["He makes them wear the silent chains of brutes, the bloodthirsty souls he encloses in bears, the thieves in wolves, the deceivers in foxes; where, after successive years and a thousand forms, man had spent his life, and after purgation in Lethe’s flood, at last he restores them to the primordial human shapes.”  —­Claudian, In Ruf., ii. 482.]

If it had been valiant, he lodged it in the body of a lion; if voluptuous, in that of a hog; if timorous, in that of a hart or hare; if malicious, in that of a fox, and so of the rest, till having purified it by this chastisement, it again entered into the body of some other man: 

               “Ipse ego nam memini, Trojani, tempore belli
               Panthoides Euphorbus eram.”

     ["For I myself remember that, in the days of the Trojan war, I was
     Euphorbus, son of Pantheus.”—­Ovid, Met., xv. 160; and see Diogenes
     Laertius, Life of Pythagoras.]

As to the relationship betwixt us and beasts, I do not much admit of it; nor of that which several nations, and those among the most ancient and most noble, have practised, who have not only received brutes into their society and companionship, but have given them a rank infinitely above themselves, esteeming them one while familiars and favourites of the gods, and having them in more than human reverence and respect; others acknowledged no other god or divinity than they: 

          “Bellux a barbaris propter beneficium consecratae.”

     ["Beasts, out of opinion of some benefit received by them, were
     consecrated by barbarians”—­Cicero, De Natura Deor., i. 36.]

                              “Crocodilon adorat
               Pars haec; illa pavet saturam serpentibus ibin: 
               Effigies sacri hic nitet aurea cercopitheci;
                              Hic piscem flumints, illic
               Oppida tota canem venerantur.”

["This place adores the crocodile; another dreads the ibis, feeder on serpents; here shines the golden image of the sacred ape; here men venerate the fish of the river; there whole towns worship a dog.”—­Juvenal, xv. 2.]

And the very interpretation that Plutarch, gives to this error, which is very well conceived, is advantageous to them:  for he says that it was not the cat or the ox, for example, that the Egyptians adored:  but that they, in those beasts, adored some image of the divine faculties; in this, patience and utility:  in that, vivacity, or, as with our neighbours the Burgundians and all the Germans, impatience to see themselves shut up; by which they represented liberty, which they loved and adored above all other godlike attributes, and so of the rest.  But when, amongst the more moderate opinions, I meet with arguments that endeavour to demonstrate the near resemblance betwixt us and animals, how large a share they have in our greatest privileges, and with how much probability they compare us together, truly I abate a great deal of our presumption, and willingly resign that imaginary sovereignty that is attributed to us over other creatures.