pocrates, Aristotle, and other ancient philosophers, as 

 if they had seen them. We can never sufficiently ex- 

 tol the extreme penetration of those great geniuses, 

 whb^ guided solely by reason, arrived so long before 

 us, where we, after all our nice experiments and la- 

 borious researches, are glad to rest. 



10. Democritus is the first of the Grecian philoso- 

 phers who hath spoken of certain worms which assume 

 at length the human form; but 110 author transmitted 

 to us, hath entered into a detail of this opinion ; 

 though Epicurus, Diodorus Sieulas, and Euripides, 

 seem to hint at it. Epicurus thought that the genera- 

 tion of animals vjas effected by the continual transfor- 

 mation of one into another. Anaxagoras had said the 1 

 same, as weil as Euripides quoted by Plutarch, Galen, 

 Eusebius, and Philo. But Domocritus, in explaining 

 himself more precisely, taught that men, in their first 

 original, appeared in the fonr of small worms, which: 

 in all probability, he conceived to be contained in the 

 seminal juice of the male; tor it is natural to suppose, 

 that in this idea, he agr eu wu Ilippocraies, who in 

 sinuate?, that the soed of animals is tilled with animal* 

 cula, whose parts ui.-.^iu themselves, a ad grow all at 

 a time. 



11. That illustrious physician without all doubt held 

 conferences u,:ou this subject with Oemocrttus-, whom 

 he found engaged in toe cj-jsection of animals when luj 

 went first to visa him, and lng enjoyed the utmost 

 satisfaction in ms company upon matters entirely phi. 

 lo: >phical. Aristotle set-ms- to hint at Domocritus, 

 wiien iioa..i ig oi the fi.st formation of men, he says, 

 u that so ne h.-ive thought that the first men, after 

 haung spraag out uf tht; earth, began their existence 

 in the torn) o little worms :" and in another place he 

 speaks oi Doniocritus as having believed, that in the 

 generation ot *uii'.i tiie exterior parts of the Icetus are 

 first. formed; so that it is even tnea of human shape, 



