De sollertia animalium

But that my discourse may draw to a conclusion, let us (as the saying is) move the stone over the sacred line, and add something concerning the divinity and prophetic nature with which our terrestrial creatures are endued. Which when we consider, we shall find that that part of soothsaying which is founded upon the observation of birds is not the meanest or most ignoble, but very ancient and in great esteem. For the smartness and intelligible faculty of birds, together with their capability to receive all impressions of fancy, afford the Deity a convenience to make use of those faculties as instruments, that he may turn them into motion, sounds, chirpings, and forms, now to stop and stay, anon to drive forward like the winds; by

means of some of these stopping short, by the means of others directing to their end, the actions and impetuous impulses of men. Therefore Euripides in general calls birds the criers of the Gods; and particularly Socrates styles himself a fellow-servant with the swans. As among princes, Pyrrhus was pleased with the surname of Eagle; and Antiochus loved to be called Antiochus the Falcon. But they who deride men as insipid and void of ingenuity call them by the names of fish. And whereas we can produce millions of things and accidents which are foretold us by land and flying creatures, there is not any one such example that the patrons of water-animals call produce in their behalf; but being all void of hearing, perfectly sottish, and without any sight, discerning, or providence, they are all thrown apart into that same place, unblest and hideous, called the sea, as it were into the region of the ungodly, where the rational and intellectual part of the soul is extinguished; being animated with only some diminutive portion, the lowest that may be imagined, of a confused and overwhelmed sense, so that they rather seem to palpitate than breathe.