Man

This is the source of those metamorpheses, or transformations, so celebrated among the Hebrews and among the Pythagoreans; for even the esoteric theology of the Hebrews at times transforms the holy Enoch into the angel of divinity which is sometimes called "malakh-ha-shekinah" and at other times transforms other personages into divinities of other names; while the Pythagoreans transform men guilty of crimes into brutes or even, if we are to believe Empedocles, into plants...

Who then will not look with wonder upon man who, not without reason, in the sacred Mosaic and Christian writings, is designated by the term "all flesh" and sometimes by the term "every creature," because he molds, fashions and transforms himself into the likeness of all flesh and assumes the characteristic power of every form of life? This is why Evantes the Persian in his exposition of Chaldean theology, writes that man has no inborn and proper semblance, but many which are extraneous and adventitious: whence the Chaldean saying: "Enosh hu shinnujim vejammah tabhaoth haj"- "man is a living creature of varied, multiform, and ever-changing nature."

-from Oration on the Dignity of Man by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola