which are in the blood hardly merit that name being purely naturall and destitute of all perception and that in our life time as being common to us with plants and specifically differing from animall spirits as might bee shown by the different actions wherein nature employes them In the next degree above these naturall ones are the vitall spirits which vanish with the life which they conserved so that then the arteries which contained them become empty And lastly those that were sensitive cannot remain in a dead man because they are easily dissipated and have need of continual reparation as we see in swoonings the senses saile as soone as the heart ceaseth to furnish them with matter to uphold the continuity of their generation Or if they did remaine in the body after death they could performe no action for want of necessary disposures in their organs as we see in those that are blinde dease paralytick and others But because the refutation of the reasons given of this effect is a thing very easie and may be done in many other subjects It is better to shew that this bleeding cannot come from any naturall cause no not of such as are unknown to us which is easily done if we presuppose that all naturall causes are necessary and do act without liberty at all times when their objects are presented to them Which falls not out so heere for it hath oftentimes beene seene that murtherers for feare of being accused of murder have made more and neerer approaches round about the dead body than any other which hath beene used as a presumption against them though the body did not bleed in their presence and oftentimes nurses overlie their children which notwithstanding bleed not after death though they hold them in their armes as a signe of their great affection and innocence And had this signe been naturall Salomon that was very skilfull in nature would have used this rather than a morall triall wherein was much lesse certainty nor would Moses have forgotten it Besides we see every day the executioners come to take from the gallows or the wheel those persons whom the day before they executed with their owne hands out of whose wounds comes not a drop of blood although all the causes of such bleeding doe concurre in this example and ought to produce their effect unlesse you think they were hindered by some morall reason as the consideration that this execution was by the order of justice But then beasts being uncapable of this consideration and having none of this wisedome should bleed in the presence of those butchers which are not very exact in their trade with which the Jewes doe every day upbraid them And such as have killed Hares and Partridges should cause their bodies to bleed when they come neere them Moreover they which have beene set upon by some assasin finde it not alwayes easie to know him againe when they see him though they be in perfect health and awake much lesse can a man that is asleep or very neere death by any signe discover the approching assasin that mortally wounded him and yet it is hard to imagine that we have lesse perception and knowledge during the remainders of our life than after our death and that a wounded man must die that he may become more sensible Lastly it is easie to make it appeare that it is not in this effect as in other marvels which have a naturall cause because though many effects are so hidden from us that wee are not able to assigne their particular causes yet they may be all proved by some reasons if not demonstrative yet at least probable even the magneticall cure by sympathy and antipathy which are the onely principles of all naturall motions Which motions are but of two sorts that is to say Approach and Remotion it being naturall to all bodies to joine themselves to their like and to fly from the objects from which they have some naturall aversenesse And indeed if the blood issued naturally it would be to joyne it selfe with blood of the same nature as the blood of the dead mans kindred for sympathy is onely betweene bodies joined in amity Nor can antipathy produce this effect for it is not its property to joine and bring-neerer-together two bodies which are enemies but on the contrary in the presence of the murtherer it should concentrate all the blood and cause it to retire to the inner parts And these are the grounds which perswade me not only that the causes of this miracle are not yet found but also that it is impossible that it should have any that is naturall The fifth said that this bleeding may be caused by the imagination if according to the opinion of Avicenna it doth act even out of its owne subject the phantasie of the guilty with the remembrance of the blood spilt by him in the killing of the dead there lying before his eyes which stirres all his powers may be able to cause this haemorrhagie or issuing of blood Some nitrous vapours also of the earth may help this ebullition of the blood in the carkasse when it is taken up out of the earth or the water having insinuated it selfe into the veines of a drowned carkasse may make the blood more fluid Hereunto also the aire may contribute by its heat which is greater than that of the earth or water and is increased by the concourse of the multitudes which use to run to such spectacles Also the fermentation which after death happens to the blood serves very much to this heat which makes it boile in the veines as syrups in the time of their sermentation boile and fill up the vessels which before were not full till at length they make them run over at the top in the same manner the blood which before did not fill the veines yet after it is fermented doth so puffe them up that they can no longer hold it all and having withall gotten a tarmesse which corrodes the orifices of the vessels it makes its way out some dayes after death as we see in the bodies reserved for anatomies where the rope having caused the blood to rise to the braine where it could not be contained it runs out at the nose Also the sympathy of the spirits once friendly and afterward become enemies may help toward this effect which should not be thought more strange than many other like motions as the paine felt by the Nurse in her breasts when her nurse-child cries the fury which the red colour stirres up in the Lion and the Turky-cock the falling-sicknesse whose fits are augmented or advanced in those that hold in their hand the plant called Virga sanguinea or a twig of the Cornill tree a kind of Jasper stayes bleeding by a contrary reason Lapis Nephriticus makes the gravell come out of the kidneyes the Weapon-salve cures a wound being applied to the sword which made it 100. leagues off and many other Talismanick effects of which
