differs from Principle because every Cause is real and imparts a being different from its own which Privation being a Principle hath not And so every Cause is a Principle but every Principle is not a Cause Now a Cause is That which produceth an Effect There are Four Matter Form the Agent and its End Which Number is not drawn from any real distinction between them Seeing many times one and the same Thing is Form Agent and End in several respects So the Rational Soul is the Form of Man the Efficient Cause of his Ratiocination and the next End of the Creation But it is drawn from the four wayes of being a Cause which are call'd Causalities whereof one susteineth the Forms to wit the Matter An Other informeth that Matter and is the Form A Third produceth that Form and uniteth it to the Matter and is the Agent or Efficient Cause The Fourth by its goodness exciteth the Agent to act and is the Final Cause The Second said That the Causes are handled diversly according to the diversity of Sciences The Logician speaks of them so far as he draws from them his Demonstrations Definitions and Probable Arguments The Natural Philosopher inasmuch as they are the Principles of all kind of Alterations hapning in natural bodies The Metaphysitian as Cause is a Species of Entity which is generally divided into Cause and Effect In which consideration Supernatural Things have also some Causes but not all Wherefore in my Judgement said he Cause taken in general cannot be divided into the Four Species above mention'd because Spirits have no Material Cause but it ought to be first divided in reference to Immaterial things into Efficient and Final and into the four abovesaid in respect of Material That Efficient Cause is the first principle of Motion and Rest and is of two sorts viz. Vniversal or Equivocal and Particular or Vnivocal The former can produce several effects of different Species whether it depend not on any other as God and is then call'd the First Cause or depend on some other and is call'd a Second Cause As the Sun which together with Man generates Man The Particular otherwise Univocal Cause is that which produceth one sort of effect alone As Man generateth Man The Material Cause is that of which something is made The Formal Cause is that which causeth the Thing to be that which it is whether Essentially as the Soul makes the Man or Accidentally as a round form makes a Bowle The Final is that which incites the Agent to act as Gain doth the Merchant to Traffick The Third said Matter and Form being parts of the whole cannot be Causes thereof because then they would be Causes of themselves which is absurd Neither is the End a Cause but onely the term and rest of the Cause Besides there are some Ends which are impossible to obtain and are nothing of reality such as a Cause ought to be as when Heliogabalus propounded to himself to become a Woman others to fly to become invisible and the like absurdities So that there is but the Efficient Sole Cause of all Things which is the Internal Idea in God which is nothing else but that Fiat which created the World 'T is that very Cause which produceth all things in all different times and places and acts upon Art Nature and Nothing whence it is that All Entity conformable to that Increated Exemplar beareth those three Characters Truth Goodness and Vnity which all things are bound to represent under the Penalty of becoming Nothing out of which they were produced 'T is a Circle according to Trismegist whose Centre is every where and Circumference no where which possibly mov'd Galen to term Man the Centre of Mixt Bodies and all Antiquity a Little World and made Saint Thomas say that Man hath been united hypostatically to God the Son who is the Idea of the Father for the rejoyning of all the productions of the world to their first Principle Here he fell into Divinity but he was admonish'd to observe the Rules appointed by this Assembly to keep as far off as possible from such Matters and so he ended when he had mention'd the order that is observ'd in the actions of that Idea which said he acteth first upon the Intelligences as nearest approaching to its pure Nature they upon the Heavens these upon the Elements and these upon mixt bodies The Fourth added That that Idea is a Cause not onely in Natural Things but also in Artificial As in the building of a House the Idea which the Architect hath in his Mind excited his Will and this commands the Motive-faculty of the Members or those of his Laborours to dispose the Stones Timber and Morter which entring into the Composition of the Building cannot for the Reason above-mention'd be Causes of it as neither can the proportion and form An Other said That if the Idea be a Cause which cannot be but in Artificial Things it must be the Formal and not the Efficient since it is nothing else but an Original in imitation of which the Artificer labours and since the work derives its form from that Idea which is the Copy It was added by a Sixth That the Idea is not Cause but the true Essence of Things and the first objective Verity which precedes all Knowledge Humane but not Divine and is onely hereby distinct from Nothing in that it is known by God which suteth not with Nothing from which any thing cannot be distinguish'd but it must be if not in Act at least in Power The Seventh amplifying touching Ideas said That upon the Knowledge of them depend all Sciences and Arts but especially all what Men call Inventions which are nothing less then such because 't is no more possible to invent some thing new then to create some substance and make some thing of nothing But as all things are made by Transmutation so no Novelty is produc'd by Imitation either of things which are really existent or which our Mind frames and connects as of a Mountain and Gold it makes a Golden Mountain Thus the four most Excellent Inventions of the Modern Ages The Compass the Gun Printing and Perspective-glasses the two former were deriv'd from Experiments of the Load-stone from the effect of shooting Trunks and Fire As for Printing what is the Matrice wherein the Founders cast their Characters or those Characters compos'd in a flat Form as also Copper-cuts but a perfect Exemplar and Idea which is communicated fully to all its individuals And Perspective-glasses are nothing but ordinary ones multiply'd Another said That Causes cannot be known at all whence it comes to pass that we have no certain Knowledge Now to know is to know a thing by its Causes For the Vniversal Efficient Cause is above us and surpasseth the capacity of our Understanding and hence all the other inferiour and subordinate ones are unknown because their Cause is not known The Final is not in our power and being not so cannot be known because knowing presupposeth being Formes and Specifical Differences are hidden to us The Matter is
so unknown and so little a thing that even Aristotle could not define it saving by what it is not or by Analogy and Proportion to other things But since Proportion cannot be but between two things equally known and the First Matter being not so so much as the Wax to which for Example it is compar'd our Mind cannot comprehend that Analogy The Ninth said That the Elements which he held to be the First Matter are ingenerable and incorruptible Mixt Bodies being nothing else but those Elements united in sundry fashions That this Harmonical Vnion and Symmetry is the form of Mixts which is nothing but a certain Mode or Fashion of Being Whence in all kind of Generation there being no Substantial Mutation but onely a Conjunction and Separation of the Elements there is no other Cause but their Matter Which is thus prov'd to be the First because if there be a second granted then as Brass being the Matter of a Statue that Brass must have another Matter and this is a Third and so to Infinity unless one First be acknowledg'd The Tenth said That if a Material Cause be admitted the Three other must be admitted also For Matter naturally desiring Formes it is alter'd from one into another and that Alteration cannot arise from it self For Nothing is altered by it self but by an other It comes then from some Agent which moves that Matter and which is the Efficient Cause which cannot do any thing in vain but for some End and this is the Final Cause This End is in Natural Things the same with the Form and differs not from it but according to our manner of Understanding For the End of Generation is the Form of the Thing generated and that very Formis the End of Generation Wherefore admitting the Matter the other Three cannot be excluded II. Whence it is that we are zealous for out own Opinions Here they pass'd to the Second Point design'd for this Conference upon which many Opinions of divers Authors were alledged Some attributing the Zeal for our own Judgements to the Antipathy which is found in contrary Humours caus'd by the diversity of Temper and these by the opposition of the Heavenly Bodies Especially when Saturn that obstinate and melancholly Planet is predominant there Others refer'd it to Ambition following the conceit of those who think there is a Heap of Honour in the world to which every one hath his right and of which there is less left to others when some are suffer'd to take a great deal One ascrib'd it to the subtilty of the Mind which seeks to sport it self in new conceits and having produc'd them will not seem to want means to defend them And he observ'd that this Cantharides of Opinastry adheres usually to the goodliest flowers there being otherwise nothing more necessary to the evidencing of Truth then contest in which we propose to our selves to find it After this One explicated that which gave occasion to the Question in this manner Men desire nothing but Good distinguish'd into Honour Profit and Pleasure None of which Three are gotten by obstinacy in an erronious conceit especially when it is known for such But on the contrary there is shame in it one loseth his credit by it many times but alwayes the time and renders himself unacceptable to the hearers as 't is seen in Scholastick Disputes Whence it comes to pass that a Scholar brought up in these wranglings never begins to be esteem'd in company till he has laid aside that ill quality of Never-yielding Whereas on the contrary the more Ingenuous decline those Asperities by words of yieldance even in things wherein they have apparently most of Reason on their side And whon they are mistaken as a metled Horse rather rids himself out of the Plough then stayes there So 't is proper to a strong Mind to betake to a better Sentiment then its own without sticking at the fear which the weaker are possess'd with lest they should be blam'd for having been subject to err either in fact or in right Remembring that 't is incident to Humanity to err but Diabolical to persevere in a fault Hippocrates hath freely told his own St. Augustin hath made a Book purposely of his Retractations and after him Cardan and many other great personages Every one knows this every one commends it rather then Opiniastry but when it comes to the effect very few people practise it Which might be excus'd by the strong Passion for particular interests if Men gave their Opinions in a Matter which concern'd their or their Friend's Estate c. But I account it strange in a Question which imports no benefit at all to any person as in that about the Idea's which we were newly speaking of The next found some scruple in the Thesis for that it seem'd impossible to him for a Man not be concern'd for his Good Now his Good is that his judgement be alwayes esteemed Nor matters it that he may be mistaken in his conceit of that Good for it sufficeth that he judge it such Objects of the Will being to the Understanding as Colours are to Light this doth not give them their Essence of Colour but they hold that from their own Principle but it imparts the being visible or visibility to them So the Understanding gives not to the Objects of the Will that sutableness wherein the Nature of Good consists they have that from their own stock and Nature but it gives them Amability or Appetibility or to speak better the being amiable or desirable For knowing such convenience or sutableness it judgeth the sutable thing amiable So that as soon as 't is judg'd such 't is desired as a Good Now Man judging it a Good to have his Opinion follow'd willeth it as such and as a thing wherein he hath the highest interest For Man as Man hath no Good more Eminent then to Know Judge and give his Sentence of Things 't is his utmost Natural End Moreover Truth which is the Result of that Good is defin'd a Measure Adequateness and Correspondence of our Understanding and the Thing known attributing to it nothing Extrinsical and abstracting from it nothing that is its own Now a Man that hath judg'd and given his advice at least according to his Apprehension seeing that advice rejected falls into a double interest One arising from the charitable inclination which he hath for the good of him that consults him whom he seeth likely to miscarry by not following his advice The other being his own proper interest for that the sleighting his advice is a tacite accusing him of failing in a Thing Essential to his End and calling him a Monster or Fault of Nature For as a Monster is call'd a Fault of Nature because the Agents producing it have slipt and gone awry out of the way which she had prescrib'd and scored out to
kind is when onely the Spirits are enflam'd and 't is call'd Ephemera because it continues but one day unless the Humours too become of the party as it falls out usually and it admits of three differences according to the three sorts of Spirits Animal Vital and Natural The Humoral Fever is either Simple or Compounded The Simple is either Continual or Intermitting The Continual is caus'd when the putrefaction of the Blood possesses the great Vessels or some noble Part. The Intermitting produc'd by the three other Humours putrefying out of the Veins is either Quotidian which is produc'd by Phlegme or Tertian by Choler or Quartane by Melancholy The Compounded or complex Humoral Fever is caus'd by the mixture of those Humours which then cause a double Quotidian double Tertian and double Quartane yea sometimes but very rarely a Quintane and others of longer interval which may be attributed to all the different from which Fevers arise The Efficient causes is in my opinion the strength of Nature and every one's particular Temper as he who is more robust and upon whom the disease is more violent will have longer Fits the Fight of Nature with the Malady being more stoutly maintain'd by the parties and consequently shorter intervals because that which increases to the one decreases to the other The Cholerick will have longer Fits of a Tertian Fever and shorter of a Quotidiane The Material Cause contributes very much herein being that which supplies Ammunition to this intestine War which is continu'd or discontinu'd according to the proportion and quantity of the Matter 'T is more easie to name the Formal Cause then to understand it But as for the Final 't is certain that Nature makes the intervals of Fevers purposely to rally and recruit her strength as truces and cessations of Armes use to be made when the Country is almost spent or the Souldiers too much harrass'd and out of heart The Second said That the Periods of Fevers have been matter of torture to the best wits who could not without admiration consider how e. g. one sick of a Quartan and appearing to day at the point of Death should nevertheless for two days together perform all his actions perfectly and then upon the fourth many times too at the same hour in more contumacious Fevers become in the like pitiful condition again Now the Cause hereof is commonly attributed to the time which is requir'd for producing the matter of the Fever and consuming it They hold that it is so long in consuming as the Fit lasts the the end whereof is the Crisis like as the ancient water-clocks of the Romans did not signifie nor strike the hour till the vessel was full Some have imputed the cause to the motion of the Humour and believ'd that as the humid mass of the Sea hath its flux reflux and interval so have the Humours of our Bodies when the natural heat which regulated them being disorder'd and its effect suspended by the disease governes the same no longer but abandons them to their own Capricio Of which motion 't is no easier to render a reason then of that of the Sea the Load-stone and all other occult motions Hence many have recurr'd to the Asylum of Last Differences the knowledge whereof is interdicted to Humane Capacity And therefore they have ventur'd to assign no other cause saving that the Interval of these Fevers being their most proper Difference it must not be wonder'd if we understand their nature as little as those of all other things in the world The Third said That the time which is requisite for generating the Humour cannot be the cause of these Intervals since the Fits of a Fever are longer or shorter though the Fever change not its Nature yea it will become double or trebble sometimes and still keep the name of a Quartan As on the contrary when there is so little matter left for it that it is almost quite gone yet it alwayes returnes on the fourth day although the Fit lasts a shorter time Yea it comes to pass oftentimes that he who hath had a Quartan and is cur'd of all other Symptomes of his Ague yet for a long time after feels the chilness and weariness at the same day and hour that his Disease was wont to seize upon him In the mean time while 't is manifest that the Fever being gone the Melancholy Humour is no longer gather'd together in sufficient quantity to produce it and therefore the cause cannot be attributed to the Melancholly Humour since it no longer causeth the fever Whereby we may judge that the quantity of the matter contributes to the lengthening or diminishing of the fit but gives not the fever its name or form Now as for the motion which they attribute to the Humour like that of the Sea and their calling this Interval the form of the Fever 't is a confession of their Ignorance but not a solution of the Question Galen in the second Book of the Differences of Fevers and the last Chapter refers the cause of these regular and periodical motions to the dispositions of the parts of the whole Body which being distemper'd cease not to transmit or receive generate or attract superfluous and excrementitious humours and he holds that so long as the cause of these dispositions lasts so long the circuits continue and consequently the reason why a Tertian which is caus'd by Choler returnes every third day is because the distemper'd parts transmit or receive or generate bilious humours and excrements every other day But the question remains still whence it is that these parts are affected in such manner that they cause such just and regular periods For though it be true that the parts by reason of pain or heat e. g. yellow putrid Choler nevertheless this doth not infer that they attract the same rather the third day then the fourth or every day as they ought to do since the cause being alwayes present viz. the pain or heat which incessantly attracts this humour the effect should alwayes follow and make a Quotidian circuit although indeed 't is but once in three dayes The Fourth said That as Physitians refer the unusual motions of Epileptical and the violent sallies of the Frantick not barely to the phlegmatick or atrabilarious humour but to a certain quality of it so ought we to do touching the periodical motions of Fevers which proceed not simply from the humours corrupted but from a particular condition and virtue of each humour whereby it is that putrifying Phlegme makes its approaches every day Choler every third and Melancholy every fourth day And as these humours so long as they retain their natural constitution have a regular motion which carries one into the Bladder of Gall and the Guts the other into the Spleen and the other into the Stomack so being corrupted each acquires a certain new quality and putrefaction which is the cause of other periodical motions namely those of Fevers The Fifth
proceed but from Heaven or the Elements there is no probability in attributing them to these latter otherwise they would be both Agents and Patients together And besides if the Elements were the Efficient Cause of the Mutations which come to pass in Nature there would be nothing regular by reason of their continual Generation and Corruption Wherefore 't is to the Heavens that it ought to be ascrib'd And as the same Letters put together in the same order make alwayes the same word So as often as the principal Planets meet in the same Aspect and the same Coelestial Configuration the Men that are born under such Constellations are found alike Nor is it material to say though 't is true that the Heavenly Bodies are never twice in the same scituation because if this should happen it would not be Resemblance longer but Identity such as Plato promised in his great Revolution after six and forty thousand years Besides there is no one so like to another but there is alwayes found more difference then conformity The Sixth affirm'd That the same Cause which produceth the likeness of Bodies is also that which rendreth the inclinations of Souls alike seeing the one is the Index of the other Thus we see oftimes the manners of Children so expresly imitate those of their Parents of both Sexes that the same may be more rightfully alledged for an Argument of their Legitimacy then the External Resemblance alone which consists onely in colour and figure This makes it doubtful whether we may attribute that Resemblance to the Formative Virtue Otherwise being connex'd as they are it would be to assign an Immaterial Effect as all the operations of the Rational Soul are to a Material Cause The Seventh ascrib'd it to the sole vigour or weakness of the Formative Virtue which is nothing else but the Spirits inherent in the Geniture and constituting the more pure part of it The rest serving those Spirits for Matter upon which they act for the organizing it and framing a Body thereof Now every Individual proposing to himself to make his like he arrives to his End when the Matter is suted and possess'd with an Active Virtue sufficiently vigorous and then this likeness will be not onely according to the Specifical Nature and the Essence but also according to the Individual Nature and the Accidents which accompany the same This seems perhaps manifest enough in that First Degree of Children to Fathers but the difficulty is not small how a later Son that hath no Features of his Fathers Countenance comes to resemble his Grand-father or Great Grand-father The Cause in my Judgement may be assign'd thus Though the Geniture of the Ancestor was provided with sufficient Spirits to form a Son like himself yet it met with a Feminine Geniture abounding with qualities contrary to its own which infring'd its formative vertue and check'd the Action thereof hindring the Exuberance of its Spirits from attaining to frame such lineaments of the Countenance as Nature intended or else it met with a Matrice out of due temper by some casual cold though otherwise both the Genitures were laudably elaborated For when those Spirits or Formative Virtue become chil'd and num'd they shrink and retire into their mass as he that is cold to his bed and wanting heat in which their Activity consists they remain in a manner buried and without Action in reference to this Resemblance And nevertheless there is left enough to make a Male like to the Father as to the species This Son thus form'd comes to Age to Generate and meeting with a Feminine Geniture proportion'd to his own in vigour and strength and a Matrice proper to receive them those Spirits of his Father which till then lay dormant are awaken'd to Action and concurring from all parts of the Body suddenly impregnate the Geniture of the Immediate Father having by their long residence in the corporeal mass been recruited refined and elaborated And as old Wine surpasseth new in strength and vigour of Spirits because it hath less Phlegme so those Spirits of the Grand-father having digested all the superfluous Phlegm wherewith those of the Father abound are more strong then they and win possession in the Geniture for the forming and organizing of it according to the shape of the Body from whence they first issued The Eighth said That he was very backward to believe that any Thing of our Great Grand-fathers remaineth in us seeing it is doubted upon probable grounds whether there remaineth in our Old Age any thing of our Child-hood and that the Body of Man by the continual deperdition of its Three-fold Substance Spirits Humours and solid parts is like the ship Argo which by the successive addition of new matter was the same and not the same That he conceiv'd not yet how the Geniture can proceed from all the parts seeing Anatomy teacheth us that the Spermatick Veines derive it immediately from the Trunk of the Hollow Vein Vena Cava and the Emulgent and the Arteries from the great Artery Aorta conveying it to be elaborated in the Glandules call'd Prostatae from whence it is set on work by Nature The solid Parts can have no Influence upon it for what humour or juice is brought to them for their nourishment goeth not away naturally but by sweat insensible transpiration and the production of hair The Spirits are too subtle and dissipable to preserve in themselves a Character and imprint the same upon any Subject That Resemblance in my Judgement proceedeth from the natural heat which elaborateth and delineateth the Body of the Geniture and by it the Embryo First with the general Idea of its species and then with the accidents which it hath and which it borroweth from the Matrice from the menstruous blood and the other Circumstances requisite to Generation and when chance pleaseth there is found a likeness to the Father Mother or others Which Circumstances being alike in the Formation of Twinns cause them to resemble one another unless when the Particles of the Geniture which is sufficient for two are of unlike Natures and are unequally sever'd by the natural heat So that for Example the milder and more temperate Particles are shar'd on one side and on the other the more rough and bilious As it hapned in Jacob and Esau the former of whom was of a sweet and the other of a savage humour and then Bodies as different as their Manners One the contrary many resemble one another in Countenance who are nothing at all related as Augustus and that young Man who being ask'd by the Emperour whether his Mother had never been at Rome answer'd No but his Father had And the true and false Martin Guerre who put a Parliament their Wife and all their kinred to a hard task to distinguish them II. Whether Letters ought to be joyned with Armes The Second Hour design'd for treating of the Conjunction of Armes and Letters began with this discourse That Armes seem not
