_In our study of Anatomy, there is a mass of mysterious Philosophy, and such as reduced the very Heathens to Divinity._] So it did _Galen_, who considering the order, use, and disposition of the parts of the body, brake forth into these words: _Compono hic profecto Canticam in creatoris nostri laudem, quod ultra res suas ornare voluit melius quam ulla arte possent_. Galen, 3. _de usu partium_. _Sect. 37. Pag. 55._ _I cannot believe the wisdom of_ Pythagoras _did ever positively, and in a literal sense, affirm his_ Metempsychosis.] In this the opinion of _Grotius_ is contrary to the Author, who saith this opinion was begotten by occasion of the opinion of other Philosophers, who in their discourses of the life that is to be after this, brought such arguments, _Quæ non magis de homine quam de bestiis procedunt_. And therefore, saith he, _mirandum non est, si transitum animarum de hominibus in bestias, de bestiis in homines alii commenti sunt_. _Lib. 2. de ver. Relig. Christ. (vide etiam Annotat. ejusd.)._ But yet there is a shrewd objection against the opinion of _Pythagoras_, if he did mean it literally, which is cast in by the Sectators of _Democritus_ and _Epicurus_, which _Lucretius_ remembers in these Verses: _Præterea si immortalis natura animaï Constat, et in corpus nascentibus insinuatur, Cur super anteactam ætatem meminisse nequimus? Nec vestigia gestarum rerum ulla tenemus? Namsi tantopere 'st animi mutata potestas, Omnis ut actarum excideret retinentia rerum, Non ut opinor ea ab læto jam longiter errat._ [Lib. 3.] This Argument, 'tis true, is _pro falso contra falsum_, but yet holds _ad hominem_ so far, that it is not likely (as the Author saith) but _Pythagoras_ would observe an absurdity in the consequence of his Metempsychosis; and therefore did not mean it literally, but desired only to express the Soul to be immortal, which he, and the other Philosophers that were of that opinion, who had not heard of Creation, could not conceive, unless it must be taken for truth, that the soul were before the body; so saith _Lactantius_ of them. _Non putaverunt aliter fieri posse ut supersint animæ post corpora, nisi videntur fuisse ante corpora. De fals. Sap._ c. 18. _Sect. 41. Pag. 59._ _I do not envy the temper of Crows or Daws._] As _Theophrastus_ did, who dying, accused Nature for giving them, to whom it could not be of any concernment, so large a life; and to man, whom it much concern'd, so short a one. _Cic. Tusc. quæst. l. 3._ How long Daws live, see in _Not. ad Sect. 41_. _Sect. 42. Pag. 61._