'Who knoweth,' said he, 'the spirit of a man that it goeth upwards?
I said in my heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.

For that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea they have all one breath, so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity.'" Eccles.

c.
iii: v.

18.
And such had been the opinion of Moses, as a translator of Herodotus (M.Archer of the Academy of Inscriptions) justly observes in note 389 of the second book; where he says also that the immortality of the soul was not introduced among the Hebrews till their intercourse with the Assyrians.

In other respects, the whole Pythagorean system, properly analysed, appears to be merely a system of physics badly understood.
"Hence, also its transmigrations, known by the name of metempsychosis, that is, the passage of the vital principle from one body to another; an idea which arose from the real transmigration of the material elements.
And behold, ye Indians, ye Boudhists, ye Christians, ye Mussulmans! whence are derived all your opinions on the spirituality of the soul; behold what was the source of the dreams of Pythagoras and Plato, your masters, who were themselves but the echoes of another, the last sect of visionary philosophers, which we will proceed to examine.
VIII.