else but an execess of heat which is a meer Accident as well in its little degrees as in its excesses More and less making no change in the species Our Fire then is an excessive heat which adheres to Things that have some crass and oleaginous humour in them and continues there by a continual efflux and successive Generation without any permanence like the Water of a River which Heat lasts so long till that humour be consumed If it be said that it ascends upwards seeking its own place I answer that 't is the Exhalation that carries it up yea that it descends too as we see in a Candle blown out and still smoaking if it be held beneath another burning one the flame descendeth along the smoak and lighteth it again So that the Fire is indifferent of it self where it goes for it lets it self be govern'd and carry'd by the Exhalation And it appears further That Fire is less subtile then Air for flame is not transparent and it engendreth soot which is very gross The Third added That indeed Fire cannot be a Substance because it hath a Contrary viz. The Water Besides every Substantial Form preserves its own Matter and acts not against it but Fire destroyes its own Moreover a certain degree of some Quality is never necessary to a Substantial Form as the Earth ceaseth not to be Earth though it be less cold or dry and so of the rest But Fire cannot be Fire unless the supreme degree of heat be in it Add hereunto that Fire may be produc'd in a Substance without corrupting it as we see in a Flint or a burning Bullet Now a Substantial Form is not produc'd in a Subject till the preceding be destroy'd the Generation of the one being the corruption of the other Lastly Every substance produceth by way of Generation an indivisible substantial Form But Fire produceth a divisible Quality For that which was cold becometh first warm then hot and by degrees becometh Fire which cannot be with a mixture of cold non consist therewith unless as degrees of qualities The Fourth said That Fire is a most perfect Element hot and dry according to Aristotle of the most perfect form and activity of all the Elements according to Plato the principal instrument of Nature according to Empedocles the Father of Things Whence it was that the Assyrians ador'd it The Persians carry'd it out of Honour before their Kings and at the head of their Armies The Romans made so great account of it that they assign'd it to the care of certain Virgins to be kept immortal Pythagoras believ'd it to be an Animal because it is nourish'd as Animals and for want of Aliment dyes And because a lighted Torch being cast into the Water the Fire extinguishing sendeth forth such a noyse as Animals do at the gasps of Death But he esteemed its natural place to be the Centre of the Subterranean World Whence it is said he that we see so many Volcanoes and other Fires issue out of the entrals of the Earth as those of Monte Vesuvio in the Kingdom of Naples Monte Gibello formerly Aetna in Sicily and Monte Hecla in Iseland and so many other burning Mountains The Fifth said That as the Sea is the Principle from whence all the Waters come and the end whether they return So the Sun is the Element of Fire from whence all other Fires come and whether at length they reascend as to their Source 1. For that all Effects Qualities and Properties of Fire agree particularly to the Sun seeing he heats burnes dryes and is the cause of all the Generations that are made here below 2. Because the Elements stay in their natural places Now the Fire not onely ascendeth from the Subterraneous places where it is detain'd by reason of a sulphureous and bituminous Matter which serves it for food but it passeth also beyond the Heavens of the Moon Mercury and Venus as appears by Comets which are igneous and particularly by that which appear'd in the year 1618. acknowledg'd by all the Astronomers upon the reasons of Opticks to have been above the said places The Sixth denyed That the Sun can be the Element of Fire 1. Because 't is a Coelestial and Incorruptible Body and by consequence not Igneous or Elementary 2. If all Fires come from the Sun it will follow that all his rayes are Igneous Bodies for there cannot be imagin'd other Fires to come from the Sun hither but his beams Now the Sun-beams are neither Bodies nor Igneous Not Bodies since Illumination and Eradiation being made in an instant it will follow that a Body cometh from Heaven to Earth in a Moment Which is absurd because No Motion is made in an instant Besides being those Rayes penetrate Glass and such other solid and diaphanous Bodies there would be a penetration of Dimensions which is impossible Nor are they Igneous seeing Fire being of its own nature light descendeth not but the beams of the Sun descend down hither Moreover Fire is actually hot but the Sun-beams are onely so in power viz. when they are reflected by an opake body as appears in the Middle Region of the Air where it is colder then upon the Earth though its beams are nearer Wherefore it is more reasonable to hold to the common opinion which placeth the Fire immediately under the Heaven of the Moon For there is no fear that that Fire how great soever can burn the World it s hear being allay'd and dull'd by the extreme humidity of the Air its Neighbour and by the great coldness of the same Air which is in the Middle Region and counter-checketh that heat which on one side hath already lost its violence and acrimony by its natural Rarity Nor is there any trouble to be taken for its nourishment for being in its own Centre and Empire it hath no enemies nor contraries and needeth no food for its support as our common Fire doth What if we behold it not 'T is not because there is none but because it is so rare and so pure that it cannot fall within the perception of our Senses As there is such a thing as Air though we see it not How many Colours Odours Sapours and Sounds are there which we never knew And as for what is observ'd in a Candle newly put out it is clear that the Fire descendeth not to it but inflameth the unctuous Matter which it toucheth and this the next even to the Candle from whence that Matter proceedeth II Of the Vniversal Spirit Upon the Second Point it was said That it must First be known what is meant by Universal Spirit 2. Whether there be one 3. What it is As for the First By the word Universal Spirit is understood some universal cause and principle of all the actions and motions which are made in Generation Just as they assign one same First Matter for the Subject of all Formes so they speak of an Vniversal Form which containes all the rest in
in imitation of that which the Heavens excite here below The Third said The Philosophers stone is a Powder of Projection a very little of which being cast upon imperfect Metals as all are except Gold purifies and cures them of their Leprosie and impurity in such a manner that having first taken away their feculency and then multiply'd their degrees they acquire a more perfect nature Metals not differing among themselves but in degrees of perfection It is of two sorts the white which serves to make Silver and the red which being more concocted is proper to make Gold Now to attain it you need onely have the perfect knowledge of three things to wit the Agent the Matter and the Proportion requisite to the end the Agent may educe the form out of the bosome of that Matter duly prepar'd by the application of actives to passives The first two are easie to be known For the Agent is nothing else but Heat either of the Sun or of our common fire or of a dunghill which they call a Horse's belly or of Balneum Mariae hot water or else that of an Animal The patients are Salt Sulphur or Mercury Gold Silver Antimony Vitriol or some little of such other things the experience whereof easily shews what is to be expected from them But the Application of the Agent to the Patient the determination of the degrees of Heat and the utmost preparation and disposition of the Matter cannot be known but by great labour and long experience Which being difficult thence we see more delusions and impostures in this Art then truths Nevertheless Histories bear witness that Hermes Trismegistus Glauber Raimond Lully Arnauld Flamel Trevisanus and some others had knowledge of it But because for those few that are said to have it almost infinite others have been ruin'd by it therefore the search of it seemes more curious then profitable The Fourth said That as Mathematicians have by their search after the Quadrature of a circle arriv'd to the knowledge of many things which were before unknown to them so though the Chymists have not discover'd the Philosophers stone yet they have found out admirable secrets in the three families of Vegetables Animals and Minerals But it not the less possible although none should ever attain it not onely for this general reason that Nature gives us no desire in vain but particularly because all Metals are of the same species being made of one and the same Matter Sulphur and Mercury and concocted by one and the same celestial heat not differing but in concoction alone as the grains of the same raisin do which ripen at several times This is evident by the extraction of Gold and Silver out of all Metals even out of Lead and Iron the most imperfect of them So that the Art ought not to be judg'd inferior in this matter to all others which it perfectionates Moreover the Greek Etymology of Metals shews that they are transmutable one into another The Fifth said That as in the production of Corn by Nature the seed and the fat of the Earth are its matter and its efficient is partly internal included in the grain and partly external viz. the heat of the Sun and the place in the bosome of the Earth so in the production of Gold by Art its matter is Gold it self and its Quick-silver and the efficient cause is partly in the Gold partly in the external heat the place is the furnace containing the Egg of Glass wherein the matter is inclos'd dissolve'd and grows black call'd the Crowes head waxes white and then is hardned into a red mass the hardness whereof gives it the name of a stone which being reduc'd into powder and kept three dayes in a vessel hermetically seal'd upon a strong fire acquires a purple colour and one dram of it converts two hundred of Quicksilver into pure Gold yea the whole Sea were it of like substance The Sixth said That Art indeed may imitate but cannot surpass Nature But it should if we could change other metals into Gold which is impossible to Nature it self even in the Mines in how long time soever those of Iron Lead Tin or Copper never becoming Mines of Gold or Silver Therefore much less can the Alchymist do it in his furnaces no more then he can produce some thing more excellent then Gold as this Philosophical stone would be Gold being the most perfect compound of all mixt bodies and for that reason incorruptible And indeed how should these Artists accomplish such a work when they are not agreed upon the next matter of it nor upon the efcien tcause time place and manner of working there being as many opinions as there are different Authors Moreover 't is untrue that all Metals are of one species and differ onely in degree of concoction for Iron is more concocted then Silver as also more hard and less fusible and their difference was necessary in reference to humane uses Now perfect species which are under the same next genius as Metals are can never be transmuted one into another no more then a Horse into a Lyon Yea could this Philosophical stone act upon Metals yet it would not produce Gold or Silver but other stones like it self or onely imprint upon them its own qualities according to the ordinary effects of all natural Agents And if it were true that the powder of Gold produc'd other Gold being cast upon Metals as a grain of wheat brings forth many others being cast into the Earth it would be requisite to observe the same order and progress in the multiplication of Gold which Men do in that of grains of Wheat Yet the Chymists do not so but will have their multiplication to be made in an instant The Seventh said That since Art draws so many natural effects out of fitting matter as Worms Serpents Frogs Mice Toads and Bees although the subject of these Metamorphoses be much more difficult to be dispos'd and made susceptible of a sensitive soul then insensible metal is to receive a Form divisible like its matter he saw no absurdity in it but that at least by the extraordinary instruction of good or bad spirits some knowledge of this operation may be deriv'd to men considering that we see other species naturally trans-form'd one into another as Egyptain Nitre into stone a Jasper into an Emerald the herb Basil into wild Thyme Wheat into Darnel a Caterpiller into a Butter-fly yea if we will believe the Scotch they have a Tree whose fruit falling into the water is turn'd into a Bird. II. Of a Mont de Pieté or Bank for lending to the Poor Upon the second Point it was said That Charity toward our Neighbour being the most certain sign of Piety towards God and Hills having been chosen almost by all Nations to sacrifice upon as neerest to Heaven upon these accounts the name of Mont de Pieté hath been given to all institutions made for relief of the poor whereof lending
same with perfect freedom CONFERENCE LXVIII I. Of the Magnetical Cure of Diseases II. Of Anger I. Of the Magnetical cure of Diseases 'T Is requisite to agree upon the Facts before inquiry into Right Now many Authors report that wounds have been cur'd by the sole application of a certain Unguent which for this reason they call Armarium to the instrument or offensive weapon that made it And Goclenius a German Physitian affirms that he saw a Swedish Lady cure one of her servants so that had been hurt by a blow with a knife by his companion and that this cure is very common having been practis'd in presence of the Emperour Maximilian Yea that 't is ordinary for the Peasants of his Country to cure hurts in their feet by sticking the nails or thorns which made them in Lard or Bacon Many Farriers cure prick'd horses by digging up as much ground as their foot cover'd Behold the ordinary composition of the aforesaid Oyntment Take an ounce of the unctuous matter that sticks on the inside of the Scull of one hang'd and left in the air let it be gather'd when the Moon encreases and is in the Sign either of Pisces Taurus or Libra and as neer as may be to Venus of Mummie and man's blood yet warm of each as much of man's fat two ounces of Lin-seed-oyl Turpentine and Bole Armenick of each two drams mingle altogether in a Morter and keep the mixture in a long-neck'd glass well stop'd It must be made while the Sun is in the Sign Livra and the Weapon must be anointed with it beginning from that part which did the mischief from the point to the hilt if it be a thrust and from the edge if it be a cut or blow Every morning the Patient must wash his hurt with his own Urine or else with warm water wiping away the pus which would hinder unition The weapon must be swath'd as the wound uses to be and kept in a temperate place For otherwise they say the Patient will feel pain If you would hasten the cure the weapon must be dress'd often and if you doubt of the part which did the mischief it must be dip'd all over in unguent If the hurt be small 't will be enough to dress the weapon every other day washing the hurt every morning and evening But this is not to be practis'd in wounds of the Arteries Heart Liver and Brain because it would be to no purpose Now by the nature of the ingredients and their conformity with us their effect seems to be natural and grounded upon the sympathy that there is between the blood issu'd from the wound and remaining on the weapon and that which is left in the wounded body so that the one communicates to the other what good or evil it receives although it be separated from the whole As they affirm that those whose leg or arm is cut off endure great pains when those parts that were lop'd off corrupt in the earth Which happens not if they be carefully embalm'd So the Bee the Viper and the Scorpion heal the hurts made by themselves Of which no other reason is alledg'd but this correspondence and similitude of the parts to their whole the bond of which is very strong although to us invisible The Second said There 's no need of recurring to these superstitious remedies since Nature of her own accord heals wounds provided they be not in the noble parts and be kept clean from the impurities generated in them through their weakness which hinder unition which is an effect of the natural Balsam of the blood and therefore not to be attributed to those Chimerical inventions which have no affinity with the cure whereunto they are intitl'd For every natural agent is determin'd to a certain sphere of activity beyond which it cannot act so the fire burns what it touches heats what approaches it but acts not at any remote distance whatever Moreover time and place would in vain be accounted inseparable accidents from natural motions if this device held good considering that contact is requisite to every natural action which is either Mathematical when surfaces and extremities are together or Physical when the agents touch the Patients by some vertue that proceeds from them Neither of which can be unless the body which heals touches that which is heal'd For all Medicinal effects being to be referr'd to Elementary qualities there is none of them more active then heat which being circumscrib'd within its bounds even in the aliment of fire can be no less elsewhere The Third said That the doctrine of the common Philosophy which teacheth that natural agents always touch one the other is erroneous or else ill explain'd and dependent upon other false principles which attribute all actions to elementary qualities which are taken for univocal causes whereas themselves are but equivocal effects of other supream causes the first of which is Heaven For when God created the world immediately with his own hands he was pleas'd to commit the conduct of natural causes to the Heavens that he might not be oblig'd to make every day new miracles as were those of the Creation For this end he fill'd them with spirits sufficient to inform all sorts of matters whose mixture requir'd some new form and change This made the Philosopher say that the Sun and Man beget Man and Hermes in his Smaragdine Table that the things which are below are as those which are on high And the Astrologers hold that there is nothing here below but hath some proper and peculiar Star some of which appear but far more appear not in the Heavens in regard of their disproportion to our sight or their neer conjunction as in the milky way But if the respective correspondencies of all the Celestial Bodies be not so clearly evident in other sublunary bodies as that of the Pole-star is with the Load-stone of dew with the Sun of this and the Moon with the Heliotrope and Selenotrope yet are they no less true 'T is credible therefore that the Weapon-salve hath such sympathy with the Constellation which is to make the cure of the wound that by its magnetick vertue it attracts its influence from Heaven and reunites it as a Burning-glass doth the Sun-beams at as great distance by which means it is deriv'd to the instrument that made the wound communicating its healing vertue to the same as the Sun likewise communicates his heat to the earth which heats us afterwards and thus this instrument being indu'd with a sanative vertue communicates the same to the wound made by it the cure of which besides the form and connexion of the instrumental cause with the effect is further'd by Nature which always tends to preserve it self and the imagination of the wounded person which induces Hippocrates to require that the Patient have hope and confidence in his Physitian for this as its contrary ruines many by dejecting their strength doth miracles towards a recovery
Third said That the heat which preserves our lives is natural gentle and agreeable not extraneous as that meant in the question is Therefore external cold must be compar'd with heat likewise external and extraneous not with the vital heat which is of a more sublime order then these elementary qualities Now 't is certain external heat is more powerful and active then external cold since it consumes and dissolves Metals which cold cannot and is more hurtful because it dries up humidity which is the foundation of life 'T is also less tolerable for we can bear the touch of the coldest body in the world namely Ice yea eat it without harm but none could ever resist flames Whence fire is the cruellest of punishments not cold from which besides we may more easily defend our selves then from excessive heat which may be abated a little by winds shadows or other artifices but not wholly as cold is by help of fire clothes and motion The Fourth said If it be true which Cardan saith that cold is nothing but a privation of heat Nature which dreads nothing so much as non-entity must abhor it most nor can it be any way active since that which exists not cannot act But I will suppose as 't is most probable that both the one and the other are positive entities since cold enters into the composition of bodies as well as heat the bones membranes skin nerves and all but the fleshy parts being cold as also the brain the noblest part of man And I conceive that heat and cold consider'd either as internal principles of a living body or as two external agents enemies of life cold is always more hurtful then heat On the one side hot distempers alter the functions but cold abolish them depriving us of sense motion and life as in the Lethargy Apoplexie Epilepsie and other cold diseases And on the other external heat indeed draws forth part of our spirits and thereby weakens us whence come faintings after too hot a bath or too great a fire but it never wholly quenches and destroys them as the light of the Sun drowns that of a Candle at noon but do's not extinguish it The Fifth said Because as Hippocrates saith in his Aphorisms some natures are best in Winter others in Summer as old men are not much inconvenienc'd by the most vehement heats whereas cold kills them on the contrary young people of hot tempers endure heat more impatiently then cold and there is no temperament ad pondus or exact Reason must be call'd to the aid of our senses not only to judge of moist and dry as Galen thinks but also of hot and cold which being absolutely consider'd in their own nature without respect to us I conceive heat much more active then cold and consequently less supportable because the more a thing hath of form and less of matter 't is the more active the one of these principles being purely active and the cause of all natural actions the other simply passive Thus the earth and water are dull and heavy elements in comparison of the air and fire which are less dense and material Heaven the universal cause of all sublunary things is a form without matter as Averroës affirms Now heat rarifies and dilates its subject and seems to make it more spiritual and so is more active then cold which condenses and stops all the pores and passages Which also appears in that the hottest diseases are the most acute and if cold diseases kill sometimes they charm and dull the senses and so render death more gentle and supportable On the contrary the cruellest deaths great pains and the most violent diseases are ordinarily caus'd by some hot humour Hence it is that no person dyes without a Fever and Hippocrates affirms that the same heat which generates us kills us In fine God who is the prime Reason hath judg'd heat more active and less supportable then cold since he appoints fire to torment the devils and damned souls II. Who are most happy in this world Wise Men or Fools Upon the second Point 't was said As there is but one right line and infinite crooked so there is but one wisdom and one way to attain it namely to follow right reason but follies are of all sorts and of as many fashions as there are different minds which conceive things under divers apparences of goodness So that the number of fools being greater then that of wise men these will always lose their cause Moreover if happiness be well defin'd by contentment who is there but accounts fools more happy then the wise Witness he who otherwise intelligent enough was a fool in this only point that he would diligently repair alone to the Theatre and phancy that he saw and heard the Actors and applauded them although no body was there besides himself but being cur'd of his folly he complain'd of his friends in stead of thanking them for having been too careful to render him miserable being a happy man before Besides folly hath this priviledge that we bear with that truth from the mouth of a fool which would be odious in another and the tribe of fools is indeed exceeding great since we are born such for a child is agreeable upon no other account but its simplicity which is nothing else but folly by which many faults are excusable in youth which are not to be endur'd in other ages And those whom we account happiest and that dye of old age end thus and are therefore call'd twice children and folly serves to take away the sense of all the discontents and incommodities of old age Yea he that more neerly considers the course of our life will find more of folly in it then of wisdom For if self-conceit play love and the other passions be so many follies who is free from it The Second said That wise men alone are happy is justly accounted a Stoical Paradox since 't is contrary to true natural sentiments which shew us that the happiness of this life consists only in two points namely in the privation of grief and the possession of good As for the first not to speak of bodily pains from which the wise are no more exempt then fools the strongest minds are more intelligent by their more vigorous reasoning and consequently more susceptible of inward grief and affliction of hope fear desire and as other passions besides that they are ordinary of a melancholy temper and more fix'd upon their objects then fools who are more inconstant to say nothing of the scruples of conscience which many times rack their spirits of the points of honour of civilities nor of the knotty questions in the Sciences As for the latter the possession of good fools have a better share then the wise because there is no absolute but onely relative good in this world whence proceeded the many different opinions touching the chief good and the saying that none is truly happy unless he thinks himself
