ses in opposition to each other, he will find that
the philosophy of the one sort suits with the Seythians, Sogdians, and
Melanchlaenians, of whom Herodotus's relation is scarce believed; but
the sentiments of Pythagoras and Empedocles were the laws and customs of
the ancients Grecians.

Who, then, were the first authors of this opinion, that we owe no
justice to dumb animals?

Who first beat out accursed steel,
And made the lab'ring ox a knife to feel.

In the very same manner oppressors and tyrants begin first to shed
blood. For example, the first man that the Athenians ever put to death
was one of the basest of all knaves, who had the reputation of deserving
it; after him they put to death a second and a third. After this, being
now accustomed to blood, they patiently saw Niceratus the son of Nicias,
and their own general Theramenes, and Polemarchus the philosopher suffer
death. Even so, in the beginning, some wild and mischievous beast was
killed and eaten, and then some little bird or fish was entrapped.
And the desire of slaughter, being first experimented and exercised
in these, at last passed even to the laboring ox, and the sheep that
clothes us, and to the poor cock that keeps the house; until by little
and little, unsatiableness, being strengthened by use, men came to
the slaughter of men, to bloodshed and wars. Now even if one cannot
demonstrate and make out, that souls in their regenerations make a
promiscuous use of all bodies, and that that which is now rational
will at another time be irrational, and that again tame which is now
wild,--for that Nature changes and transmutes everything,

With different fleshy coats new clothing all,--

this thing should be sufficient to change and show men, that it is a
savage and intemperate habit, that it brings sickness and heaviness upon
the body, and that it inclines the mind the more brutishly to bloodshed
and destruction, when we have once accustomed ourselves neither to
entertain a guest nor keep a wedding nor to treat our friends without
blood and slaughter.

And if what is argued about the return of souls into bodies is not of
force enough to beget faith, yet methinks the very uncertainty of the
thing should fill us with apprehension and fear. Suppose, for instance,
one should in some night-engagement run on with his drawn sword upon one
that had fallen down and covered his body with his arms, and should
in the meantime hear one say, that h