CHAP. VIII.
The same absurdities likewise happen from assigning, as the causes of what is effected by sacrifices, either certain numbers that are with us, such, for instance, as assuming the number sixty in the crocodile,[[97]] as adapted to the sun; or physical reasons, as the powers and energies of animals, for instance, of the dog[[98]], the cynocephalus,[[99]] and the weasel[[100]], these being common to the moon; or material forms, such as are seen in sacred animals[[101]] according to the colours, and all the forms of the body; or any thing else pertaining to the bodies of animals, or of other things which are offered; or a certain member, as the heart of a cock;[[106]] or other things of the like kind which are surveyed about nature, if they are considered as the causes of the efficacy in sacrifices. For from these things the Gods are not demonstrated to be supernatural causes; nor, as such, to be excited by sacrifices. But they are considered as physical causes detained by matter, and as physically involved in bodies, and coexcited and becoming quiescent together with them, these things also existing about nature. If, therefore, any thing of this kind takes place in sacrifices, it follows as a concause, and as having the relation of that without which a thing is not effected; and thus it is suspended from precedaneous causes.