Principles II. Of the End of all Things Page 5 CONFERENCE III I. Of Causes in general II. Whence it is that every one is zealous for his own Opinion though it be of no importance to him Page 12 CONFERENCE IV I. Of the First Matter II. Of Perpetual Motion Page 18 CONFERENCE V I. Of Resemblance II. Whether it behoveth to joyn Armes to Letters Page 24 CONFERENCE VI I. Of Fire II. Of the Vniversal Spirit Page 31 CONFERENCE VII I. Of the Air. II. Whether it be best for a State to have Slaves Page 38 CONFERENCE VIII I. Of Water II. Of Wine and whether it be necessary for Souldiers Page 44 CONFERENCE IX I. Of the Earth II. What it is that makes a Man wise Page 51 CONFERENCE X I. Of the Motion or Rest of the Earth II. Of two Monstrous Brethren living in the same Body which are to be seen in this City Page 57 CONFERENCE XI I. Of the little Hairy Girl lately seen in this City II. Whether it is more easie to resist Pleasure then Pain Page 64 CONFERENCE XII I. Of three Suns II. Whether an Affection can be without Interest Page 71 CONFERENCE XIII I. Whether Melancholy Persons are the most ingenious or prudent II. Which is most necessary in a State Reward or Punishment Page 77 CONFERENCE XIV I. Of the Seat of Folly II. Whether a Man or Woman be most inclin'd to Love Page 83 CONFERENCE XV I. How long a Man may continue without eating II. Of the Echo Page 89 CONFERENCE XVI I. How Spirits act upon Bodies II. Whether is more powerful Love or Hatred Page 95 CONFERENCE XVII I. Of the several fashions of wearing Mourning and why Black is us'd to that purpose rather then any other colour II. Why people are pleas'd with Musick Page 103 CONFERENCE XVIII I. Of the Original of Winds II. Why none are contented with their Condition Page 109 CONFERENCE XIX I. Of the Flowing and Ebbing of the Sea II. Of the Point of Honour Page 115 CONFERENCE XX I. Of the Original of Fountains II. Whether there be a commendable Ambition Page 121 CONFERENCE XXI I. Of Dreams II. Why Men are rather inclin'd to Vice then Virtue Page 127 CONFERENCE XXII I. Of Judiciary Astrologie II. Which is least blameable Covetousness or Prodigality Page 133 CONFERENCE XXIII I. Of Physiognomy II. Of Artificial Memory Page 139 CONFERENCE XXIV I. Which of the Five Senses is the most noble II. Of Laughter Page 144 CONFERENCE XXV I. Of the Diversity of Countenances II. Whether Man or Woman be the more noble Page 150 CONFERENCE XXVI I. Whether it be lawful for one to commend himself II. Of Beauty Page 157 CONFERENCE XXVII I. Whether the World grows old II. Of Jealousie Page 163 CONFERENCE XXVIII I. What is the greatest Delight of Man II. Of Cuckoldry Page 169 CONFERENCE XXIX I. Whence the saltness of the Sea proceeds II. Which is the best Food Flesh or Fish Page 174 CONFERENCE XXX I. Of the Terrestrial Paradise II. Of Embalmings and Mummies Page 180 CONFERENCE XXXI I. Whether the Life of Man may be prolong'd by Art II. Whether 't is better to be without Passions then to moderate them Page 185 CONFERENCE XXXII I. Sympathy and Antipathy II. Whether Love descending is stronger then ascending Page 191 CONFERENCE XXXIII I. Of those that walk in their sleep II. Which is the most excellent Moral Virtue Page 197 CONFERENCE XXXIV I. Of Lycanthropy II. Of the way to acquire Nobility Page 203 CONFERENCE XXXV I. Of feigned Diseases II. Of regulating the Poor Page 209 CONFERENCE XXXVI I. Of the tying of the Point II. Which is the greatest of all Vices Page 214 CONFERENCE XXXVII I. Of the Cabala II. Whether the Truth ought always to be spoken Page 220 CONFERENCE XXXVIII I. Of the Period called Fits of Fevers II. Of Friendship Page 226 CONFERENCE XXXIX I. Why all men naturally desire knowledge II. Whether Permutation or Exchange be more commodious then Buying and Selling Page 230 CONFERENCE XL I. Of Prognostication or Presaging by certain Animals II. Why all men love more to command then to obey Page 238 CONFERENCE XLI I. Of Comets II. Whether Pardon be better then Revenge Page 244 CONFERENCE XLII I. Of the Diversity of Languages II. Whether is to be preferr'd a great stature or a small Page 251 CONFERENCE XLIII I. Of the Philosophers stone II. Of Mont de piete or charitable provision for the Poor Page 256 CONFERENCE XLIV I. How Minerals grow II. Whether it be best to know a little of every thing or one thing exactly Page 262 CONFERENCE XLV I. Whether the Heavens be solid or liquid II. Whether it be harder to get then to preserve Page 268 CONFERENCE XLVI I. Of Vacuity II. Of the Extravagance of Women Page 274 CONFERENCE XLVII I. Of the Virtue of Numbers II. Of the Visible Species Page 280 CONFERENCE XLVIII I. Whether every thing that nourishes an Animal ought to have life II. Of Courage Page 286 CONFERENCE XLIX I. Whether there be Specifical remedies to every Disease II. Whether Tears proceed from Weakness Page 292 CONFERENCE L I. Whether Colours are real II. Whether is better to speak well or to write well Page 298 CONFERENCE LI I. At what time the year ought to begin II. Why the Load-stone draws Iron Page 309 CONFERENCE LII I. Of a Point II. Whether other Animals besides Man have the use of Reason Page 315 CONFERENCE LIII I. Whether there be more then five Senses II. Whether is better to speak or to be silent Page 319 CONFERENCE LIV I. Of Touch. II. Of Fortune Page 325 CONFERENCE LV I. Of the Taste II. Whether Poetry be useful Page 331 CONFERENCE LVI I. Of the Smelling II. Of Eloquence Page 337 CONFERENCE LVII I. Of the Hearing II. Of Harmony Page 343 CONFERENCE LVIII I. Of the Sight II. Of Painting Page 349 CONFERENCE LIX I. Of Light II. Of Age. Page 355 CONFERENCE LX I. Of Quintessence II. Which is the most in esteem Knowledge or Virtue Page 361 CONFERENCE LXI I. Which is hardest to endure Hunger or Thirst. II. Whether a General of an Army should endanger his person Page 367 CONFERENCE LXII I. Of Time II. Whether 't is best to overcome by open force or otherwise Page 373 CONFERENCE LXIII I. Of Motion II. Of Custome Page 379 CONFERENCE LXIV I. Of the Imagination II. Which is most powerful Hope or Fear Page 384 CONFERENCE LXV I. Of the Intellect II. Whether the Husband and Wife should be of the same humour Page 390 CONFERENCE LXVI I. Of Drunkenness II. Of Dancing Page 396 CONFERENCE LXVII I. Of Death II. Of the Will Page 402 CONFERENCE LXVIII I. Of the Magnetical Cure of Diseases II. Of Anger Page 408 CONFERENCE LXIX I. Of Life II. Of Fasting Page 414 CONFERENCE LXX I. Of Climacterical Years II. Of Shame Page 419 CONFERENCE LXXI I. Why motion produces heat II. Of Chastity Page 425 CONFERENCE LXXII I. Of Thunder II. Which of all the Arts is the most
must be such Now the Matter is not contrary to the Form Therefore Privation must That every Cause is not an Element is clear by the Final and the Efficient both of them being extrinsical to the Thing And nevertheless an Element is the least part of the Thing in which it is in Act or in Power It is also manifest that an Element is not a Principle for it is compounded and corporeal which a Principle is not Particular Principles are as various as there are several things in the world So the Principle of Divinity is the Faith Of Physick to preserve the Man and destroy the disease Of Law that which is according to Nature Reason and Custome The Principle of Understanding is Natural Evidence those of Oeconomy lawful acquisition and use of Goods Of Politicks Policy Prudence applyed to right Government Of Prudence that which is expedient to do or avoid The Principles of Mathematicks are its Axiomes As if of two equal tfiings you take away from one as much as from the other the remainder shall be equal The Principles of History are Experience and Humane Faith Of other Arts and Disciplines their Rules and Precepts The Principles of Man as Man are the Body and the Soul as a mixt Substance the Four Elements as a Natural the Liver as Vital the Heart as an Animal or Sensitive the Brain as Reasonable the Intellect The Principles of an Argument are the Major and the Minor The End is the Principle of rational Actions as the Matter in things Natural and the Idea in Artificial II. Of the End of all Things The Second Hour was imploy'd in discourse touching the End concerning which it was said First that End may be taken as many wayes as Beginning Improperly for the corruption of some thing therefore saith Aristotle Death is not an End but a terme Properly 't is the Good whereunto all things tend and 't is either first as to make a medicine or last as to cure Things which can tend to this End are divided into four Classes Some are furnish'd with Reason but not with Sense as the Angels or Intelligences Others have Reason and Sense as Man Others have Sense without Reason as Brutes Others have neither Sense nor Reason as all the rest of the Creatures Onely the two former Agents namely Angel and Man act formally for some End because they alone have the four conditions requisite for so doing viz. 1. Knowledge of the End 2. Knowledge of the Means which conduce thereunto 3. A Will to attain it And 4. Election or Choice of those Means Others act indeed for it but improperly as the Spider and the Swallow though they frame onely by a natural Instinct the one its Web the other its Neast yet attain their End and the Stone is carried by its own weight to its Centre which is its Good but without the above-mention'd conditions The Second went about to prove that some of those Animals which we account void of Reason Act formally for their End For said he not to mention the Elephant recorded by Plutarch who divided his Oates in his Master's presence as to shew him that he had but half his allowance usually given him or that other who carried his Kettle to the River and fill'd it with water to try whether it had not a hole in it Nor the Ox who never went beyond the number of buckets of water which he was wont to draw Nor the Fox which layes his Ear to the Ice to listen whether the water moves still underneath before he trust himself upon it Nor the Hart of Crete which runs to the Dittany and as they say with that herb draws the Arrow out of his flesh Is it not for the good of its young that the Swallow distills into their Eyes the juice of Celandine with which she recovers their sight From whence Men have learnt to make use of that herb against the filme of the Eye Have we not Horses which let themselves blood Ha's not the Dog election of all the wayes whereof he chooses onely that which his Master went who with all the goodly prerogatives that he ascribes to himself above him cannot do so much as his Dog And though the Example be familiar do we not see Domestick Animals whom the Apprehension of beating keeps often from doing the mischief to which their natural inclination leads them Which is not onely to know an End but amongst many to choose the best The Third reply'd That these Examples evidence the dexterity of Man's wit who knows how to apply them to his own purposes But in reality it belongs not to a Brute what ever advantage it may get by commerce with Man to know its End as an End Because the End is that which measures the Means a Mean Medium being not the better for that it is greater but for that it is fitter proportion'd to its End So when Hippocrates cures the Cramp with cold water the Cure is not less excellent then if he did it with potable Gold Now this Comparing and Measuring is a work of the Understanding The Fourth said As all other Lights disappear at the Sun 's so all the other Ends must give place to the Last which is the Supreme Good or Felicity Which being either Natural or Supernatural and this latter inexpressible It seems that the present Exercise ought to terminate in the former namely Natural Felicity This Beatitude in what ever thing it is found for Saint Augustine reckons above eight hundred Opinions about it and yet more may be added to the number consists in the most excellent Action of Man which cannot depend but upon the noblest Faculties the Understanding and the Will The Action of the former is to Vnderstand That of the Latter is to Will The Felicity then of Man consists in Vnderstanding well and in Willing well or Loving For the pleasure of Enjoyment is but the relishing of this Felicity not the Felicity it self as some have thought with Epicurus who is to be blam'd onely in this regard For it is neither true nor credible that a Philosopher could so much forget himself as the vulgar imputes to him to place the Supreme Good in Pleasures even the foulest and grossest The Fifth maintain'd That it was unprofitable to speak of a Thing which is not Meaning that pretended worldly Felicity which Men onely fancy and to that Induction which Solomon makes of all the things in which Men seek their contentment in vain he added Authorities holy and profane to shew that there is nothing happy on all sides and that Solon had reason to say That Felicity is not to be found in this Life The Sixth reply'd That what is said of the Miseries of this corruptible Life compar'd with the beatitude of the other eternal ought not to be confounded and taken absolutely That the contentments of the one cannot be too much vilifi'd in respect to the ravishments of the other of which the Pagans
known by the Senses unless by its Second Qualities which arising from the mixture of the First it follows that the Elements which have no other cannot be the object of our Senses For the First Qualities would not be perceptible by our Senses if they lodg'd in a Simple Element As it appears by the flame of Aqua Vitae which burnes not by reason of the thinness of its Matter By Ashes which while it is making is more Light then heavy By the Aire which dryes instead of moistning and yet is call'd the First Humid Body And by Water which following the qualities of the Neighbouring Bodies shews that it cannot be term'd of it self either hot or cold II. Of Perpetual Motion At the Second Hour it was said That the Perpetual Motion to which this Hour was design'd is not meant of Motion to Substance which is Generation and Corruption by reason of which Compounded Bodies are in Perpetual Motion For in Corruptible Things every Moment is a degree of Corruption Nor is it meant of Motion to Quantity which is Augmentation and Diminution nor of that which is made to Quality which is Alteration but of Local Motion And again the Inquiry is not about the possibility of Local Motion in Animals nor about running-water or Fire to whom it is natural as appears in Mills which are upon Rivers and Turn-spits or Engines which the Smoke causeth to turn about Wherefore his Invention who exactly fastned a Girdle to his skin which rising and falling as he took his breath serv'd for a perpetual spring to a Watch that hung at it which by that means needed not winding up was not the Perpetual Motion which we mean No more was that which proceeded from the wings of a little Wind-mill plac'd at the mouth of a Cave which the Vapour continually issuing forth caus'd alwayes to move But it must be in a subject naturally unmoveable made by Art to continue its Motion And this is prov'd possible I. Because as Hermes saith That which is below is as that which is above Now we see above the Perpetual Motion of the Heavenly Bodies by example of which it is certain that this Motion must be Circular In the Second place Nature hath not given us a desire of Things impossible Now an infinite number of good wits shew by their search the desire which they have of it Thirdly it is held that Archimedes had it whence it was feign'd that Jupiter was jealous of him In the Fourth place it seems that if a very uniform Circle could be put exactly upon a Pivot or Spindle and were set in Motion it would never stop any more then the Heavens because it doth not poise or gravitate upon its Centre so long as it is turning as it appears by a Stone which poiseth not in the Circle made on high in turning it round and so nothing resisting the external Agent the Motion must last as long as the impression lasteth and the impression must last alwayes because nothing resists it but on the contrary the Agitation continues it Thus of all the Models of Engines contriv'd to move perpetually we see not one that makes so much as one turn Whereas a plain wheel makes above a thousand though it be not exactly plac'd upon its Centre and the Poles be not two simple points as they ought to be if that Art could come to perfection in which Case the effect of Perpetual Motion would follow The Second said That he held it for impossible for that it is repugnant not onely as to the Efficient Cause which being limited and finite cannot produce an infinite Effect but also as to the very form of that Motion which must be either Direct Circular or Mixt. If it be Direct it will be made from one term to another in the one of which its Motion ending it cannot be perpetual And because the most certain Principle of this Direct Motion cometh from Gravity which tendeth from high downwards when it shall be arriv'd there nothing will be able to mount it up again Gravity having found its Centre and place or if the Motion be violent the impression being ended it cannot re-produce it self of its own accord in the Engine otherwise it would be animated and therefore it will cease from Motion If the Motion be Circular as in this effect it would be the most proper in imitation of that of the Heavens this moving Circle shall be in all parts either of equal or different weight If it be equal throughout it shall not turn at all of it self one part having no advantage over another If it be unequal and there be put for example four pound to raise up three it will happen that when the greatest weight hath gotten the lowest place the lighter parts will not be able to raise up the heavier and so the Motion will have an End Now if the Direct and Circular Motion are incapable of this perpetuity the mixt or compounded of both shall be so too So that it seemeth impossible by reason of the gravity of the matter not to mention its corruptibility to compose a Machine or Engine that moves alwayes And were there any ground to think of it some have conceiv'd it might be done with the Load-stone which hath a Virtue of attracting to it self on one side and driving away on the other and so by continuing this little Motion which would be of no great benefit it might render the same perpetual But you ordinarily see that they who make these inquiries onely find rest in their Engines and Motion in their brains whereas they hop'd the contrary The Third said That it appears by that which they call the Roman Balance that the same weight hang'd neer the Centre weighes less then when it is more distant from it Consequently that disposing the weights which shall be round a wheel so as to be neer the Centre about one half thereof and distant from it the other half you shall have a Perpetual Motion which ought not to be accounted the less such though the Matter should last but a year yea but a day it sufficing for a night to that name that it lasts as long as its Matter as 't is seen in the Vice of Archimedes termed without End though it be made but of wood not by reason of its lasting but because the Vice being apply'd upon an indented wheel instead of entring into a screw there is no raising or letting it down as is practis'd in those of Presses He prov'd it further For that it is seen that by the help of that Vice without End by the instrument term'd Polyspaston and others of the like Nature a Child may easily lift up a weight of 10000 pounds Yea even to Infinity could the strength of the Cordage and the Instruments bear it For it follows that if a less weight can lift up a greater this greater will lift up a less which will be the Perpetual Motion which we inquire
these two points were chosen First Of the Hairy Girl seen in this City Secondly Whether it be more difficult to resist Pleasure then Pain CONFERENCE XI I. Of the little Hairy Girl lately seen in this City II. Whether it is more easie to resist Pleasure then Pain I. Of the Hairy Girl THe First said That this German Girl born at Ausperg called Barbara Vrsine the Name and Sir-name very well suting to the person if they were not invented purposely is no Monster For a Monster is desin'd a Natural Effect degenerating from the right and usual frame or perfection essential to its species But the same holdeth not in this person who is onely an extraordinary effect of Nature whereof two causes may be assign'd First the prevalence of internal heat which more powerfully drives outwards the steames or exhalations that serve for the matter of Hair and is also the cause that Children are sometimes born with Teeth Whence it comes to pass that Hair grows in more places and more plentifully in those which are hot and dry In like manner it hath been observ'd that some notable Warriours and Pirats have had their Hearts hairy The Second Cause is the strong Imagination of the Mother during her conceiving or in the dayes near it when the Embryo being like soft wax is capable of every impression never so little proportionate to its subject yea sometimes it is so extravagant that the effect cannot be attributed to any other cause Such was that young Girl mention'd by Marcus Damascenus and presented to the Emperour Charles IV. which besides that she was all hairy like this had the feet of a Camel her Mother having too wistly consider'd the Image of Saint John Baptist clothed in Camel's hair And this consideration satisfi'd the Father who at first disown'd her The same was the Opinion of Hippocrates when he sav'd the Honour and Life of a Princess who had brought forth an Aethiopian through the too attentive minding of the picture of a Moor hanging at her beds-feet Which mov'd Galen to advise such Ladies as would have fair Children to behold those that are such frequently at least in picture The Second said That this Hair being an Effect against the Intention as well of Vniversal Nature which could not design any profit from a bearded Woman as of the particular Agents which designed to produce an Individual like to one of themselves according to the ordinary course it follows that the Girl must be termed a Monster The Cause whereof cannot be the indisposition of the Matter nor its too great quantity or deficience since all the parts of this Child being well proportioned and her colour native conclude and argue the same as to the humours of her Body Yet it may well proceed from some exorbitance in quality not caus'd by the formative virtue but by the Imagination of the Mother For that of the Father contributes nothing hereunto That the Formative Virtue doth not the business is prov'd because the Hair is a fuliginous vapour arising from the more dry and earthy parts of the residue and excrement of the third Concoction which is made in the parts and the Expulsive Faculty casteth forth as useless and unsutable the same arriving at the skin is imprison'd thereby the Cuticle And Nature which hath no further need of it hinders its return Now this Matter is forc'd to abide thus till it make it self way through the Pores fram'd by its heat rarifying the skin During its stay there it is concocted incrassated hardened and puts on the figure of the Pore through which it issueth As the soft Matter of Glass is incrassated by the heat and takes the form of the mould in which it is formed Hence it is that they whose skin is tender have very soft Hair For their skin being by reason of its great rarity unable to resist the least heat easily opens its Pores which thereby become very small to give the vapour passage which vapour because it stay'd not long enough to be concocted and hardned produceth very soft gentle and loose Hair On the other side in those whose skin is hard and dry the resistance of the same causeth the inclosed heat to act more vehemently and consequently to make greater Pores through the which those vapours passing after a longer inclosure produce a Hair thicker dryer and harder as having been more parched and adur'd For the vapour is by this means thickned and hardned like the smoak which is condens'd into soot in the Chimney Now the Formative Virtue cannot be the cause of this production of Hair in all parts of the Body of this person First because heat the cause efficient is at that time too weak through defect of which we see that a dozen or fifteen years after the birth Hair is not produc'd even in Males Secondly the Matter of this little Body is too soft to furnish stuff dry enough for the making of that fuliginous vapour It remaineth therefore that it be ascrib'd to the Imagination of the Mother who being a Superior Agent many times hinders the Formative Virtue from doing what it designeth That she is Superior it is true For the Formative Virtue belongeth to the Vegetative Life Man begetting onely as he is Vegetative God alone begetteth by the Vnderstanding but the Imagination is a Faculty of the Sensitive Life and so subjecteth the less to it self as the Agent which operateth by the Understanding makes use of that which operateth by Nature So the Smith though a mean Artisan yet makes use of Fire the most noble Elementary Agent as a Slave Now the Imagination acteth in this manner It presents to the Woman some pleasing object this object excites her Appetite the Appetite by its dominion and command moves the Motive Faculty the performer of its pleasure This Motive Faculty discharging its Office by the Spirits which it sets in Motion and sends forth as it lists And these Spirits having their Source and Original in the Brain upon which the Phantasmes of the Imagination are imprinted it comes to pass that when a Child-bearing Woman hath a lively representation or Imagination of the thing which she desires those Spirits upon which the Image is imprinted coming to be sent forth by the Motive Faculty and separating from the rest of their troop which is in the Brain carry along with them the said Image or Effigies The same hapning in the Brain that doth in a Looking-glass which being intire sheweth but one Object but broken into a hundred pieces every piece representeth the same whole For the Nature of Species is of it self indivisible and is not divided but because of the subject in which they are So the Phantasme being in the Brain representeth but one and the same thing but a part of the Spirits upon which it is engraven separating from thence carry the same along with them And arriving with the blood and humours at the faetus which incessantly draws them from the Mothers