we do no more see their connection with their causes than of this of the spirits of the murtherer and the murthered which notwithstanding are no lesse effectuall in this occurrence than the spirits which come out of a bleare eye are able to hurt the eye that lookes on it or the eyes of a Witch to bewitch lambs and to produce all other marvellous effects whereof their histories are full The sixth said It would be hard to perswade most men that there is sense in all lifelesse bodies much more that there remaines any after death because sense is given to all bodies for no other cause but to enable them to discerne their objects to carry them toward their likes and to make them fly from subjects worthy of their eschewing Which cannot be said of dead bodies for whom nature hath no longer any care or providence So that she which doth nothing in vaine and gives not to bodies qualities of which they have no use hath not taken care to put into or preserve in carkasses a passion which might serve to uphold them in that estate For that were against the intention of Nature her selfe who strives to ruine such bodies and to resolve them into their elements to the end that thereof she may make new mixts and so augment some of her species But if we grant Campanella that dead bodies have some remainder of sense yet will it not thereupon follow that they have enough of it to cause the motions of trembling and anger to which he attributes this bleeding for anger requires too many sorts of reciprocall motions and too much mixt to be compatible with the cold which freezeth the spirits of dead bodies whatsoever the Historians say to the contrary for they write that anger might be seene in the sterne visages of divers men slaine in battaile which hath no likelihood of truth And forasmuch as plants which according to the opinion of this author have a greater measure of sense than carkasses have witnesse the attractions and expulsions which they make yet are not at all capaple of anger and having seene some men so stupid as to be displeased with nothing in their life time I cannot beleeve that they become more sensible after their death Such bodies are then past trembling either for apprehension or memory both which are fled away with their life and they are in an estate of having no further apprehension of their murderers And if they would tremble for feare it were time for them so to do at the approach of the Anatomists who without all pity pull them in as many pieces as they can imagine any way to differ from one another and besides feare would not make the blood to issue forasmuch as this passion is not caused but by the concentration of the spirits and their abandoning of the outer-parts that they may retire inward Another unlikely consequent is that these spirits separated from the soule should be more able to discern the murderer than when they were joyned to it for a living man is not able to know him that hurt him in the night or as a high-way-robber with a vizor and silence preventing all discovery of him by his face or voyce Furthermore the spirits are of the nature of the Sun-beams which give heat and light so long as they are continued from the body of the Sun to the object on which they fall but the Sun is no sooner hidden but that the beames cease to be Even so as long as the rete admirabile of the brain which is the spring and forge of the animall spirits which are only capable of knowledge does continue an influence of spirits into the nerves and through them into the other organs of the sense so long are they able to discern and no longer though they could subsist longer So that this opinion cannot stand no not with the opinion of the Pagan Philosophers who teach that the soule after death quits not the body but only the operations of the inward and outward senses the ceasing of the actions whereof the spirits are instruments being sufficient to shew that the spirits themselves are ceased The seventh said that this extraordinary motion cannot be referred but to a light supernaturally sent from God to the Judges for the discovery of the blackest crimes which otherwise would escape unpunished which is also the cause why this miracle though it sometimes happen yet is not alwayes observable as the effects of naturall causes which are necessary and thereby are distinguished from contingents it being no lesse impiety to deny that the divine justice doth sometimes send succour to the justice of men than it is ignorant rusticity in all things to content our selves with universall causes without seeking the particular ones which indeed God commonly employes for the producing of effects but yet hath not so enchained his power to the necessity of their order as that hecannot break it when he pleaseth even to the giving unto moystened clay a vertue to restore sight to the eyes of one borne blinde FINIS
