The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
CHAPTER 10
Further arguments against transmigration.
14. History proclaims and Scripture teaches that men by their way of life can become like the beasts of the field. Hence it is that the Psalmist whom I have quoted says, Man, for all bis dignity, has not understood; he has been joined with senseless beasts and has become like them.19 But this refers to the present life, not to the life after death. Hence, when the Psalmist said, Deliver not up to beasts the soul that confesses to Thee,?° he did not wish his soul to be handed over to the power of such beasts as the Lord bids us beware of when He says that they are clothed in the vesture of sheep but inwardly are ravenous wolves;?! or he did not wish his soul to be handed over to the Devil and his angels, for he is called a lion and a dragon.??
15. What kind of argument do philosophers offer who think that the souls of human beings can be sent into beasts, or the souls of beasts sent into human beings after death? They argue, of course, that men's ways of acting would draw them to like creatures: misers to ants, plunderers to kites, violent and proud men to lions, voluptuaries to pigs, and so forth.23 These are the arguments which they assert,?+ but they do not advert to the fact that by this reasoning it would be quite impossible for the soul of a beast to enter into a human being after death. For a pig will certainly not be more like a human being than a pig; and when lions are tamed, they become more like dogs or even sheep than men. Hence, beasts do not give up the ways of beasts, and those that are somewhat unlike the others are none the less more like their own kind than like humans. Their difference from human beings is far greater than their difference from beasts. These souls of beasts, then, will never be souls of men if like attracts like.
Now, if this argument of the proponents of transmigration is false, how can their theory be true, since they do not offer any other argument to establish even the probability, if not the truth, of the theory? I am inclined to agree with their later followers who say that men of old put this account in their books