Body by the Umbilical Veins engrave upon it the Image configur'd to them The Third said That he could not ascribe this Effect to the Imagination no more then all other Monsters because the Girl resembling neither Father nor Mother seem'd to him by this uncouth and strange hairiness to deserve the name of a Monster For First The Imagination cannot produce any real Effect the Intentions of Men produce nothing such this belongs onely to the Deity Secondly All the Animal Faculties being almost intercepted in Generation how can the Formative Faculty which according to Erastus is the sole Agent conceive and apprehend those Images and Representations For there is little appearance that the formes of the Imagination are engraven upon Aerial Spirits in the same manner that these of the Formative Faculty of the Heavens or Vniversal Spirit are imprinted in the Air for the production of Mixt Bodies For if it were so then Children would have upon their Bodies marks or tokens of every thing that their Mothers had ardently desir'd and imagin'd and in their Imagination and desires they have no commendation for Constancy by reason of the continual Agitation of their blood which is incessantly attracted by the Foetus So that we should see strange portraits of the Mothers Phancies upon the Infants Body whereby would be sav'd much of the pains that Baptista Porta takes in his Natural Magick to teach how to produce Monsters Moreover as the Common Sense judgeth of the difference of Objects which it carrieth to the Imagination so the Imagination retaineth not those Species saving to present them to Reason which judgeth and determineth upon them Wherefore if for example the Common Sense represents to the Imagnation a Centaur or some other Monster and the Imagination represent the same to Reason this Reason of ours will never allow or consent that the Formative Faculty attempt to bring it to effect The Fourth said That he did not think this Girl ought to be termed a Monster unless in the large signification of the word as it comprehends every thing that is contrary to the intention of the agent or is extraordinary Thus Aristotle calls a Woman a Monster and a fault of Nature which always designes the making of a Male as the more perfect which being unable to do either in regard of the disposition of the Agent or of the Matter she makes a Woman And for the same reason he calls a Child which doth not resemble its Father a Monster because the Father design'd to beget a Man like himself But this person is not truly such since she is faulty onely in the excess of superfluities or excrements not of any part that varies the species As one that voideth more excrements then others or hath greater Nails then usual cannot be stil'd a Monster Besides what we account monstrous in this person we have the same our selves For were our Sight acute enough we might see that there is no part of the Body but is cover'd with Hair and perhaps not so fair and soft as hers in which we find nothing extraordinary but in the length For whereas she hath a light-colour'd beard of four or five fingers length the cause thereof is because the Hair is carefully shav'd off the rest of her countenance which otherwise would be all of the same length This Hair proceedeth from extreme Moisture and Moderate Coldness the former supplyeth the matter for its Generation and the latter helpeth the Action of Heat by the occlusion of the Pores which it causeth So that if among Children which according to Hippocrates are more humid then those who have attain'd to Adolescence there be found any who have such a degree of Coldness as is able to support the root of the Hair by condensing the skin it will grow in all parts of the Body though unequally according to the difference of humour The Fifth said That besides the Imagination already alledg'd which caus'd Perfina Queen of Ethiopia to bring forth a white Daughter and a Woman in our time to bring forth a Child like a Frog by having held a Frog in her hand for some disease this Hair proceeds from a certain temper proper for producing the same which temper is found in this little person as it is in other persons in some places onely and at a certain Age. This temper seemes to be cold for we see that Men and other Creatures are most hairy in the coldest Countries and cold hath a great influence upon Hair some persons having in one night had their Hair extremely grown and chang'd through an excess of fear and consequently of cold for fear causeth all the heat of the external parts to retire inwards As it hapned to a Gentleman of twenty eight years old who being condemned to death for an Adultery committed in the Palace of Charles V. the next morning was found all white in the Prison whereupon the Emperour granted him his pardon As the Grandfather of the same Emperour did formerly upon the same account to a Spaniard nam'd Osorio The like hapned to an other in shorter time who found the rope begin to break by which he was let down by the side of a steep rock to get an airy of Hawks Now this great abundance of Hair cannot proceed from extreme Humidity for then it must either be radical and consequently mild and no sit Matter for Hair or else adventitious sharp and corroding which would destroy their root Besides it is not credible that so little a Body as this can afford so much excrementitious matter Nor can it proceed from excess of Heat for we see heat makes Hair to shed in those that have a burning Fever or a Hectick and the Hair and Nails grow in dead bodies which have no natural heat II. Whether it be harder to resist Pleasure then Pain Upon the Second Point it was said That if Pleasure be consider'd as a Good and Pain as an Evil it is not to be doubted but that the latter is as insupportable to our Nature as the former is agreeable to it But there are two sorts of Good and Evil of Pain and Pleasure One of the Mind and another of the Body and many times the pains and sufferings of the Body are the joyes of the Mind and the pleasures and the gratifications of the flesh the crosses and torments of the Spirit Now there are scarce any pure and unmixt pleasures or pains in the world but they are usually mingled one with the other And if they could be separated Pain would turn the scale as being the more heavy and difficult to be supported In reference to which mixture the Greek Poet judiciously feigned that there are two vessels at the entrance of Heaven one full of Honey and sweetness the other of Gall and bitterness Of which two Liquors mingled together Jupiter makes all men to drink and tempers with them every thing that he pours down here below So that the Pains and Pleasures of the
same manner were the Crown and the Iris produc'd for they were form'd by a reflection and refraction of the Solar rayes and consequently at the intersection of the Iris and the Crown there was a double reflection and refraction Whence at the the said intersection appear'd two false Suns sufficiently bright by the new reflection of which upon the same circumference of the Iris were formed two other Suns of less brightness The Third said That this plurality of Suns ought to be attributed to a reflection of the species of the true Sun receiv'd in some Stars so oppos'd to him that they send back his light and species and the concurse of those reflected rayes causes those masses of light to appear in the centres of concave bodies that reflect them which cannot be Clouds because they are neither smooth nor opake nor void of colour the three accidents necessary for reflection Moreover the Clouds cannot receive his species upon their uppermost surface for then they could not reflect it nor upon their lowermost or interior surface for this cannot receive it unless it be reflected from the Water and then we should not see those Suns in the Air but in the Water Nor lastly upon one side because then the Spectator must not be upon the Earth but in a line perpendicular to the diametre of the side of the Cloud according to the doctrine of the Catoptricks The Fourth said That the Clouds being polite or smooth when they are turn'd into Water and their profundity serving instead of opacity as we see in deep Waters which our sight is unable to penetrate they remit the species presented to them And the same may happen in the Air when it is condens'd Whence as Aristotle reports many have seen their own Images in the Air and some affirm that they have seen whole Cities so particularly Avignon The Fifth said That the Viscosity into which the aqueousness of those Clouds had degenerated when those four Parhelij appear'd at Rome was the cause not onely of their appearance but also of their subsistence at mid-day To the which also more concocted and condens'd must those three Suns ascrib'd which were observ'd in Spain Anno 753. for the space of three years and the three others that appear'd over the City of Theodosia on the twenty ninth of October 1596. from Sun-rise to Sun-set The Sixt said That all these difficulties inclin'd him to attribute Parhelij to one or more Clouds round and resplendent like the Sun For what unlikelihood is there that an unctuous exhalation may be elevated in the Air in a round figure which being inflam'd on all sides equally may represent by its light that of the Sun seeing Nature is much more ingenious then Art which represents him at pleasure by artificial fires and we behold even from the surface of the Earth up to the Orbes of the Planets igneous bodies of all figures and colours and those of very long continuance II. Whether any Love be without self interest Upon the Second Point the First said That 't is not without a mystery that Plato in his Convivium makes two Cupids one the Son of Venus Coelestial the other the Son of the common or Terrestrial Venus intimating thereby that there are two sorts of Love one vile and abject which is that of Concupiscence whereby a Man loves that which is agreeable to him for his own interest the other divine and perfect wherewith we love a thing for it self which kind is very rare And therefore Hesiod makes it to be born of the Chaos and the Earth to intimate that it is difficult to meet any that is pure and without any interest The Ancients have also made two Loves one of Plenty Abundance by which the Perfect loves the Imperfect to communicate thereunto what it wanteth the other of Indigence which the Defective hath towards the Perfect that it may be made perfect by it The former is that of God towards his Creatures the latter that of Creatures towards God And as for that which is found between Creatures it is more or less excellent according as it partaketh of the one or the other But to speak generally it is more noble to be lov'd then to love as it is more excellent to be sought to then to seek to another to give then to receive The Second said That there are two sorts of Love the one of Friendship the other of Desire The former causeth us to love things because they are worthy of it the latter because they are convenient for us The first is not onely possible but more natural then the second For the Love of Friendship is direct that of Concupiscence is onely by reflection Now that which is direct is in the date of Nature before the reflected the stroke is before the rebound the voice before the Echo and the Ray before the reverberation For Reflection is a re-plication or re-doubling of a thing That the Love of Desire is such I manifest It is with our Knowledge as with our Love A Man knows himself less easily then he doth others because he knows all things else by a direct action and himself by reflection He sees every thing directly but he cannot see himself saving in a Looking-glass And for that nothing enters into him but passeth through the Senses it is requisite that that which is in him come forth to re-enter again by the Senses and pass into the Mind For all Knowledge is by Assimilation as that I may see the pupil of my Eye must have the Image of the thing which I would see and so become like to it Now all resemblance is between things that are distinct So that if the Mind of Man is to know any thing of it self that thing must be abstracted and sever'd from him that it may be made like to him and consequently cannot enter into his Knowledge but by reflection in which the species loseth of its virtue as we see in the Echo which is never so natural as the voice which it imitates nor the Object in the Looking-glass as the first Object The case is the same in Love For by it we love things before we desire them Which is evident both in respect to the Object and also to the Act of Love Its Object Good includeth two things First its Nature of Good which is an Entity consider'd in it as conducing to the perfection of the thing wherein it is And Secondly its communicability or relation to other things capable of receiving its diffusion The former is the foundation and efficient emanative cause of the other which is onely a Propriety and consequently less natural because posterior and subservient to the former Moreover Love taken as an act of the Will hath the same effect according to which it is defin'd an adequateness conformity and correspondence of our heart to the thing and an approbation and complacency in the goodness which is in the Object which our Mind judging good
as Imprisonment solitary and gloomy places immoderate watchings Agitations and Motions of Body and Mind especially Sadness and Fear immoderate fasting the use of base and black Wines gross food as Pulse Coleworts Beef especially salted and Animals that have black hair such as are the Stag the Hare and all Water fowle Aristotle conceiv'd that this Natural Melancholy was the fittest humour to make Men ingenious as he treats at large in his Problemes and shews that the greatest persons that have excell'd in Philosophy Policy Poetry and other Arts have partaken most of it yea of the atribilarious Humour as Hercules Ajax and Bellerophon And before him Hippocrates in his Book De Flatibus saith That nothing contributes more to Prudence then the blood in a good consistence as the Melancholy Humour is Galen will have Dexterity to proceed from Choler Integrity and Constancy from Melancholy The first reasons are taken from the similitude which Melancholy hath with Wine I. First as Wine is stronger upon its Lee and keeps longer so is the blood upon Melancholy II. The Spirit which is drawn from Wine mingled with its Lee is far better then that which is drawn from Wine alone So the Spirits which proceed from blood joyn'd with Melancholy are much more vigorous thereby III. As it easier to leap on high when one hath his foot upon firm ground then in a fluid place So Melancholy being more firm then the other Humours makes the Spirits bound the higher and they are also better reflected as the rayes of the Sun are better reflected by the Earth then by the Water IV. Melancholy persons have a stronger Imagination and so more proper for the Sciences because Knowledge is acquir'd by the reception of Phantasines into the Imagination V. Old Men who are prudent are Melancholy Whence came that saying The prudent Mind is in a dry Body And the blood of studious and contemplative persons becomes dry and Melancholy by study Therefore Plato said That the Mind begins to flourish when the Body is pass'd its flower In fine the Melancholy are very patient and are not discourag'd by any obstacles which they meet with And as they are very slow in taking resolutions so when they are once taken they perform them notwithstanding what ever difficulties they encounter therein The Second said He could not conceive how this Humour which causeth the greatest diseases in the Spleen and in the Veins the Hypochondriacal Dotage and the Quartan Ague in any part the Scirrhus and the Cancer and in the whole Body the Leprosie and other incurable diseases should increase Wit and contribute to Prudence For considering it even in its natural constitution it renders those in whom it predominates of a leaden colour pensive solitary slow in motion sad and timerous and causes them to have a small Pulse which is an argment of the weakness of their Spirits On the contrary the Sanguine Humour opposite to it hath none but commendable signes and effects a rosey colour a cheerful aspect a sociable humour an active promptitude In brief all actions in perfection Whence it follows that the Humours of a well temper'd Man being more exquisite the Spirits which proceed from purer blood must be also more more refin'd The Third Said That to know whether the Melancholy Temper be most proper for Prudence it behoveth to consider the nature both of Prudence and of Melancholy and see how they agree together Prudence is the Habit of acting according to Reason Whereunto is requisite a clear Knowledge of the End of Man and of his actions as also of the Means which conduce to that end together with an integrity and firmness of Mind to guide a Man in the election and practice of those means Wherefore it is not without good reason that Prudence is accounted the Queen and Rule of all Virtues and that all of them are but species or kinds of Prudence Whence he that hath all the Virtues and hath not Prudence cannot be said to have any Virtue For indeed it is to Action what Sapience or Wisedom is to Contemplation Melancholy not-natural which becometh such by adustion of the natural of the Blood Choler and salt Flegme is easily inflam'd and being inflam'd renders Men furious and so is very contrary to Prudence which requires a great tranquillity and moderation of Mind for right judging of the End of things and of the Means to attain thereunto Choler indeed makes good Wits capable of well judging of the End and the Means yea it gives Courage for the execution But the bilious Spirits are usually fickle and want constancy in resolutions and patience in executions which defects are very remote from Prudence The Flegmatick have as we say ny bouche ny esperon neither counsel nor dispatch They are dull both of Body and Mind and incapable of understanding and performing well The Sanguine have Wit good enough and gentle qualities but they they are too sensual and tender by reason of the softness and mildness of the numour which ought to be moderated in a Prudent Man But Natural Melancholy gives a solid Judgement Gravity Constancy Patience and Temperance which are the principal pillars of Prudence So then the Melancholy Temper alone is proper for it and of the rest that which nearest approacheth it namely the Sanguine Now every Temper being compounded of the Four Humours that in which Blood and Natural Melancholy predominate will be the most proper of all for Prudence For these two Humours make a very perspicacious Wit and a profound and solid Judgement Melancholy when moderately heated by the Blood and Choler carries a Man to undertake and execute boldly and confidently because it is with knowledge of the End and Means Thus I have given you the Common Opinion But I esteem it absurd to believe that the Elementary Qualities cause such noble Effects as the Inclinations to Prudence Magnanimity Justice and other Virtues For they are caus'd by the Influence of the Stars as is found most evidently in Nativities by which without seeing the person or his temper one may tell his Inclinations But because in every Generation the superior and inferior causes concur together and the temper almost alwayes corresponds to the Influences thence Aristotle and Galen who understood not the true Science of Coelestial Powers have affirm'd the former in his Physiognomy That the Manners of Man follow his Temper And the latter That the Temperament is by it self the first and true efficient cause of all the actions of the mixt Body and consequently of the Manners of a Man Whereby they ascribe that to the Temper which ought to be attributed onely to the Influences And indeed the Hermetick Philosophy assignes to the Elementary Qualities no other Virtues but of heating cooling moistning drying condensing and rarifying Now according to Astrologers Prudence is from the influence of Saturn and Jupiter who preside over Melancholly and Blood according as those Planets reign or favourably regard all the points
in the Tuilleries justifies him Yet Art finds a greater facility in this matter near Lakes Hills and Woods naturally dispos'd for such a re-percussion But which increases the wonder of the Echo is its reduplication which is multiply'd in some places seven times and more the reason whereof seemes to be the same with that of multiplication of Images in Mirrors For as there are Mirrors which not onely receive the species on their surface so plainly as our Eye beholds but cannot see the same in the Air though they are no less there then in the Mirror so there are some that cast forth the species into the Air so that stretching out your arm you see another arm as it were coming out of the Mirror to meet yours In like manner it is with the voice And as a second and a third Mirror rightly situated double and trebble the same species so other Angles and Concavities opposite to the first cause the voice to bound and by their sending it from one to another multiply it as many times as there are several Angles but indeed weaker in the end then in the beginning because all Reaction is less then the First Action CONFERENCE XVI I. How Spirits act upon Bodies II. Whether is more powerful Love or Hatred I. How Spirits act upon Bodies IT is requisite to understand the Nature of ordinary and sensible actions that we may judge of others as in all Sciences a known Term is laid down to serve for a rule to those which are inquir'd So Architects have a Level and a Square whereby to discern perpendicular Lines and Angles Now in Natural Actions between two Bodies there is an Agent a Patient a Contact either Physical or Mathematical or compounded of both a Proportion of Nature and Place and a Reaction Moreover Action is onely between Contraries so that Substances and Bodies having no contraries act not one against the other saving by their qualities Which nevertheless inhering in the subjects which support them cause Philosophers to say that Actions proceed from Supposita Now that which causeth the difficulty in the Question is not that which results from the Agent for the Spirit is not onely a perpetual Agent but also a pure Act nor that which proceedeth from the Patient for Matter which predominates in Bodies is of its own Nature purely Passive But 't is from the want of Contact For it seemeth not possible for a Physical Contact to be between any but two complete substances And if we speak of the Soul which informes the Body it is not complete because it hath an essence ordinated and relative to the Body If we speak of Angels or Daemons there is no proportion of Nature between them and Bodies and much less resemblance as to the manner of being in a place For Angels are in a place onely definitively and Bodies are circumscrib'd with the internal surface of their place How then can they act one upon the other Nor can there be reaction between them For Spirits cannot part from Bodies But on the other side since Action is onely between Contraries and Contraries are under the same next Genus and Substance is divided into Spiritual and Corporeal there ought to be no more true Action then between the Soul and the Body both Contraries not onely according to the acception of Divines who constantly oppose the Body to the Spirit and make them fight one with the other but speaking naturally it is evident that the proprieties of the one being diametrically opposite to those of the other cause a perpetual conflict with them which is the same that we call Action Contact is no more necessary between the Soul and the Body to infer their action then it is between the Iron and the Load-stone which attracts it What Proportion can be found greater then between Act and Power the Form and the Matter the Soul and the Body which are in the same place As for Reaction supposing it to be necessary whereof yet we see no effect in the Sun nor the other Coelestial Bodies which no Man will say suffer any thing from our Eye upon which nevertheless they act making themselves seen by us And Lovers are not wholly without reason when they say a subject makes them suffer remaining it self unmoveable It is certain that our Soul suffers little less then our Body as is seen in griefs and corporal maladies which alter the free functions of the Mind caus'd by the influence of the Soul upon the Body through Anger Fear Hope and the other Passions The Soul then acts upon the Body over which it is accustom'd to exercise Dominion from the time of our Formation in our Mothers womb it governs and inures it to obey in the same manner as a good Rider doth a Horse whom he hath manag'd from his youth and rides upon every day Their common contentment facilitates this obedience the instruments the Soul makes use of are the Spirits which are of a middle nature between it and the Body Not that I fancy them half spiritual and half corporeal as some would suppose but by reason they are of so subtile a Nature that they vanish together with the Soul So that the Arteries Ventricles and other parts which contain them are found wholly empty immediately after death The Second said That if we would judge aright what ways the Soul takes to act upon the Body we need onely seek what the Body takes to act upon the Soul For the lines drawn from the centre to the circumference are equal to those from the circumference to the centre Now the course which it holds towards the Soul is thus The Objects imprint their species in the Organ of the outward Sense this carries the same to the Common Sense and this to the Phancy The Memory at the same time presents to the Judgement the fore-past Experiences which she hath kept in her Treasury The Judgement by comparing them with the knowledge newly arriv'd to it by its Phantasmes together with its natural habit of first principles draws from the same a conclusion which the Will approves as soon as Reason acquiesseth therein According to the same order the Will consignes the Phantasmes in the Memory and the Phancy this to the Common Sense and this to the Organs of the Senses For Example as soon as my Judgement hath approv'd the discourse which I make to you and my Will hath agreed thereunto she consign'd the species to my Memory that it might remember to reduce them into this order according to which my Memory distributed them to my Imagination this to my Common Sense this to the Nerves appointed for the Motion of my Tongue and the other Organs of Speech to recite the same and now into those of my hand to write them down to you The Third said That the clearing of the Question propounded depended upon two others First what link or union there may be between a Spiritual and a Corporeal thing Secondly supposing