comes to passe that the Cock hath a pre-eminence over the Lion which he understands not till the crowing raise in his imagination some species which in him produce terror Unlesse you will say that the spirits of the Cock are communicated to the Lion by meanes of this voyce for that is a thing more materiate and so more capable to act than the spirits which come out of sore eyes which neverthelesse do infect those that are found if they look on them nay to speak with the Poet they do bewitch the very lambs The second said we must reckon this error of a Cock scaring a Lion by crowing among divers other vulgar ones of which oftentimes the chaires and pulpits ring as if they were certaine truths when in the triall they prove stark false It may be some tame Lion growen cowardly by the manner of his breeding hath been seen affrighted by the shrill sound of some Cock crowing suddenly and neere to his eares which will seem not unlikely to them that in the beginning of March last past were present at the intended combat in the Tennis-court at Rochel between such a Lion and a Bull at the sight of whom the Lion was so afraid that he bolted thorow the nets throwing down the spectators which were there placed in great number as thinking it a place of greater security and running thence he hid himselfe and could by no meanes be made re-enter the lists Or it may be the novelty of this crowing surprised some Lion that never heard it before as having alwayes lived far from any village or countrey house where poultry are bred and thereupon the Lion at this first motion startled It is also possible and most likely too that the startle of choller whereinto the Lion fals as soone as any thing displeases him was mistaken by some body for a signe of feare whereas it was a token of his indignation For I see no shew of reason to imagine in this generous beast a true and universall feare of so small a matter as the voyce of a Cock seeing that this likenesse of nature which is attributed to them should rather produce some sympathy than any aversion and yet this enmity if any were and that as great as between wolves and sheep ought no more to scare the Lion than the bleating of a sheep affrights a wolfe But the wolfe devoures the sheep and assimilates it to his own substance rather for the good-will that he beares himselfe than for any ill-will or hatred that he beares toward the sheep Besides we ordinarily see Cocks and Hens in the court-yards of the houses where Lions are kept which never make any shew of astonishment at their crowing Nay I remember I have seen a young Lion eat a Cock 't is true he did not crow any more than those of Nibas a village neere to Thessalonica in Macedon where the Cocks never crow But the Lion would have been content with tearing the cock in pieces and not have eaten him if there had been such an antipathy between them as some imagine But this error finds entertainment for the moralls sake which they inferre upon it to shew us that the most hardy are not exempt from fear which oftentimes arises whence it is least looked for So that to ask why the crowing of a Cock scares Lions is to seek the cause of a thing that is not The third said we must not make so little account of the authority of our predecessors as absolutely to deny what they have averred the proofe of which seems sufficiently tried by the continued experience of so many ages for to deny a truth because we know not the reason of it is to imitate Alexander which cut the Gordian knot because he could not unty it It is better in the nature of the Cock and his voyce to seek a cause of the fright of the Lion who being a creature always in a fever by his excessive cholerick distemper of which his haire and his violence are tokens great noise is to him as intollerable as to those that are sick and feverish especially those in whom a cholerick humour enflamed stirrs up headach Besides there are some kinds of sound which some persons cannot endure and yet can give you no reason for it but are constrained to flie to specificall properties and antipathies and such we may conceive to be between the Cocks-crowing and a Lions eare shith much more likelihood than that the Remora staies vessels under full saile and a thousand other effects impenetrable by our reason but assured by our experience Lastly this astonishment that the Cock puts the Lion into with his crowing is not very unreasonable This king of beasts having occasion to wonder how out of so small a body should issue a voyce so strong and which is heard so farre off whereas himselfe can make such great slaughters with so little noise Which amazement of the Lion is so much the greater if the Cock bee white because this colour helps yet more to dissipate his spirits which were already scattered by the first motion of his apprehension FINIS VVhy dead Bodies bleed in the presence of their murtherers GOod Antiquity was so desirous to know the truth that as often as naturall and ordinary proofes failed them they had recourse to supernaturall and extraordinary wayes Such among the Jewes was the water of jealousie of which an Adulteresse could not drink without discovering her guiltinesse it making her burst Such was the triall of the Sieve in which the Vestall Nun not guilty of unchastity as she was accused to be did carry water of Tiber without spilling any Such were the oathes upon Saint Anthonies arme of so great reverence that it was beleeved that whosoever was there perjured would within a yeare after bee burned with the fire of that Saint and even in our times it is commonly reckoned that none lives above a yeare after they have incurred the excommunication of Saint Geneviefve And because nothing is so hidden from justice as murder they use not only torments of the body but also the torture of the soule to which its passions doe deliver it over of which Feare discovering it selfe more than the rest the Judges have forgotten nothing that may serve to make the suspected person fearefull for besides their interrogatories confronting him with witnesses sterne looks and bringing before him the instruments of torture as if they were ready to make him feele them they have invented all other meanes to surprise his resolution and break his silence especially when they have found already some signes and conjectures Wherefore they perswade him that a carkasse bleeds in the presence of the murtherers because dead bodies being removed doe often bleed and then he whose conscience is tainted with the Synteresis of the fact is troubled in such sort that by his mouth or gesture he often bewrayes his owne guiltinesse as not having his first motions in his owne power Now
the cause of this flowing of the blood in the presence of the guilty is this After death the blood growes cold and thick but after a few dayes it becomes thin again as when we open a veine and receive our blood into Porrangers if we let it stand in them we may there see the like the heat of the corruption supplying the roome of the naturall heat which kept the blood liquid in the living body So that if the carkasse be removed by the murderer it is no wonder if it bleed And because the murther is hardly discovered by suspitions till after some dayes about which time also this liquefaction of the blood happens so that this accident is often found in the presence of the murtherer hence it comes to passe that the one is counted the cause of the other Although this cause and this effect be of the nature of those things which with small reason are thought to depend one on the other meerely because they fall out at the same time and because this perswasion though it be false hath a reall effect in discovery of truth therefore the Law-givers have authorized it using the same care for the discovery of truth that the guilty do to cover and hide it by their denials and divers sleights But we must take heed that we render no such cause of this issuing of the blood as may make it depend on the presence of the murderer as if it would not have happened without it The second said that it is not credible that the Soveraign Courts which have practised this triall and made good use of it were so defective in the knowledge of naturall causes as not to be able to discern the effusion of blood which comes by the putrefaction of it in the veines for they have a property to keep it from congelation from the gushing out of the same blood observed at the first approach of the guilty and when he is brought to look on the body It is therefore much better to seek the cause than to call in question the effect unlesse we had better reason so to doe than because it seems too marvellous Some have referred it to a magnetick or electricall vertue of the blood saying that quarrels seldome happen between persons unknowne but that the murtherer and the slaine having had acquaintance together their bloods have gotten such society as to draw one another and so the living mans blood being the more active draws the blood out of the other But as this attraction hath an imperceptible subtilty so it is not easie to conceive it possible if it be not helped by some meanes that may connect this effect to its cause I like better the opinion of Levinus Lemnius who presupposeth that two enemies intending one anothers death do dart their spirits one at another for they are the messengers of the soule by which she exerciseth the sight and all her other outward senses Now these spirits seeking the destruction of one another and being made active by the sting of choler doe insinuate and work themselves into the opposite bodies and finding an open entrance through some wound they tend thither more notably than to any other passage and there they mingle with the blood of the wounded and hee shortly after dying they there settle themselves and abide with his spirits till the murderer afterwards again approaching to the dead body the spirits which were all this while separated from their totall do take this occasion to rerurn and rejoyne themselves as all things are desirous to returne to their own beginnings But this they cannot do without clearing and separating themselves from that masse of blood wherein they lay confused and therefore they trouble this masse and so cause an effusion of that blood which till then was retained in the veines Which is helped not a little by that confusion whereinto we bring the murderer by laying before him the body by him murthered for hereupon his spirits forsaking their Center and wandring do meet with their fellowes as the Lode-stone and Iron meeting one another halfe way The third man was of the opinion of Campanella who attributes the cause of this bleeding to the sense which is in all things and which continues in dead bodies so that having a perception of their murderers and perceiving them neere them they suffer two very different motions of trembling and anger which shake the body and remove the blood in the veines violently enough to make it issue at the gaps of their wounds For the spirits which during life had knowledge enough to make them perceive and obey the commands of the soule retaine it even after death so farre as to be able to discerne their friends and their enemies And as at the time of our birth all the objects which are present do imprint in us their qualities in that universall change which is made at that moment as Astrologers speak whence comes that important choyce which they prescribe us to make of mid-wives and gossips that is if we consider the matter more neerly of the persons which are to be about the child-wife so when we die and quit our naturall qualities to borrow new ones from the bodies about us we get a conformity with all those which are neere us and with the murtherer more than with any other The fourth said this opinion could not be true for then it would follow that hee which had killed some man by the shot of an Arquebuz could not be knowne by the signe and that if a man were killed in the armes of his wife and amidst his friends which had defended him such a one would rather bleed in the presence of his friends than of the murtherer whose spirits are ordinarily kept in by the guilt of his conscience and the apprehension of punishment whereas his friends being animated with anger do call forth all their spirits to a necessary defence Besides if the murtherer now brought neere the carkasse have also beene wounded in this encounter he should rather bleed than the dead man because his blood is more boyling and must have received many of the spirits which did all leave the slaine man at his death being evaporated thence upon the bodies which were round about him For they issue out of the wounds of a dying man together with his blood and that so violently that they will not permit at the same time a motion contrary to theirs and so cannot admit any entrance for the spirits of the murtherer which if they should enter would there acquire a Sympathy with the dead body in whose blood they would tongeale and lose the Sympathy that they had with the body out of which they came Even as no man retaines the spirits of that creature whose blood or heart he eates but he thereof formes his owne spirits Nay if they did retaine this Sympathy yet could they not know the murderer for want of senses which they never had because the spirits