we know not how; there is something in us that can
be without us, and will be after us, though it is strange
that it hath no history what it was before us, nor cannot
tell how it entered in us.

Sect. 37.--Now, for these walls of flesh, wherein the
soul doth seem to be immured before the resurrection,
it is nothing but an elemental composition, and a
fabrick that must fall to ashes. "All flesh is grass," is
not only metaphorically, but literally, true; for all
those creatures we behold are but the herbs of the field,
digested into flesh in them, or more remotely carnified
in ourselves. Nay, further, we are what we all abhor,
anthropophagi, and cannibals, devourers not only of men,
but of ourselves; and that not in an allegory but a
positive truth: for all this mass of flesh which we be-
hold, came in at our mouths: this frame we look upon,
hath been upon our trenchers; in brief, we have devoured
ourselves. I cannot believe the wisdom of Pythagoras
did ever positively, and in a literal sense, affirm his
metempsychosis, or impossible transmigration of the
souls of men into beasts. Of all metamorphoses or
transmigrations, I believe only one, that is of Lot's
wife; for that of Nabuchodonosor proceeded not so far.
In all others I conceive there is no further verity than
is contained in their implicit sense and morality. I
believe that the whole frame of a beast doth perish, and
is left in the same state after death as before it was
materialled unto life: that the souls of men know
neither contrary nor corruption; that they subsist be-