that evil is the cause that we are never contented therewith I add further If it were possible to heap all the goods of the world into one condition and all kind of evils were banish'd from the same yet could it not fill the Appetite of our Soul which being capable of an infinite Good if she receive any thing below infinite she is not fill'd nor contented therewith Nevertheless this dissatisfaction doth not proceed from the infirmity and ignorance of the Humane Soul but rather from her great perfection and knowledge whereby she judging all the goods of the world less then her self the goods intermingled with miseries serve her for so many admonitions that she ought not to stay there but aspire to other goods more pure and solid Besides these I have two natural reasons thereof First Every Good being of it self desirable every one in particular may desire all the goods which all Men together possess Yet it is not possible for him to obtain them wherefore every one may desire more then he can possess Whence there must alwayes be frustrated desires and discontents Secondly The Desires of Men cannot be contented but by giving them the enjoyment of what they desire Now they cannot be dealt withall butas a bad Physitian doth with his Patients in whom for one disease that he cures he causeth three more dangerous For satisfie one Desire and you raise many others The poor hungry person asketh onely Bread give it him and then he is thirsty and when he is provided for the present he is sollicitous for the future If he hath money he is troubled both how to keep it and how to spend it Which caus'd Solomon after he had deny'd his Soul nothing that it desir'd to pronounce That All is vanity and vexation of Spirit The Third conceiv'd That the Cause of this Dissatisfaction is for that the conditions of others seem more suitable to us and for that our Election dependeth on the Imagination which incessantly proposeth new Objects to the Soul which she beholding afar off esteemes highly afterwards considering them nearer sees as the Fable saith that what she accounted a treasure is but a bottle of Hay The Fourth said That because every thing which we possess gives us some ground of disgust and we do not yet perceive the inconvenience of the thing we desire therefore we are weary of the present and hope to find less in the future Whence we despise the one and desire the other The Fifth added That Man being compos'd of two parts Body and Soul which love change it is necessary that he love it too Choose the best posture and the best food you will it will weary you in a little time Let the most Eloquent Orator entertain you with the most excellent Subject suppose God himself you will count his Sermon too long if it exceed two hours or perhaps less Is it a wonder then if the Whole be of the same Nature with the Parts The Sixth attributed the Cause of this Discontent to the comparison which every one makes of his own State with that of others For as a Man of middle stature seemes low near a Gyant so a Man of moderate fortune comparing his own with the greater of another becomes discontented therewith Wherefore as long as there are different conditions they of the lowest will always endeavour to rise to the greatest and for the taking away of this Displeasure Lycurgus's Law must be introduc'd who made all the people of Sparta of equal condition If it be reply'd that nevertheless they of the highest condition will be contented I answer that our Mind being infinite will rather fancy to it self Epicurus's plurality of worlds as Alexander did then be contented with the possession of a single one and so 't will be sufficient to discontent us not that there is but that there may be some more contented then our selves The Seventh said That the Cause hereof is the desire of attaining perfection which in Bodies is Light whence they are alwayes chang'd till they become transparent as Glass and in Spirits their satisfaction which is impossible For Man having two principles of his Actions which alone are capable of being contented namely the Vnderstanding and the Will he cannot satiate either of them One truth known makes him desire another The sign of a moderate Mind is to be contented with it self whereas that of a great Mind is to have alwayes an insatiable appetite of knowing Whence proceedeth this It is for that it knows that God created every thing in the world for it and that it cannot make use thereof unless it have an exact and particular knowledge of the virtues and properties of all things It knows also that it self was created for God and the knowledge of the Creatures is nothing but a means to guide it to that of God So that if it take those means which lead it to the end for the end it self it deceives it self and finds not the contentment which it seeks and will never find the same till it be united to its First Principle which is God who alone can content the Vnderstanding His Will is also hard to be satifi'd The more goods it hath the more it desires It can love nothing but what is perfect It finds nothing absolutely perfect but goodness it self For the Light and knowledge wherewith the Understanding supplieth it discover to it so many imperfections and impurities in the particular goods it possesseth that it distasts and despises them as unworthy to have entertainment in it Wherefore it is not to be wonder'd if Man can never be contented in this world since he cannot attain his utmost End in it either for Body or Soul CONFERENCE XIX I. Of the Flowing and Ebbing of the Sea II. Of the Point of Honour I. Of the Flux of the Sea THe First said That if there be any other cause of this Flux then the heaping together of the Waters from the beginning under the Aequinoctial by Gods Command whence they descend again by their natural gravity and are again driven thither by the obedience which they owe to that Command which is so evident that they who sail under the Aequator perceive them selves lifted up so high by the currents that are usually there that they are many times terrifi'd thereat there is none more probable then the Moon which hath dominon overall moist Bodies and augments or diminishes this Flux according as she is in the increase or the wane The Second said That the Moon indeed makes the Flux and Reflux of the Sea greater or less yea she governes and rules it because being at the Full she causeth a Rarefaction of its Waters But this doth not argue that she is the Efficient Cause of the said Flux The Sea rises at the shore when the Moon riseth in the Heaven and retires again when the Moon is going down their motions are indeed correspondent one to the other yet I know not how
this charge comes to may be taken for profit upon the Pawn and added to the principal but the remainder restor'd to the owner And nothing above this is to be suffer'd CONFERENCE XLIV I. How Minerals grow II. Whether it be best to know a little of every thing or one thing exactly I. How Minerals grow UNder Minerals are comprehended Metals Stones and all sorts of Fossilia or things dig'd out of the earth The causes of their growing or augmentation are here inquir'd All the world agrees that they grow excepting those who hold that God created them at the beginning together with the earth But they who have kept a stone in water for a long time and find the same increas'd in bigness will confute that opinion by this experiment as also the experience of Miners doth who having exhausted a Mine of its Metal find more in it after some years and when they discover Mines as yet imperfect they cover the same again with earth and after some space of time find them fit to be wrought upon and as it were arriv'd to their maturity This is also verifi'd by that Chymical operation call'd vegetable Gold and pieces of Cinnabar or Quick-silver mingled with Sulphur melted and put amongst the filings of Silver being set over a furnace in a well luted Vessel produceth pure Silver though of less profit then curiosity For this visible artifice seems to prove the invisible one of nature according to the opinion of Philosophers who hold that all Metals are made of Quick-silver and Sulphur So that we must not seek other causes of their generation and increasing then a new accession of that matter either gliding along the veins of the earth or reduc'd first into vapour by heat and then condens'd by cold The Second said That he was of Cardan's opinion who assigns a particular vegetative soul to all Minerals as well as to all Plants whereunto they have great resemblance not only in that they have some virtues and faculties alike yea far more excellent which cannot come but from a principle of life since action is the indication of life but also because they grow according to all their dimensions as Plants do have a conformation and configuration which is common to Plants with them attract retain and concoct the nourishment which they receive from the earth by their veins and passages and have also an expulsive faculty which is not in Plants casting forth their dross and exhaling their superfluous vapours They have also roots and barks as Trees have their substance is of parts organical and really dissimilar though in appearance some of them seem to be similar and homogeneous and Lead out of which are extracted Salt or Sugar Quick-silver and Sulphur is no more a similar body then Ebeny Box and Milk out of which such different substances are drawn The Third said That before we can know whether Minerals live we must first understand how life is caus'd in man who is to be as the rule of all living things It consists but in one sole action to wit that of Heat upon Humidity which it rarefies and subtilizes causing the same to ascend by little and little out of the intestines through the Mesentery to the Liver Heart and Brain in each of which it casting off its excrementitious parts it acquires a new perfection the utmost in the Brain where it becomes a very thin spirit capable of receiving any form even that of light as appears by the internal splendor of our sight and that brightness which is sometimes seen outwardly upon some Bodies In Plants are found the like cavities destinated to receive and prepare their nourishment which heat attracts into them and their knots are so many repositories wherein that heat is re-united and takes new strength till being arriv'd at the top of the Plant according to the rectitude of the fibres it circulates the matter so carried up that it spreads into branches leaves and fruit For as humidity is of it self immoveable and incapable of any action so being accompani'd with heat it moves every way and there is no need of admitting an attractive faculty in each part since it is carried thereunto sufficiently of it self Natural heat indeed drives it upwards but all unusual heat makes it break out collaterally as is seen in sweat for no eruption of humidity is caus'd but by the excess of some strange heat not proper or natural Now we may observe these tokens of life in the production of Minerals their vaporous matter being first sublim'd and purifi'd by heat and then incorporated with themselves But because all Natures works are occult and the instrument she uses to wit natural heat is imperceptible 't is no wonder if it be hard to know truly how Minerals hid in the earth grow since we are ignorant how the accretion of Plants expos'd to our view is made we perceive them to have grown but not to grow as the shadow on on the Dyal is observ'd to have gone its round yet appears not to move at all Nevertheless the Arborists would have us except the Plant of Aloes out of this number whose flower and trunk at a certain time shoot forth so high and so speedily that the motion thereof is perceptible to the eye The Fourth said That the generation of some Minerals is effected by heat and of others by cold the former by coction and the latter by concretion or co-agulation which two agents are discover'd by the dissolution of Metals For such as are made by cold are melted by its contrary Heat as Lead Silver and other Metals and those which are made by heat dissolve in water as all Salts provided neither the one nor the other be so compact and close that they admit not the qualities of their contraries for which reason Glass which is concocted by fire is not dissolv'd in water and the Diamond Marble and some other stones congealed by cold are not melted by fire But their accretion is not made by any vital principle but only by a new apposition of matter Moreover they have no sign of inward life as nutrition equal and uniform augmentation in all their parts which should be distinct and organiz'd certain constant terms and limits of magnitude and resemblance of figure and conformation both internal and external between all individuals of the same species For Minerals having no cavities cannot receive aliment inwardly They grow as long as matter is supply'd to them and that inequally Their figure is indeterminate and various according to the casual application of their matter in the veins of the earth and their parts are all alike The barks roots and veins attributed to them have nothing but the shape of those things not the use no more then the paps of men Nor do they bear flowers fruits or seeds nor produce or multiply themselves any other way as Plants do The Fifth said We give appellations or names to things from their external form because
the subtilest sense to wit the Sight The Fifth said That the nobleness of the Touch appears principally in that 't is the most infallible of all the senses as the most honourable persons are accounted most worthy of credit Therefore our Lord being to convince S. Thomas at that time incredulous caus'd him to feel his side and manifest things are call'd palpable because the Touch is the last sense that is deceiv'd Whence they who dream do not frequently find their errour till putting forth their hands to the phantasin they begin to be convinc'd that it is nothing but air The Sixth said That as 't is a common vice to all the Senses to be deceiv'd so that of Touch is not more exempt from it then the rest and the less because it judges of the quality of its objects only by comparison according to the diversity of which one and the same thing diversly affects it and is sometimes apprehended one way sometimes another A man that comes out of a hot Bath shivers in the same air which he accounted warm before he enter'd into the water and when he that learns to dance puts off his leaden soles he thinks his feet lighter then he did before he put them on The Seventh said The Touch is an external sense terrestrial and gross it perceives hot and cold dry and moist heavy and light hard and soft smooth and rough or unequal acide viscous or slippery thick and thin tough and friable or brittle and other such tactile and earthy qualities For as there are five simple Bodies in Nature namely the Heaven and the Elements so each of the five external Senses corresponds to one of them the Sight to Heaven in regard of its transparence and lucidity the other four to the Elements of which the Earth symbolizeth with the Touch because every thing that is felt must have some solidity and consistence which proceeds from the Earth otherwise it could not make it self felt by it self but only by some predominant quality as we feel not the air when it touches us unless it be extreamly cold or hot The Organ of Feeling is inward skin which incompasses the whole body of a creature by reason of its so perfect and equal temperature that it is neither hot nor cold dry moist but equally partakes of all these qualities a requisite condition in the Organs of the senses which must be unprovided of all the qualities whereof they are to judge So the Crystalline humour is without colour the tongue without sapour the nostrils without scent the ears without any sound And the skin is neither hard like the bones nor soft like the flesh but of a temper between both being therefore call'd a Nervous flesh and a fleshy Nerve which skin never so little touch'd feels perfectly which would not come to pass if it were not the Organ of the Touch. 'T is therefore woven of infinite nerves terminated in it and bringing the animal spirits to it which are the efficient causes of the Touch as well as of all the other Senses For what the Philosopher saith That a sensible object apply'd upon the Organ is not perceiv'd must be understood only of the three Senses which are for the convenience of an animal to wit the Sight Hearing and Smelling not of the other two which are for its absolute necessity upon which consideration Nature hath appointed them to judge more neerly exercising these two Senses by a medium internal and inseparable from the Organ II. Of Fortune Upon the second Point it was said Fortune is a cause by accident in things which are done for some end by an Agent that makes use of Reason So 't is fortune when one walking for his health or divertisement finds a Purse but chance hazard or adventure is in things which act for some end without election as brutes mad people and children who are not fortunate or unfortunate unless in hope The difficulty of understanding the nature of Fortune ariseth from the infinite abundance of things which may be causes of things which befall men And as 't is proper to man to admire what he understands not upon the observation of the many strange and unforeseen accidents in the world some say that they come to pass by a fatal destiny necessarily guiding every cause to its effect others that they fall out by chance to which the ancient Philosophers ascrib'd so much that Empedocles accounted the situation of the Elements fortuitous Democritus and Leucippus thought the production of all things was effected by the casual concourse of their atomes flying in the vacuum insomuch that out of a blind superstition they erected Temples and Altars to Fortune For indeed there is nothing divine in Fortune since there is not any cause by it self but may be a cause by accident and consequently Fortune Nor is it the Divine Providence since that which is foreseen cannot be call'd fortuitous But we give the appellation of Fortune to any cause which missing of its proper effect produceth another which it intended not The Second said 'T was the ignorance of men that invented Fortune which hath no other existence but in their imagination For every thing that is hath a certain cause determined to its effect But Fortune and Chance are uncertain and indeterminate therefore not causes And although the proximate cause of every thing be unknown to us yet 't is not the less certain for all that in respect of God who ignores nothing Therefore if there be a fortune in respect of us 't is an effect of our ignorance The Third said We must establish in Nature either Destiny or Fortune The former seems to fasten man to Ixion's wheel which permits him not to do any thing of himself and takes from him the commendation of good and blame of evil rendring him by this means guiltless of whatever he do's and laying all upon universal causes whatever distinction may be made of God's will in general and particular it not being conceivable that two contrary wills can at the same time proceed from the same source The second is more correspondent with the daily events which produce effects whereof no necessary cause can be found Indeed if effects are to be divided according to their causes 't is certain that some are necessary and some contingent whereof the latter being fortuitous cannot be referr'd to any thing but to Fortune Yea of the things which come to pass in the world some always arrive in the same manner as day and night when the Sun rises and sets others fall out ordinarily but not always as that a child is born with five fingers on a hand there being some that have six and others on the contrary arrive very rarely as Monsters But if this variety of causes and effects hath place in natural things 't is found much oftner in humane actions whose constancy is unconstancy it self there being not any whose effect is certain For what man can promise himself
as it is very excellent so 't is exceeding rare and being not us'd amongst us cannot come into comparison with the rest Whereas Sculpture and Statuary consisting only in paring away the overplus of matter or if the matter be fusible in casting it into a mould made from the original as the moulds of Plaster are from the faces of persons newly deceas'd need less industry The Second said Although Painting be sensible and visible yet it belongs to very few persons to judge well of it witness Alexander who going to see Appelles and offering to talk concerning Painting he spoke so ill that the Apprentices of that Artist could not forbear laughing Indeed Painting is one of the noblest parts of the Mechanicks and ought as well to be rank'd amongst the Mathematicks as Astronomy For if the reason of the Celestial motions gave cause for accounting this Science amongst the Mathematicks more justly may the reason of the motions and proportions of mans body the object of Painting more admirable and of which more certain and real knowledge may be had then of those remote bodies deserves to be of that rank considering that it makes use of the same Mathematical Rules Proportions whose Rules are so infallible that seven excellent Statuaries very distant one from the other being employ'd to make a brazen Colossus perform'd their tasks by the precepts of their Art and the parts which each of them made severally being put together represented a well proportion'd man According to which proportion a mans body must be eight lengths of his head from the less corner of the eye to the tip of the Ear is to be twice the length of the Eye the Feet and Hands stretch'd forth equally distant from the Navil and such other remarks The Third said The reason of the measures and proportions observ'd in Painting consists principally in four points viz. in the form and figure of the thing represented which is taken from the visual rays in the shadow which is to be taken from the rays of light in colour which is to imitate the natural and in the handsome posture or situation of the thing painted For Painting is the imitation of the affections of bodies with reference to the light made upon a solid Plane Hence a face is otherwise represented under the water then bare distant then neer in the Sun-shine then in the shadow by Candle-light or Moon-light And though the Painter represents also the dispositions of the soul as anger or sadness yet he doth it always by the features and qualities of the body The Fourth said They who blame Painting and Statuary because they represent unfitting objects and gave occasion to the Idolatry of antiquity may as justly blame beauty because 't is sometimes the occasion of sinning Painting hath this preeminence above all Arts that it imitates God more perfectly then they for God was the first Painter when he made man the goodliest piece of the world after his own image and likeness and all the bless'd spirits are but contracted copies of so perfect an original 'T is that which frees the body from the tombe and like a second table after shipwrack preserves the memory of virtuous men renders present those who are absent and makes almost as strong impressions upon our Soul as the thing it self witnesse the friendships of the greatest personages of the world contracted by its means And as if the desire of pourtraying it self were natural to all things there is no body but incessantly produces its own image which flies and wanders in the Air till it meet with some solid and smooth body whereon to represent it self as we see in Looking-glasses and polish'd marble where the images are much more exact then those which Art draws with a pencil yea then their own originals of whose corporeal matter they are wholly divested And as the beginning of all Arts are rude this of Painting is attributed to the Daughter of Belus who observing her Fathers shadow upon a wall delineated it with a coal For Pourtraiture invented by Philocles the Aegyptian is ancienter then Painting invented either by Gyges the Lydian in Aegypt according to Pliny or by Pyrhus Cousin to Daedalus according to Aristotle The Fifth said That in Painting as in other disciplines Ignorance of the principles is the cause that so few succeed well in it These principles are the methodical proportion of Mans Body Perspective the reason of shadows Natural Colours Designing and History all which must be found in a good Piece and the defect of some of them as it frequently happens causes us to wonder though we know not the reason that there is commonly something in all draughts that does not satisfie our Minds For oftentimes when all the rest is good Perspective hath not been well observ'd or the Design is nought or the History ill follow'd But as things are the more to be esteem'd which are the most simple so there is more of wonder in Painting to the life with a coal as Appelles did before Ptolomy to denote a person to him whom he could not name then with colours the least part of Painting which consists properly onely in proportion and this being the most divine action of Understanding 't is no wonder if there be so few good Painters For they are mistaken who place the excellence of painting in the smallness of the strokes because they fancy that Appelles was discover'd to Protogenes by having made a smaller line then he For on the contrary the most excellent strokes of Masters are many times the grossest and that this proportion may be exact it must imitate not onely particular subjects but generally the species of every thing Which Michel Caravague neglecting to do about 90. years since and instead of following Durer's excellent Rules addicting himself to draw onely after the life hath lead the way to all his successors who care not for his Rules but give themselves onely to imitation and this is the cause of the defects of painting at this day CONFERENCE LIX I. Of Light II. Of Age. I. Of Light I Conceive with a learned Physitian of the most worthy Chancellor that France ever had in his Treatise of this subject that Light is of two sorts one radical and essential which is found perfectly in the Stars the fire and some other subjects but imperfectly in colour'd bodies because Colour is a species of Light The other secondary and derivative which is found in bodies illuminated by the Light Both are made in Transparent Bodies those of the Stars in the Heaven and that of flame and bodies ignited in the fire whiteness in the Air and blackness in the Water But these transparent bodies must be condens'd that those Lights and Colours may appear and therefore the principle of Light is in transparence alone whereof neither purity rarity tenuity nor equality of surfaces are the causes but they all proceed from the quantity of matter some bodies having more matter then others
