotâ prius Lethes nudâ_, as men into wolves, beares, dogs, hogs, as they were inclined in their lives, or participated in conditions: ‘_——inque ferinas_ _Possumus ire domus pecudumque in corpora condi._’ “Lucian’s cock was first _Euphorbus_, a captaine: ‘_Ille ego (nam memini) Trojani tempore belli_ _Panthoides Euphorbus eram._’” And Plato, in Timæus, and in Phædo— EV. Enough of Plato, dear Astrophel; or believe, with me, that _his_ philosophy on this point was merely _figurative of the similarity of mind, or genius, or feature, between the dead and the living_;—as it was said of old, that the soul of Raphael had transmigrated to the body of Francesco Mazzola (Parmegiano), _because_ his style and personal beauty so closely resembled those of the all but divine master of his art. And pray what was the gist of that special astronomer, who affirmed that he “saw something written in the moon?”—A wild romance only? No, forsooth. Pythagoras may classically vociferate— “——errat, et illinc, Huc venit, hinc illuc, et quoslibet occupat artus Spiritus: eque feris humana in corpora transit, Inque feras noster.” But read further, and you will find the high moral to be a severe injunction against flesh-eating: “Then let not piety be put to flight, To please the taste of glutton appetite; But suffer innate souls secure to dwell, Lest from their seats your parents you expel: With rabid hunger feed upon your kind, Or from a beast dislodge a brother’s mind.”