not by rarity alone or local extension but by formal extension or internal quantity and consequently that a little matter under a great internal quantity is the principle cause of tenuity rarity and transparence to which the evenness of surfaces is also requisite in gross bodies So that Light consists in a proportion between the quantity and the matter of its subject and Light is great when the matter is little under a great quantity as in the Heavens on the contrary the body is dark when a very small quantity is joyn'd to a great deal of matter as is seen in the Earth To prove this you must observe that all simple bodies are luminous excepting the Earth which is opake and we find Light in sundry animated bodies as in the Eyes of Cats and of those Indian Snailes which shine like torches and in our Gloe-wormes whose Light proceeds from their Spirits which being of a middle nature between the Body and the Soul are the least material thing in the world Whence it follows that Light is a form with the most of essence amongst sensible formes as obscurity hath the least The Second said The wonder of Marsilius Ficinus was with reason how 't was possible that nothing should be so obscure as Light For if Transparence be the subject of it why doth Crystal heated red hot in the fire come forth more luminous and less transparent then it was The same may be said of Rarity for we see that Air and Aqua Vitae are well rarify'd by the fire which inflames them but cease to be transparent as soon as they are made more rare and luminous which is an evident sign that rarity and transparence are not causes nor yet conditions of Light So the whole remainder of Heaven is lucid but onely the less rare parts and such as you might call vapours in respect of the pure Air. And the light which proceeds from the Sun the most luminous of all those celestial bodies would never be visible but be depriv'd of all its effects which are heating and enlightning if it were not reflected by some solid body Then it not onely appears but exerts its activity And if things be produc'd by the same causes which preserve and multiply them the solidity of burning mirrors made of Steel the hardest of all metals which make the Sun-beams do more then their own nature empowers them to shews sufficiently that their Light cannot arise from a rare and diaphanous cause Nor may the Light of rotten wood be assign'd to its rarity alone since many other bodies of greater rarity shine not at all nor that of Gloe-worms and Cats Eyes to their spirits since the flesh of some animals shines after their death as 't is affirm'd of Oxen that have frequently eaten a sort of Moon-wort and not onely the scales of divers fishes shine after separation from their bodies but sparkles of fire issue from the hair of some persons in great droughts whereunto the spirits contribute nothing Which would perswade me to believe that Light is a Form to the introduction whereof several conditions are requisite according to the diversity of subjects just as we see the Souls of some irrational creatures need great dispositions for their reception a Brain a Heart and a Liver with their dependances whereas others as Insects require lesse and are contented with something that may supply this defect some are generated in an instant without any apparent preparation as Frogs in a summer showre and therefore to assign the cause of Light is to seek the reason of Formes which is unknown to us Which similitude the vulgar speech confirmes for the people say The Candle is dead when it is extinguish'd presupposing that it had life before as an Animal hath so long as its form is conjoyn'd with its body Moreover Fire hath a Locall Motion as Animals have to obtain its food The Third said Light is a substance for it was created by God but 't is a Sixth Essence more subtile then that of Heaven which is call'd a Quintessence in respect of the Four Elements A substance which subsisted before the Sun having been created three dayes before it and nothing hinders but it may be communicated in a moment from Heaven to Earth since the intentional species of visible things is so Indeed whereunto shall we attribute the effect of Light which heats at distance and blinds being too great which colours and gives ornament to the Universe if it be not a substance And the Penetration of Dimension objected hereunto is salv'd by saying that it hath no more place here then when an Iron is red hot with the Fire which yet none will affirm to be an accident and neverthelesse it enters into the whole substance of the Iron and Light with it for 't is transparent and luminous at its centre when 't is throughly heated in the Fire The Fourth said The excellence of Light appears in that nothing hath greater resemblance with the Deity Which made some Heathen Philosophers say that Light is Gods Body and Truth his Soul Moreover the Scripture teaches us that God dwells in inaccessible Light And the blessed Spirits are stil'd Angels of Light as Daemons Spirits of darknesse Light enlivens and animates all things it rejoyces all Creatures by its presence Birds begin to sing and even flowers to display their beauties at its arrival And because Nothing gives what it hath not therefore some have conceiv'd that Light the enlivener of all the world is it self indu'd with life and that 't is the Universal Spirit and the Soul of the whole world Whence Plato in his timaeus brings no other argument to prove that Fire is an Animal but that it is luminous And in the sixth Book of his Common-wealth he makes the Sun who is the known Father of all living things the son of Light without which Pythagoras forbad to do any thing Moreover it hath no contrary Darkness being oppos'd to it onely privatively For its being is so excellent that Nature found not her self so able to make any thing that might be equall'd with it that might alter and corrupt it as the nature of Contraries require whereas all Qualities have each their particular enemy And 't is upon this very reason that Light acts in an instant because having no contrary quality to expel from its subject it needs no time or successive motion which is necessary to other qualities as to heat to warm cold water The Fifth said Light is a real form produc'd in the medium by a luminous body Aristotle calls it the act of the Perspicuum as it is Perspicuum This Form is accidental and falls under the head of Patible Qualities because 't is sensible by it self which is the property of accidents alone whereas substance is not sensible that is falls not under the perception of sense but by means of accidents and as it is the principle of action which belongs onely to a Quality For it cannot
and these being dissipated by age the species put forth themselves by little and little as Characters engraven on wood or stone cover'd over with wax appear proportionably as it melts off And therefore he term'd all our knowledge a remembrance but although he err'd herein yet reason'd better then Aristotle who admitted the Metempsychosis but deny'd the Reminiscence both which are necessary consequents one of the other The Second said That the operations of the Intellect are so divine that not being able to believe the same could proceed from it self it refers them to superiors For it invents disposes meditates examines and considers the least differences it compounds and divides every thing apprehends simple termes conjoynes the subject and the attribute affirms denyes suspends its judgements and alone of all the Faculties reflects upon it self yea by an action wholly divine produces a word For as in speaking a word is produc'd by the mouth so in understanding is form'd the word of the Mind Yet with this difference that the former is a corporeal patible quality imprinted in the Air and not the latter for intellection is an immanent operation Hence some have thought that all these divine actions were perform'd by God himself whom they affirm'd to be that Agent Intellect which irradiating the phantasmes produces out of them the intelligible species which it presents to our Intellect Others ascrib'd them to an Assisting Intelligence Some to a particular genius But as I deny not that in supernatural cognitions God gives Faith Hope and Charity and other supernatural gifts in which case God may be said to be an Agent Intellect I conceive also that in natural and ordinary knowledge of which alone we speak now no concourse of God other then universal is to be imagin'd whereby he preserves natural causes in their being and do's not desert them in their actions ' This then the Understanding it self which performes what ever it thinks surpasses its strength which it knows not sufficiently and the Agent and Patient Intellect are but one being distinguish'd onely by reason As it formes that species 't is call'd Agent as it keeps and preserves them Patient For as the Light causes colours to be actually visible by illuminating them together with the Air with their medium so the Agent Intellect renders all things capable of being known by illustrating the phantasmes separating them from the grosness of the matter whereof they have some what when they are in the Imagination and forming intelligible species of them Otherwise if these phantasmes remain'd still in their materiality the Understanding being spiritual could know nothing since that which is sensible and material remaining such cannot act upon what is spiritual and immaterial Besides the species of the Phancy representing to us onely the accidents of things it was requisite that the Intellect by its active virtue subliming and elevating those species to a more noble degree of being should make them representative species of their own essence Which it doth by abstraction of the individual properties of their subject from which it formes universal conceptions which action is proper to the Intellect This supreme Faculty being so noble that it ennobles all beings rendring them like to it self The Third said That the Intellect is to the Soul such as the Soul is to the body which it perfectionates And as it knows all corporeal things by the senses so it knows incorporeal by it self This Faculty serves for a medium and link uniting all things to their first cause and 't is Homer's golden chain or Jacob's ladder which reaches from Earth to Heaven by which the Angels that is the species and most spiritual notions ascend to the heaven of man which is his brain to inform him and cause the spirits to descend from thence to reduce into practice the excellent inventions of the Understanding Now as Reason discriminates men from brutes so doth this Intellect men amongst themselves And if we believe Trismegistus in his Pimander God has given to all men ratiocination but not Understanding which he proposes for a reward to his favourites Aristotle saith 't is the knowledge of indemonstrable principles and immaterial forms Plato calls it Truth Philo the Jew the chief part and torch of the Soul the Master of the little world as God is of the great both the one and the other being diffus'd through the whole without being mix'd or comprehended in any part of it The fourth said That the humane is a substance wholly divine and immortal since it hath no principle of corruption in it self being most simple and having no contrary out of it self Eternal since 't is not in time but above time Infinite since its nature is no-wise limited and is every thing that it understands changing it self thereinto not by a substantial mutation but as the First Matter is united with the formes remaining alwayes the same Matter the wax remaining entire receives all sort of figures So the intellect is not really turn'd into the things which it understands but only receives their species wherewith it is united so closely that it is therefore said to be like to them As likewise though it be call'd Patient when it receives them 't is not to be inferr'd that it is material since these species are material and acting upon the Intellect alter it not but perfectionate it Moreover it hath this peculiarity that the more excellent these species are the more perfect it is render'd whence after the highest things it can as easily comprehend the less An assured token of its incorruptibility and difference from the senses which are destroy'd by the excellence of their objects But as the soul being freed from the body hath nothing to do with sensitive knowledg because then it ratiocinates no more but beholds effects in their proper causes commanding and obeying it self most perfectly exempted from the importunity of the sensitive appetite so while it is entangled in the body it receives some impressions resulting from the parts humours and spirits destinated to its service being in some sort render'd like to them So the soul of one born blind is ignorant of colours the cholerick are subject to frowardness and the melancholy timerous by reason of the blackness of that humour The Fifth said All actions of men depending on the temper those of the Understanding so long as it is entangled in the bonds of the body are not free from it For as that of Plants gives them the qualities proper to attract concoct and convert their aliments and generate their like and beasts having a temper sutable to their nature are lead as soon as they come into the world to what is convenient for them without instruction So men are lead of their own accord to divers things according as their souls meet dispositions proper to certain actions yea they are learned without ever having learn'd any thing as appears in many phrantick and distracted persons amongst whom some although ignorant
of the radical moisture of plants and animals For they alone are capable of dying as they are of living what they attribute to Fire the Load-stone and some other inanimates being purely Metaphorical Violent death is produc'd either by internal causes as diseases or by external 'T is caus'd by destroying the harmony of the parts and humours which constituted life after which destruction the Soul not finding the organs longer meet for exercising its functions as Fire that wants unctuous and combustible humidity forsakes its matter to retire into its own sphere And though the corruption of one be the generation of another there being no matter but hath alwayes some form as Bees are generated out of dead Oxen yet there is this distinction that the progress of a form less noble to one that is more is call'd generation or life as when an Egg is made a chick but when this progress is made from a more noble form to a less as from a man to a carcase then 't is call'd Corruption and Death if the form preceding were vital Thus all are wayes of Death which lead to corruption The first of these wayes is life for nothing comes under its Laws but is subject to those of Death considering the wayes that we dye as we are borne and that our end depends on our original as there is no harmony but must end in discord the latter note not being capable to accord with the first rest which is the end or death of harmony whereunto our life is not onely compar'd but may be fitly defin'd by it that Galen enlightned by Reason alone conceiv'd the Soul to be nothing else The Third said That onely in the death of men there is a separation of the Soul from the Body seeing that after the death of animals and plants there still remain faculties in their bodies which cannot depend on the sole mistion of the Elements but must be referr'd to some internal principle which can be no other then their Soul Yet with this difference that as during life these faculties were as formes in their matter so after death they are as substances in their place though without any activity for want of necessary dispositions which return afterwards by generation or the action of the celestial bodies producing wormes and other animals which come of themselves and never but from a nature formerly animated not receiving by this new generation any substantial form but onely making the Soul appear which was kept as 't were buried before this resuscitation Thus the death of plants and beasts is the privation of their vegetative and sensitive actions the principle of those actions alwayes remaining But that of men besides this privation of their actions causes the dissolution of the Soul from the Body which is properly death The inevitable necessity whereof is by Avicenna deriv'd from four chief causes I. From the Air which alters and dryes us II. From our own heat which by accident destroyes it self III. The continual motion of our bodies furthers the dissipation of that heat IV. The various Inclination of the Elements some of which are carry'd upwards others downwards and so break the union which preserves our life Albert the Great assignes a fifth cause namely the contrariety of forms and qualities death happening when humidity hath given place to drynesse But because this excesse of drynesse might be corrected by its contrary therefore the Moderns lay the fault upon the radical moisture Which some of them say we receive from our Parents and is continually impair'd without being at all recruited from the birth But this is absurd for then the Son must have infinitely lesse then his Father because he receives but a very small portion which besides cannot be distributed through a great body nor afford supply to so many actions Others more probably affirm that the Humidum which is repair'd is not of the same purity with that which we derive from the principles of our birth by reason of reaction and its being continually alter'd by our heat But that which indubitates this reason is that the Elements do not maintain themselves but by reaction notwithstanding which they cease not to be alwayes in the same state Fire as hot Air as moist as ever it was Inasmuch as the substantial forms expell all Qualities which are not suitable to themselves and recover their natural ones without other assistance Moreover when old men beget children they communicate to them an excellent radical humidity otherwise there would be no generation and consequently they can do as well for themselves as for their posterity But if they give them such as is bad and corrupt it follows that their children who live after their death re-produce much better by their nutrition then that which they had receiv'd and consequently the radical humidity may not onely be repair'd but meliorated And there 's no reason why an exact course of dyet may not keep a man from dying as the Chymists promise I had therefore rather say that as the union of the Soul with the Body is unknown to humane wit so is their disunion which I ascribe rather to the pleasure of the supreme Ruler who causes us to abide sentinel as long as he thinks meet then to any natural thing which is the reason why those that deprive themselves of life are justly punish'd because they dispose of what is not their own although it seemes to the vulgar that they do wrong to none but themselves because 't is by their own will and act The Fourth said What is compos'd of contraries between which there is continual action necessarily receives sundry changes and alterations in its being which by degrees bring it to a total corruption This is conspicuously seen in the life of man the ages and all other mutations whereof are as so many steps towards death 'T is the most worthy employment of a man to consider that he dyes every day For as Seneca saith that which deceives us is that we consider death as afar off whereas a great part of it is already pass'd for it already possesses all the time that we have been which is the cause that instead of employing our time profitably we consume a great part of it in doing nothing a greater part in doing ill and all in doing other things then ought to be which proceeds from not thinking often enough upon death as which no Preacher is so powerful For the fear it imprints in the soul vertue it self cannot wholly eradicate the sole aspect of the shades of the dead or their voices imprinting paleness upon the countenance of the most resolute Therefore the Philosopher holds that the fear of death is not only competible with courage but that he who fears it not at all rather deserves the name of mad then valiant The Fifth said That they who have had recourse to death to deliver themselves from their miseries as Brutus Cato his daughter Portia and some others have
or elsewhere Whereby it appears that there is no Rule but has its exception since Nature which gives the same to all things oftentimes dispenses with her self The Third said The Soul is the act of an Organnical Body endu'd with Life and the principle of vegetation sense and motion according to Aristotle an Intellective or continual motion according to Plato a Number moving it And consequently Life is nothing but motion and a thing may be said to be alive when it is able to move it self by any kind of motion whether of generation or corruption accretion or diminution local motion or alteration For the most evident sign of Life is self-motion Whence we call such Living Waters which flow and those dead which stand still although improperly because this motion is extrinsical to them namely from their source and the declivity of the earth The Pythagoreans therefore believ'd the Heaven animated because it is mov'd according to all the differences of place and that this Animal is nourish'd with the Air which it draws out of the spaces which we call Imaginary Now as powers are known so they are distinguish'd by their actions So that the perfecter the motion is which denotes Life the perfecter the Life is Therefore as Oysters and other imperfect Animals endu'd with sense enjoy a nobler life then plants which onely vegetate so they are inferior to other perfect Animals which besides sense have progressive motion and these again the slower and more impedite their motion is the more they yield in dignity to others as the Snail to the Dog and Hare In brief these are lesse noble then Man whose Soul is mov'd after a more admirable manner and who hath the faculty of Understanding the most perfect of all which being found in God in a far higher degree beause it constitutes his whole essence being and Understanding being in him one and the same thing he hath the most perfect life of all Which is the cause why our Lord saith that he is the Life Moreover as the First Matter which is the lowest of all things that are if it may be said to be hath need iof all so the sublimest of all things God hath need of nothing but includes in himself all perfections the chiefest of which is Life which all Creatures enjoy onely by participation from him The Fourth said Life is a continual action of Heat upon humidity the periods whereof are distinguish'd by the several effects of this heat to wit the alterations of temper and diversity of ages For 't is Physically as well as Morally true which Job saith that our life is a warfare upon the earth since a thing is not accounted living unless so far as it acts Death being the privation of actions and there is no action but between contrary qualities of which heat and moisture are the foundation of life as cold and siccity are the concomitants of death old age which leads us thither being also cold and dry Hence they are the longest liv'd who have most heat as Males then Females terrestrial animals then Fish those which have blood then those which have not As also those that abound with this humidity live long provided it have the qualities requisite namely be fat aerious and not aqueous or excrementitious because otherwise it easily cools and congeals and by that means incongruous to life The Fifth said That heat being the most noble and active of all qualities executes all the functions of life when it meets with organs and dispositions sutable thereunto This heat must be in act and not only in power such as that of Lime and Pepper is And though it be not so sensible in plants yet it ceases not to be actually in them so long as they are alive and to digest and assimilate the aliments which it draws for them out of the earth ready prepar'd whence they have no excrements as animals have With whom nevertheless they have so great resemblance that Plato in his Timaeus saith that Plants are tanquam animala and Pythagoras conceiv'd them to be inform'd with the souls of some men who having liv'd in the world without exercising other actions then those of the vegetative life addicting themselves to nothing but to feed and generate are condemn'd to pass into the bodies of Plants as the souls of those who have lead a brutish life are relegated into those of Swine Tygres Lyons and other brutes whose manners they had imitated Empedocles and Anaxagoras as Aristotle reports attributed to Plants a perception of pain and pleasure Moreover they have not only their maladies old age and death as animals have but some too have differences of sex and local motion as 't is observ'd of certain Palmes which bend towards one another and of divers other Plants which recoil from those that are contrary to them and grow best neer others The Sixth said Life is nothing but the union of the soul with the body which requires a fitting temperature and conformation from whence afterwards proceed all actions and motions both internal and external Wherefore life is not an action of an action which is absurd but hath its own actions Nor is it the action of the soul for then the body could not be said to live But 't is the act of the soul in the body which being finite and terminated as heat its principal instrument is this is the cause that all living bodies have the terms or bounds of their quantity both as to greatness and smallness but bodies inanimate have not so because they acquire their quantity only by the approximation and apposition of their matter and not by receiving the same inwardly and because they have no organs which require a certain conformation and magnitude which they never exceed II. Of Fasting Upon the second Point it was said That there are many sorts of corporal Fasts not to speak of the spiritual which is abstinence from sin There is one of necessity and the most intolerable of all which made the ancient Poets declaim against Poverty saying that it was to be cast into the sea against the rocks and which made so few Cynicks in respect of so many other Sects of Philosophers Against which evil there is no other remedy but to make that voluntary which cannot be avoided There are fasts of thrift for the Covetous and others of Policy observ'd in many States to good purpose lest the Country be desolated of Cattle and would be should men eat egges and flesh in the beginning of the Spring when Fowls hatch and Beasts engender at which time the flesh of animals is unwholsome because they begin then to enter into heat There is a fast of Health ordain'd by Physitians to such as are full-bodied and abound with ill humours this is the best lik'd of all nothing being undertaken so willingly as for health whereunto moderate fasting greatly conduces as well to preserve it according to the Proverb that Gormandise hath slain more
blemish Cato's reputation by making him appear 46 times in full Senate to justifie himself from the accusations Envy had charg'd upon him made him more famous And the poyson which it made Socrates drink kill'd his body indeed but render'd his memory immortal The truth is if the Greek Proverb hold good which calls a life without envy unhappy Envy seems in some manner necessary to beatitude it self Whence Themistocles told one who would needs flatter him with commendations of his brave actions that he had yet done nothing remarkable since he had no enviers The Fourth said 'T is such an irregular passion that it seems to aim at subverting the establish'd order of nature and making other laws after its own phancy yea so monstrous that 't is not a bare grief for another's good or a hatred of choler or such other passion but a monster compos'd of all vicious passions and consequently the most mischievous and odious of all CONFERENCE LXXIV I. Whence comes trembling in men II. Of Navigation and Longitudes I. Whence comes trembling in men THe correspondence of the great to the little world requir'd that after the tremblings of the earth those should be spoken which happen to men some of which seize but one part of the body as the head lips hands or legs some the whole body with such violence sometimes that Cardan relates of a woman taken with such a trembling that three strong persons could not hold her 'T is a symptom of motion hurt in which the part is otherwise mov'd then it ought being sometimes lifted up and sometimes cast down For in trembling there are two contrary motions One proceeds from the motive faculty endeavouring to lift up the member which is done by retraction of the muscles towards their original which by shortning themselves draw their tail to the head and at the same time what is annex'd thereunto This motive power serves also to retain the elevated member in the posture wherein we would have it continue the abbreviation of the Muscles not suffering it to return to its first situation The other motion is contrary to the will and to that of the motive power the member being depress'd by its own gravity From which contrariety and perpetual war of these two motions arises trembling one of them carrying the part as the will guides it and the other resisting thereunto which is done more speedily then the pulse and with such short intervals that the senses cannot distinguish any middle and makes us doubt whether there be two motions or but one as a ball sometimes returns so suddenly towards him that struck it that the point of its reflexion is not perceiv'd The causes are very different as amongst others the debility of the part and of the animal faculty as in decrepit old men impotent persons and such as are recovering out of long and dangerous diseases or who have fasted long the weakness of the Nerve the instrument of the animal spirits its obstruction contraction or relaxation the coarctation of the Arteries which send the vital spirits to the Brain there to be made animal spirits and proper for motion as in fear which puts the whole body into an involuntary trembling An Ague also do's the same the natural heat which resides in the arterial being carri'd to the relief of the labouring heart and so the outward parts particularly the nerves whose nature is cold and dry becoming refrigerated and less capable of exercising voluntary motion The Second said That the actions of the motive faculty as of all others may be hurt three ways being either abolish'd diminish'd or deprav'd They are abolish'd in a Palsie which is a total privation of voluntary motion They are diminish'd in Lassitude caus'd either by sharp humors within or by tension of the muscles and tendons or by dissipation of the spirits They are deprav'd in trembling convulsion horror and rigor or shivering Convulsion is a contraction of the muscles towards their original caus'd either by repletion or inanition Rigor shaking and concussion of all the muscles of the body accompani'd with coldness and pain is caus'd according to Galen by the reciprocal motion of natural heat and its encounter with cold in the parts which it endeavours to expell or according to some others by any sharp mordicant and troublesome matter which incommoding the muscles and sensitive parts the expulsive faculty attempts to reject by this commotion Horror differs not from Rigor but in degrees this being in the muscles and that only in the skin produc'd by some matter less sharp and in less quantity But trembling being a depravation and perversion of motion cannot be known but by comparison with that which is regular Now that voluntary motion may be rightly perform'd the brain must be of a due temper for supplying animal spirits and the nerves and parts rightly dispos'd Hence the cause of tremblings is either the distemper of the brain or the defect of animal spirits or the defect of animal spirits or the bad disposition of the nerves and parts A fitting temper being the first condition requisite to action every intemperature of the brain but especially the cold is the cause it cannot elaborate spirits enough to move all the parts But this defect of spirits comes not always from such bad temper but also from want of vital spirits which are sent from the heart to the brain by the arteries to serve for matter to the animal spirits These vital spirits are deficient either when they are not generated in the ventricles of the heart through the fault either of matter or of the generative faculty or are carri'd elsewhere then to the brain by reason of their concentration or effusion As in all violent passions these spirits are either concentred in the heart as in fear and grief or diffus'd from the centre to the circumference as in joy and not sent to the brain and in these cases the motive faculty remains weakned and uncapable of well exercising its motions Lastly the nerves being ill dispos'd by some distemper caus'd either by external cold or other internal causes or else being shrunk or stop'd by some gross humors not totally for then there would be no motion at all they cause tremblings which are imperfect motions like those of Porters who endeavouring to move a greater burthen then they are able to carry the weight which draws downwards and the weakness of their faculty which supports it causes in them a motion like to those that tremble The Third said That to these causes Mercury Hellebore Henbane Wine and Women must be added For they who deal with Quick-silver who have super-purgations use stupefactives and things extreamly cold and Venery in excess and Drunkards have all these tremblings according to the diversity of which causes the remedies are also different Gold is an Antidote against Mercury which will adhere to it Repletion against the second Heat Continence and Sobriety against the rest Galen saith that blood
several species of Leprosie according to the humour by adustion whereof that black choler is generated whether blood melancholy yellow choler and salt phlegm The first being less malignant makes red Leprosie and the blood having acquir'd excessive acrimony by adustion amongst other effects corrodes the root of the hair and makes baldness The second caus'd by torrefying of melancholy makes black green or livid Leprosie which is call'd Elephantiasis because it renders the skin rough like that of Elephants The third produced of yellow choler burnt makes yellow Lepers and is call'd Leonine from the terrible aspect of those that are tainted with it or from the lips and forehead which it makes them elevate like Lyons The last caus'd by salt phlegm makes white Lepers The Third said That the material cause of Leprosie being any gross humour and the efficient a vehement heat when both these causes meet in a sufficient degree Leprosie is contracted by the ill habit of the body Hence men are more obnoxious to it then women who have less heat for want of which Eunuchs are also free from it and many have voluntarily made themselves such to avoid it Men of perfect age as between 35 and 48 years hot and dry fall most easily into this disease And of these Southern people more then Northern Whence Alexandria yea all Egypt and Judea were most pester'd with it but especially the latter where even the walls and vessels contracted leprosie Which Interpreters more admire then comprehend and gave occasion to Manetho the Historian who is refuted by Josephus to say that this Leprosie forc'd the Egyptians to drive the Jews out of their Country On the contrary Germany knew it not for a long time nor Italy before Pompey in whose time his Souldiers brought it from Egypt the Kings whereof as Pliny relates were wont to asswage the malignity by an inhumane and abominable remedy a bath of little childrens blood But the Scythians were always free from it as well by reason of the coldness of their climate as the familiar use of milk whose thin and wheyie part hinders the generation of melancholy and the other parts moisten and temper heat 'T is also produc'd by food of gross and glutinous juice as Swines flesh for this cause forbidden to the Jews by the Hemorrhoids stop'd and other suppressions of blood Now 't is not so frequent in these days as of old first because being brought hither by strangers it appear'd upon them and some of their descents but could not long consist with the mildness of our air and so became extinct of it self by the separation of such as were most infected with it as Peaches are poyson in Persia but delicious fruits amongst us Secondly because it being ignominious to be separated from all society the few Lepers that remain'd would not appear unless they were forc'd whilst in the mean time the revenues of Hospitals design'd for their support have been seiz'd by such as favour'd their concealment the better to enjoy the same The Fourth said The decreasing of this disease as well as of other Epidemical diseases is to be attributed to certain Constellations Besides perhaps the ignorance of former times took the Pox for the Leprosie and so not knowing how to cure the Pox so well as at this day it was communicated to more persons The accidents of these two diseases are almost the same both are cur'd with Mercury whose excessive coldness and humidity corrects the heat and dryness of the Leprosie and by its extream tenuity penetrating the more solid parts wherein the Leprosie lies more successfully encounters this atrabilarious venome then Mithridate and Vipers do although much commended by Galen who relates five stories of such as were cur'd therewith but we have experiences to the contrary in these latter ages refrigerating and humecting Medecines having been found more profitable then drying as Vipers are which whether our climate or some other unknown cause occasion the alteration rather increase then diminish this evil Nevertheless what is reported of the means to cure the Leprosie especially if hereditary or inveterate must be understood of a palliative or preservative not of a perfect cure which is difficult in the beginning of this malady when only the bowels are tainted very difficult in its increase when the signs begin to appear outwardly impossible in its State when the members come to be ulcerated and desperate in its declination when they begin to drop off Although Paracelsus by his great work promises to cure not onely men but also all imperfect metals which he termes leprous II. Of the wayes to render a place populous Upon the Second Point it was said All our great designes aim at Eternity and among the means of attaining thereunto Princes have found none more magnificient and correspondent to their grandeur then to build Cities after their own names Such was that of Alexander in the founding of Alexandria of Constantine in that of Constantinople of the Caesars in so many Cities of their names and in our time of the King of Sweden in Gustavousburg of the King of Spain in Philippa of the Duke of Nevers in Charle-ville and of some others But to accomplish this great design 't is to be consider'd that the business is to be done with men who are drawn by as many wayes as they consist of parts to wit Body and Soul And because most men are sensual therefore things relating to corporeal conveniences are most attractive Amongst which regard is principally to be had to the Air as that which we breathe incessantly to meat and drink which are of daily necessity Hence we see few healthful and fertile places desert whereas barren and desert places what ever care be taken alwayes return to their first nature If those conveniencies be wanting in the place they they must at least be near hand and attainable by commerce of Seas and Rivers which also are advantageous for the vent of home-bred commodities But the most necessary condition of all is safety which hath render'd Holland the Adriatick Gulph and almost all Islands populous as it sometimes assembled many out-laws and miserable persons at the first building of Rome the same course being also practis'd by Timoleon to populate Syracuse For Man being naturally a sociable creature the cause of their assembling together was not the casual concourse of atoms as Epicurus feign'd nor the wonder of fire as Vitruvius saith nor their meeting near pits and springs much less Musick Eloquence or Philosophy but onely their natural inclination to preserve themselves and be secure first against wild beasts and then against their enemies who were kept off with walls Yet as a fortress needs a strong bulwark so a frontier Town cannot easily become populous the guarding of it diverting its inhabitants from attending more necessary Arts as Agriculture Manufacture and Trade For most Cities are render'd populous by some Manufactures both buyers and sellers resorting to such places where there
Jeremy Constantine saw S. Peter and S. Paul and according to the opinion of many Samuel appear'd to Saul and foretold him of things which were to befall him though others conceive 't was a corporeal apparition which also is much more certain because souls either appear with their true bodies although this is very rare too yea and unbecoming happy souls to rejoyn themselves to putrifi'd carcases or most commonly assume bodies of air The cause of which apparitions is ascrib'd to the union which is between the soul of the dead person and that of the surviving to whom it appears whether the same proceed from consanguinity or identity of manners great familiarity and friendship which seems to make but one soul of those of two friends so that the soul finding it self in pain either through present or future evils especially when it sees it self oblig'd to the performance of some vow neglected during life God for his own glory the ease of his creature and the conversion of sinners permits it to manifest it self by ways most convenient CONFERENCE LXXX I. Of the Epilepsie or Falling Sickness II. Whether there be any Art of Divination I. Of the Epilepsie or Falling Sickness THe vulgar Maxime is not always true That a disease throughly known is half cur'd For this disease though known to the most ignorant is of very difficult cure and therefore was call'd by antiquity the Herculean disease that is to say unconquerable the Sacred disease because of its dreadful symptoms and Lunatick because those who are born either in the Full or New Moon or during its Eclipse are troubled with this malady which hath great correspondence with the motions of the Planet 't was also call'd Morbus caducus or Falling Sickness by reason that it makes the person fall to the ground and Comitialis because it interrupted Assemblies lastly 't is call'd Epilepsie because it intercepts the functions of the mind and senses 'T is defin'd the cessation of the principal actions and of sense and voluntary motion with convulsion which is not continual but by internals The true and proximate cause of it is either a vapour or an humour pricking the membranes of the brain which endeavouring to discharge the same contracts it self attracts the nerves to it these the muscles and parts into which they are implanted causing hereby those convulsive and violent agitations of the Epilepticks Sneezing and the hickcock have some resemblance of it the latter being caus'd by a sharp vapour sent from the stomack or other place by sympathy to its upper orifice which it goadeth with its acrimony and thereby forces it to contract it self in order to expell the same the former call'd by Avicenna the lesser Epilepsie differing not from the greater saving in duration is also caus'd by some vapours pricking the former part of the brain which contracts it self to expell the same by the nostrils The Second said That the unexpectedness of this malady and the Patient 's quick recovery may justifie the vulgar for thinking that there is something divine in it Since nothing amazes us more then sudden uncomprehended alterations Therefore in Hippocrates days they us'd to make expiations and incantations for this disease which he derides saying that the bad Physitians promoted this false conceit that they might get the more honour for the cure or be more excusable for not effecting the same The Third said That the Epilepsie and Apoplexie differ onely in degree both having the same cause namely abundance of gross humours either phlegmatick or melancholy which if it wholly fills the brains ventricles and makes a total obstruction so that the Animal Spirits the instruments of voluntary motion and sense be obstructed it causes an apoplexie which is a total abolition of sense and motion in the whole body with laesion of the rational faculty The Heart continues its pulse for some time till the consumption of what Animal Spirits were in the Nerves serving to the Muscles for respiration But if the obstruction be not perfect and the crass humour over-loads the ventricles then they contract themselves and all the Nerves which depend upon them whence comes that universal contraction of the limbs as one cover'd in bed with too many clothes pulls up his legs bends and lifts up his knees to have more air and room under the load which presses him The Fourth said That as the brain is the moistest of all the parts so it abounds most in excrements the thinnest of which transpire by the sutures pores but the grosser meeting in great quantity in the brain melt its substance into water which coming to stop the Veins and Arteries hinder the commerce of the spirits whether this pituitous matter be deriv'd from the paternal or maternal geniture or whether the part of seed which makes the brain happen not to be well purg'd in the womb where the rudiments of this malady are first laid or whether the brain purge not it self afterwards sufficiently by its emunctories and the scabs usual to Children Hippocrates saith this malady cannot begin after twenty years of age when the constitution of body is become more hot and dry and many Children are cur'd of it onely by the desiccation caus'd by the alteration of age seasons and manner of dyet The Fifth said That a gross humour cannot be the cause of those quick and violent motions of the Epilepsie nor be collected and dissipated in so short a time as the duration of a Paroxisme Therefore the cause of it must be some biting and very subtile matter for no such gross obstructive matter is found in the brain of those that dye of this malady but onely some traces or signes of some malignant vapour or acrimonious humour as black spots a swarthy frothy liquor an Impostume in the brain some portion of the Meninx putrifi'd corrosion of the bone and such other things evidencing rather the pricking of the brain then stopping of its passages The Sixth said That were the Epilepsie produc'd by obstruction it would follow that as a total one in an Apoplexie abolishes all sense and motion so the incomplete one of the Epilepsie should onely diminish not deprave motion as it doth So that the Epilepsie should be a symptom like the Palsie or Lethargy from which nevertheless 't is wholly different Nor can it be simply the mordacity or malignity of an humour since malignant and pestilential Fevers hot and dry Aliments as spices mustard salt garlick onyons and the lke biting things cause not this Evil. The truth is there is a specifical occult quality of the humours particularly disposing to this disease the Chymists call it a Mercurial Vapour that is an acid penetrating and subtile spirit a Vitriolike Spirit a biting and corrosive salt which makes not men onely but Quailes Dogs Sheep and Goats subject to it And as some things beget this malady by an occult Epileptical quality as Smallage Parsly a goats liver roasted and stinking smells as horn pitch
building without stones morter or other materials Therefore when Art offers to compare with Nature 't is as if a child upon a Gyant 's neck should therefore think it self taller then he whereas it hath no advantage but what it borrows from the Gyant which upholds it The Second said That actions being the rule whereby to measure the excellence of the Agents and being themselves determin'd by their end which alone sets value upon them Nature is therefore more excellent then Art in that it hath a nobler end in its actions and ordinarily attains the same which Art can never do For Nature as the internal principle of motion and rest of that wherein it is produces all substantial forms and is the cause of all generations and natural motions in the continual revolution of which is seen an unparallel'd order illustriously testifying the wisdom of Nature who governs them and who never fails to produce a plant or an animal when the matter is rightly dispos'd Whereas Art is only an external cause giving nothing but shape and outward shew to its works which indeed in some manner imitate those of Nature which is the end of Art but are never so perfect no Painter having ever made a bunch of grapes or a man so well as Nature because he represents only the surface and some few other external accidents but is far from being able to express the essence and substantial forms of these natural bodies which it attempts to imitate Moreover Nature frames all parts of her works together as in the formation of man though grosly and in a small volume and afterwards makes the same augment and move together but Art makes the parts of its work successively the foundation before the walls these before the roof the rough hewing before the last hand and motion excited by artifice is violent yea more in some parts of the Engine then in others The Third said That to doubt whether Art be more powerful then Nature is to doubt whether two be more then one or three then two For Art presupposes Nature perfected And as that is the strongest animal which can bring others under its laws so being Art always subdues Nature it must be the more potent Our nature is inclin'd to evil but the precepts of Divinity yea and of moral Philosophy too have no other aim but to correct its defects and overcome its perverseness both which are so happily effected that not only S. Paul professes I live yet not I but Christ in me but also the most excellent Physiognomist was mistaken in his judgement of Socrates from his aspect Nature leads man to follow his brutish and sensual appetite and to make use of every thing which complies therewith but Art coming to rectifie it civilizes him and teaches him to restrain his concupiscences to fast rather for conscience or health then incur eternal damnation in the other life and diseases in this And experience shews how far Art gets the mastery of Nature when a little man dextrous at his weapons easily overcomes a stronger who hath onely the help of nature The horse dog birds of prey and other animals capable of discipline do every thing which man teaches them much better then they would do of themselves Compare but the discourse of an ignorant with that of a learned person the carriage of a Clown with that of a Courtier the heaviness of a strong Lubber with the dexterity of a practis'd Champion In the Mechanicks a Child with an artificial Screw will lift up a greater burden then two Oxen can carry and these two Oxen will draw a load by the common artifice of Carts which ten other Oxen cannot bear upon their backs An Army of 20000 naked Savages hath been often defeated by 200 men arm'd with Swords and Arquebushes In brief compare the weakness of all things at their beginning and before time has brought them to perfection by a series of new precepts whereof Arts are composed and you will see that Art as much surpasses Nature as Bread doth Acorns or Wheat it self before Art hath fitted it to our use The Fourth said That duration is the measure of every thing 's excellence whence the Proverb teaches us to consider the end Bubbles of water and sope blown into the air look very handsome wait but a little and they are nothing So are all artificial things compar'd to natural As this gave them beginning so it sees them end overcomes and survives them that a thing perishes it hath from art that it lasts more or less it hath from nature as writing engraven in Marble is of longer continuance then that which is trac'd upon sand and yet 't is one and the same writing But sooner or later every thing returns to its first principles and what was borrow'd of nature must be paid back to her again We raisepalaces up to the clouds Nature endures it with some violence their gravity resisting the most it can till at length she seems to yield and to be tam'd by art But inquire news of them in future ages and they will tell you that Nature never rests till she hath return'd that to the ground which was taken out of it and this without Tools or Instruments Art squares trees which were round whence a Spartan Lady ask'd whether trees grew square leave them to the air they become round their corners rotting first of all Physitians observe that simple medicaments as the most natural are the most effectual and such as have least artifice are most active Whence the most expert laugh at that hotch-potch of herbs and other ingredients wherewith quack-salvers fill their receipts acknowledging that the more you have in compounding a medicine the lesse intentions you obtain the same one quality resisting and abating the edge of another And in removing of diseases they hold for a Maxime that 't is Nature alone which do's the cure Moreover the birth of a child is a pure work of Nature and she that leaves her to do the business is the most expert to bring Women to bed In brief all good Crises must be natural every thing that is artificial is directly contrary thereunto What adoptive Son hath so tender an affection to his parents as a natural one or what nurse suckles anothers with so good a heart as her own child which was the reason of the Gardiner to the Philosopher who ask'd him why bad herbs grew better of themselves then others transplanted and cultivated by Art When we would signifie an honest man we say he is of a good nature when a knave that he is full of artifice Men may disguise their manners and inclinations but cannot dissemble Nature a sanguine cholerick or melancholy person alwayes discover their nature through all the artifices and hypocrisies of art Preach to an intemperate ambitious or otherwise tainted with some vice as natural to him as to the lame to halt he will possibly restrain himself for some time but presently
return to his first habit The Fifth said Nature being taken for every thing compounded of matter and form and Art for Humane Wit which applies them to its own use this must be so much more excellent then that as it gives perfection to the same by introduction of an artificial form besides its natural Marble of no price in the mine yet turn'd into the statue of an old woman becomes highly valuable The Dragon in the Tapistry is as agreeable to behold as the natural one would be terrible And even of things profitable a dish of fruits well drawn is more esteem'd then a hundred natural And who prizes not a Table Cabinet or other moveables more then so much wood a glasse then the ashes it is made of 'T were to accuse all Antiquity of error and unprofitably inventing and increasing Arts to prefer the rudenesse and simplicity of Nature before them which teaching us from the birth to defend our selves by arts against all defects of the body therefore tacitely yields them the preheminence The sixth said That the meaness and imperfection of the matter sets off the excellence of the workman when his work borrows all its noblenesse from its form which he gives it and not from its matter Hence God the most perfect of all Agents needed no matter wherewith to make all his works Nothing being a sufficient material object of his Omnipotence Nature a subordinate and lesse perfect Agent then God makes all her works of the First Matter which is not a pure nothing nor yet a perfect Entity but on Entity in power and as Aristotle saith almost nothing But Art can make nothing but by the help of natural and perfect bodies compos'd of matter and form which it onely divides or conjoyns as when the Architect builds a House he joynes many stones pieces of wood and other perfect bodies together and the Statuary pares off the gross pieces of Marble till he brings forth the resemblance of what he would represent Wherefore as much as God is above Nature so much is Nature above Art II. Whether Wine is most to be temper'd in Winter or in Summer Upon the Second Poynt 't was said They who impute most diseases to the use of Wine because the Eastern people who use it not are free or less troubled with maladies will conclude as he did who marri'd a very little Woman as the least Evil that Wine most qualifid is best in case it cannot be wholly let alone But the Question will still remain in which season Winter or Summer it is most to be mix'd Now there being less heat and more humidity in the body during Winter by reason of the outward cold and closing of the pores it seems that Wine should be taken unmixt in this season For being heat consists in a proportion of the qualities that which exceds must be corrected by its contrary and the weak strengthened as they that would walk upright on a rope must turn their counterpoize to the side opposite to that whereunto they incline The Second said That in Summer the Wine should be more temper'd because then the natural heat is least as Caves are cold in Summer and hot in Winter Whence Hippocrates said that the bowels are hotter in Winter and Spring whence people have then better stomacks the capacities being enlarged by the dilatation of heat and sleep likewise longer through the abundance of vapours rising from the blood which is made in greater quantity when the natural is strong then when it is weak Moreover bodies are more healthy in cold weather then in hot which causing great dissipation of heat and spirits the losse cannot be better repair'd then by unmixt Wine whose actual coldness being overcome by our Nature its potential heat is reduc'd into act and fortifies ours adding also its volatile spirits to our spirits as old regiments are recruited by new levies The Third said That the best food being assimilated and least excrementitious as Wine is in all seasons it ought not to be mix'd either in Summer or Winter aqueous Wine making many serous excrements which cause obstructions whereas pure Wine is good in Winter to assist the natural heat assaulted by the outward cold and to digest the crudities commonly generated during this season and in Summer to support the languishing spirits by supplying new matter But if the necessity of a hot distemper require mixture of water I would have it pour'd into the wine two hours before it be drunk that so fermentation may in some measure turn the water into the nature of the wine and the encounter of these two enemies may be rather in a strange Country then in ours The Fourth said 'T was not without mystery that the Poets feign'd Bacchus new come forth out of Jupiter's thigh with an inflam'd countenance to have been deliver'd to the Nymphs to wash him and that the seven Pleiades whose rising denounces rain had the principal charge of him and that the Mythologists represent this God of Wine follow'd by a company of mischievous demons call'd Cabals the chief of which they name Acrat which signifies pure wine hereby intimating the disorders it causes when its fumes are not abated with water Moreover when Amplychion King of Athens had first put water into his wine and every one by his example a Temple was built in the City to Bacchus erect or standing intimating that as mere wine causes reeling so temper'd makes one walk upright The truth is unmix'd wine is always dangerous filling the brain with hot and pungent vapours which water allays and gives a temper to sutable to our natural heat which is mild and gentle whereas these spirits are of themselves igneous as the burning of Aqua-vitae testifies But 't is less hurtful to drink pure wine in Winter then in Summer when the natural heat being igneous and encreas'd by the outward would turn into a distemper by the adventitious heat of wine which on the contrary in Winter counter-checks the outward coldness of the air The Fifth said If we believe the Poet Orpheus who advises to drink unmix'd wine twenty days before the rising of the Dog-star and as many after then wine must not be temper'd in Summer a custom practis'd still in Italy where in the heats of Summers they drink the strongest and most delicious wines without water Moreover people eating less in this hot season should therefore drink the more pure wine as more nourishing Besides that the aqueous crudities of fruits eaten in Summer is corrected by the heat of wine The Sixth said That regard is herein to be had to every one's constitution phlegmatick old men and such as have cold stomacks may drink wine without water as also those that have Fames Canina but the cholerick and young must temper it if they do not wholly abstain yet always having regard to custom and the nature of wines amongst which if we believe the Germans their wine cannot endure water no more then the water
no other discipline but Logick and Geometry in regard of the certainty of their principles which are so clear that they are alike known by all even the most ignorant who need only understand their terms to assent to their truth Such as these are every thing which is said of the Genus is also said of the Species and what is not said of the Genus is not said of the Species which they call Dictum de omni de nulle If to equal things you add equal things the remainder will be equal And if to unequal things you add unequal things the remainder will be unequal For whereas beasts have a natural faculty which is the common sense or estimative faculty whereby they judge of the convenience or inconvenience of objects the first time the same are presented to them Man beyond this natural power enabling him to judge of sensible objects hath a peculiar one which is the Intellectual by means whereof he is said to be every thing in power because it enables him to know every thing and to judge of the truth or falshood of universal things which are Principles And as the eye beholding white or black judges sufficiently what colour it is without seeking reasons thereof elsewhere then within it self so the Intellect discerns the truth of principles by it self without the help of any other faculty yea without the habit of any Science because these principles being before the Science whereof they are principles must be more clear and known then it whence Intelligence is defin'd the habit or knowledge of such first Principles Thus ask a Geometrician why the whole is greater then its part he can give you no other reason but that 't is a principle known of its own nature The Third said That Geometry being the knowledge of eternal truths by infallible principles is most certain And 't is an evidence of its certainty that it neither proposes nor demonstrates why a thing is such but only that it is such As 't is propos'd and demonstrated that in the same segment of a circle all the angles are equal but not why they are so because 't is a truth which comes to our knowledge by certain principles and propositions formerly demonstrated as certain as the principles themselves Hence this truth is demonstrated which nevertheless hath not any cause of its existence as frail and perishing things have no material being abstracted from all matter nor efficient for the agent is not any way consider'd therein nor formal an angle being of its own nature only the inclination of lines nor yet final this being not made to any intention In like manner 't is demonstrated that four numbers or four lines being proportional that is when there is such reason of the first to the second as of the third to the fourth the square of the two extreams is equal to the square of the two middlemost but not why 't is so this question occurring only in dubious things The Fourth said That knowledge being desir'd by all men who for this end are endu'd with an Intellect capable of all sorts of notions it must needs be found in some subjects otherwise nature should have given us a general desire of a thing which is not And since there are causes of every thing there must be a Science of those causes But the multitude of apparent causes is the reason that we are oftentimes ignorant of the right and take one for another the shadow for the body and apparence for truth Which argues not that there is no knowledge but rather few knowing persons For Socrates who said he knew nothing but that he knew nothing and the Pyrrhonians who doubted of every thing had even a knowledge of their ignorance Moreover the exact knowledge men have by the senses of particular things necessarily carries them to that of universals wherein Science consists As he that often experienc'd in divers persons that Sena purg'd their melancholy acquires of himself this general Notion that all Sena purges melancholy And on the contrary he who understands a general proportion in gross may of himself apply the same to all particulars so great a connexion there is between things universal and particular in which the fruit of Science consists The Fifth said Since all knowledge depends upon another prenotion which is what they call principles those which compose the Sciences must also distinguish the same Wherefore Sciences are to be term'd certain or uncertain according as the pre-existent notions whereupon they are founded are certain or not Now amongst those principles some are universal common to all Sciences as those of Metaphysicks in all things either the affirmative or the negative is true that which is not hath no propriety Besides which 't is necessary to have particular one 's proper to the Science which are true first immediate causes of the Conclusion preceding and more known then it The six conditions requisite to principles in order to a demonstration They must be true not false for that which is false exists not that which exists not cannot be a cause of that which exists nor consequently a false principle be the cause of a true demonstration First that is not proveable by others immediate so enjoyn'd with the attribute that there is nothing between them two to joyn them more neerly causes of the conclusion that is this principle must be the necessary cause of this truth and consequently precede and be more known then it As taking this for a principle that the interposition of an opake body between light and a body illuminated causes a shadow upon this body we conclude that as often as the earth is found interpos'd between the Sun which is the light and the Moon which is the body illuminated it will necessarily come to pass that there will be a shadow upon the body of the Moon which is its Eclipse The Sixth said 'T was the errour of Socrates that observing our Sciences depending on other preceding notions he apprehended that we learned nothing new but that Science was nothing but the remembrance of what the soul formerly knew before its being inclos'd in this body not considering that the knowledge of principles and notions is confus'd and not distinct and that the knowledge of them in gross is not sufficient to denominate a person knowing but that we must first draw universal conclusions from them then apply the same to particulars without which application those principles would be unprofitable and not produce any Science Thus the Divine applies this general principle that that which is contrary to the Law of God is evil to particular conclusions as to murder theft and perjury The Physitian who holds for a Principle that Contraries are cur'd by their Contraries draws these other conclusions from it that a cold distemper is cur'd by hot medicaments a hot by refrigerating obstruction by openers which he applies again to particular subjects The States-man from this general Principle
sought onely in the continuance of the Suns action during the Spring and half the Summer whereby the Air is hotter then when he was neerer us So 't is hotter at two a clock in the afternoon then at ten in the morning although the Sun be at the same distance yea then at noon although he be then nearest of all and we read that an Ambassador of Presbyter John dy'd with heat as he landed at Lisbone although the heat be not so great there as in his Country but of louger continuance If it rains sometimes during the said season 't is by reason of too great attraction of Vapours by the heat of the Sun as is seen in the torrid Zone where when the Sun is in the greatest Apogaeum it rains continually The Second said That the Longitude of the Dog-star call'd by the Arabians Athabor is at this day about the 9. degr of Cancer and its meridional latitude 39. degr and a half Now the Ancients observing the greatest heat of the whole year to be commonly when the Sun is at the end of Cancer and beginning of Leo and at the same the Dog-star to rise with the Sun which the Astronomers call the Cosmical Rising nam'd those dayes Dog-dayes which begin with us about the two and twentieth of July whether they believ'd the cause of this heat to be that star assisting the Sun or else according to their order of distinguishing seasons before years and moneths were regulated by the course of the Sun they denoted those dayes by the rising of this star conceiving that it did not change place any more then the other stars of the Firmament As not onely the Poets but also Hippocrates distinguishes the four Seasons of the year by the rising and setting of the Pleiades and Arcturus And thus the name of the day hath remain'd to these dayes although the star be not in the same place following Ages observing that besides the eight motions admitted by the Ancients in the Heavens namely of the seven Planets and the First Mover there 's another peculiar to the starry Heaven which is finish'd according to some in 36000 years whereby it comes to pass that the Dog-star is no longer in the same place where it was at the first observation of these Dog-dayes For 't is about two thousand years since this star arose exactly with the Sun in the dayes which we call Canicular the heat whereof hath alwayes continu'd and yet the star hath pass'd forward and at this day rises not with the Sun till about the eighth of August when the Dog-dayes and strength of heat begins to expire Since therefore the effect continues and the pretended cause exists not at that time as the Astronomical Tables justifie it follows that it is not the cause of that effect Wherefore some have conceiv'd that the star which made the Dog-dayes was another star in the little Dog call'd Procyon But this Procyon did not rise with the Sun in the dayes of the Ancients till about the beginning of July which is three weeks before the Dog-dayes which consequently cannot be attributed to the fix'd stars by reason of their particular motion which causes them to vary situation the Dog-star by its proper motion proceeding 52. min. every year which make about 1. degr in 70. years 3. degr in 200. years and one sign in 2000. Besides if the stars had any force the same would be sensible at their coming to the meridian of the place with the Sun then when they rise with him because their greatest strength is when they are under the meridian being then in their greatest elevation above the Horizon and nearest the Zenith and consequently most active as experience shews in the Sun Therefore the true cause of the heat of Dog-dayes is because the Sun being towards the end of Cancer and the beginning of Leo we have more causes concurring together to produce heat then in any other season of the year namely the elevation of the Sun above the horizon the length of the days and shortness of the nights For then the dayes are not sensibly diminish'd nor the nights sensibly encreas'd the Sun hath not yet suffer'd any considerable change in his altitude above the Horizon but above all the preparation of the earth which hath been heated during the three moneths of the Spring and a moneth and half of the Summer whereby all the aqueous humidity which refrigerates is dissipated and the heat so far impacted into the earth that the night it self is less cold then in any other season The Fourth said As 't is absurd to seek in the stars for causes of effects when we see them manifest in the qualities of inferior bodies and the various concourse of so many different natural causes So 't is stupidity to deny all virtue to those great superior orbs rejecting wise Antiquity and all the most learned judiciary Astrologers who ascribe a particular virtue to each star as to the Dog-star to heat and scorch the Air. Moreover the Divine Hippocrates lib. de Affect inter Sect. 5. affirms that the disease call'd Typhos happens commonly in Summer and in these Dog-dayes because it hath a power to stir the choler through the whole Body And in his book De Aere locis aquis he adds that the rising of the stars is diligently to be observ'd especially that of the Dog-star and some few others at which times diseases turn into other kinds for which reason he saith Aph. 5. Sect. 4. That purging is dangerous when the Dog-star rises and some while before The Fifth said That all purging medicaments being hot t is no wonder if they are carefully to be manag'd during very hot weather in which there is a great dissipation of the spirits and strength so that our Bodies being then languid cannot be mov'd and agitated without danger Not that the Dog-star contributes any thing thereunto but onely the heat of the season caus'd by the Sun which attracting from the centre to the circumference and purging from the circumference to the centre there are made two contrary motions enemies to Nature which is the cause that many fall then into fevers and fainting fits II. Of the Mechanicks Upon the Second Point 't was said That as the object of the Mathematicks is two-fold either intellectual or sensible so there are two sorts of Mathematicks Some consider their object simply and abstracted from all kind of matter namely Geometry and Arithmetick others consider it as conjoyn'd to some matter and they are six Astrology Perspective Geodaesie Canonick or Musick the Logistick and the Mechanick Art which is nothing less then what its name imports being otherwise the most admirable of all because it communicates motion which is the most exquisite effect of Nature 'T is divided into Organical which composes all instruments and engines of war sordid which makes utensils necessary to the uses of life and miraculous which performs strange and extraordinary things 'T is this
or triple The Second said That every thing that is mortal and corruptible is such in that it hath in it self some cause of this corruption All mortal bodies being compos'd of contrary ingredients have in themselves the principle of corruption from which as well simple bodies as the Elements and Heavens as Spirits and separate intelligences are free because a thing simple in its own nature cannot act upon it self by a destructive action though even those Spirits have but an arbitrary existence from their first cause on whom they depend But in the first sence and of their own nature they are absolutely incorruptible for were they corruptible then must some new substance be generated out of that which is corrupted which is absurd because they are simple and free from composition and consequently from corruption Now were reasonable Souls which are part of man who is compounded of matter and form again compounded of matter and form there would be a progression to infinity in causes which is contrary to natural reason Moreover nothing is corrupted but by its contrary and therefore that which hath no contrary is free from corruption But such is the rational soul which is so far from having any contrary that the most contrary things in Nature as habits and their privations being receiv'd in the Understanding are no longer opposites or enemies but friends and of the same nature whence the reason of contraries is alike and there is but one Science of them The Third said That such as a thing is such is its action A corporeal and material substance cannot produce an action which is not corporeal and an immaterial action owns no other principle but what is immaterial and incorruptible Hence the same reasons which prove the souls of brutes mortal because their operations exceed not the bounds of the body and tend onely to self-preservation and sensible good conclude also though by a contrary sense for the immortality of the rational soul whose operations are spiritual and abstracted from the body For nutrition concoction assimilation sense motion and other such actions being corporeal because terminated upon sensible and corporeal objects must consequently be produc'd by a faculty of the same nature corporeal and material But the reasonable soul besides those actions which are common to it with those of beasts hath some peculiar and much more sublime as by the Intellect to understand eternal truths to affirm deny suspend its judgement compare things together abstract them from matter time place and all other sensible accidents by the will to love and embrace vertue in spight of the contrary inclinations of the sensitive appetite to do good actions though difficult to avoid the evil which flatters the senses and the like which actions being above the body and material objects cannot be produc'd but by an immaterial and incorruptible substance such as the reasonable soul is Moreover since the soul can know all sorts of bodies it must consequently be exempt from all corporeal entity as the tongue to judge aright of sapours must have none and the eye to discern colours well The Fourth said That Nature which makes nothing in vain hath imprinted in every thing a desire of its end whereof it is capable as appears by induction of all created Beings Now the greatest desire of man is immortality whereunto he directs all his actions and intentions and therefore he must be capable of it But since he cannot accomplish this end in this life as all other things do it must be in another without which not only good men would be more unhappy then wicked but in general the condition of men would be worse then that of beasts if after having endur'd so many infelicities which brutes experience not the haven of our miseries were the annihilation of the noblest part of our selves Yea if the soul could not subsist without the body its supream good should be in this life and in the pleasures of the body and its chiefest misery in afflictions and the exercises of vertue which is absurd For whereas 't is commonly objected that the soul cannot exercise its noblest functions but by help of corporeal organs rightly dispos'd and that when it is separated from those organs it can act no longer and consequently shall exist no more action and subsistence being convertible this is to take that for granted which is in controversie namely that the soul cannot act without the organs of the body when it is separated from the same since it operates sometimes more perfectly when 't is freest from the senses as in Extasies burning Fevers in the night time and in old age The Fifth said As in Architecture the principal piece of a building is the Foundation so the most necessary of a Science is to lay good Principles without which first establish'd all our Sciences are but conjectures and our knowledge but opinion Now in order to judge whether the souls immortality be demonstrable by natural reasons 't is to be enquir'd whether we can find the principles of this truth whose terms being known may be naturally clear and granted by all The most ordinary are these 1. Every thing which is spiritual is incorruptible 2. That which is material is mortal 3. That which is immaterial is immortal 4. That which God will preserve eternally is immortal 5. A thing acts inasmuch as it exists and some other principles by which this so important verity seems but ill supported For the first is not absolutely true since habits of grace and natural habits which are spiritual are annihilated and corrupted those by sin these by intermission of the actions which produc'd them Then for the second 't is notoriously false since not only the forms of the Elements which are material and the Elements themselves consider'd according to their whole extent but also the first matter are incorruptible and eternal and according to the opinion of many Doctors of the Church 't is not an article of faith that the Angels are incorporeal although it be de fide that they are immortal to say nothing of igneous aerious demons and other corporeal genii of the Platonists As for the third the actions of the understanding and the will are immaterial and nevertheless perish as soon as they are conceiv'd and the intentional species are not incorruptible though not compos'd either of matter or form on the contrary the Heavens which are so compos'd are yet incorruptible Whereby it appears that immortality depends on something else As for the fourth 't is as difficult to prove that God will eternally preserve reasonable souls as that they are immortal And for the last 't is certain that many things act above their reach and the condition of their nature since that which exists not as the end nevertheless acts by exciting the efficient cause motion begets heat which it self hath not and light a corporeal quality is mov'd in an instant which is the property of incorporeal substances as also
likewise had their Magi the Egyptians their Priests the Chaldeans and Babylonians their Astrologers and Sooth-sayers the Gaules their Druyds and Bards But the Greeks had more plenty and variety then any Their ancientest Philosophy was that of Musaeus Linus Orpheus Hesiod Homer who cover'd the Science of natural and supernatural things under the veil of Poetry and Fiction till the time of Pherecydes the master of Pythagoras who first writ the same in Prose Their Philosophers may be distinguish'd according to the diversity of subjects whereof they treat whence they who amuz'd themselves about ratiocination were nam'd Logicians the first of whom was Zeno. They who contemplated Nature Naturalists the first of whom was Thales they who soar'd to supernatural speculations Metaphysitians wherein Aristotle excell'd those who regulated manners Moralists of whom Socrates was the principal who was the son of a Sculptor and a Midwise But their principal division is of their different Sects which though in great number may be reduc'd to these following I. The Academick so called of the place where 't was taught so famous that all places destinated to instruction in Liberal Sciences retain the same name at this day 'T was divided into three namely the old Academy whereof Socrates and Plato were authors the middle which ow'd its institution to Archesilaus author of the famous Epoche or suspension of judgement concerning all things whom for that reason Tertullian calls Master of Ignorance and the new founded by Carneades and Lacides who held that there is something true but 't was incomprehensible which was almost the same Sect with the Scepticks and Pyrrhoneans II. The Cyrenaick introduc'd by Aristippus the Cyrenian disciple of Socrates who first took money for teaching others and held it as one of his principal maximes not to refuse any pleasure which presented it self to him yet not to seek it III. The Magarian establish'd by Euclides of Magara which proceeded by interrogations IV. The Cynick founded by Antisthenes Master to Diogenes and Menippus V. The Stoick whereof Zeno Cyttiensis Auditor of Crates the Cynick was author VI. The Epicurean of Epicurus the Athenian who conceiv'd that every thing was made by chance and that the chief good consisted in pleasure some say of the body others of the mind VII The Peripatetick instituted by Aristotle 'T would be endless to relate the extravagances of all particular persons But I conceive that of the Cynicks was the most dishonest that of the Stoicks most majestical that of the Epicureans most blameable that of Aristotle most honourable that of the Academicks most safe that of the Pyrrhoneans or Scepticks the most easie For as 't is not very creditable so nothing is easier when any thing is ask'd of us then to say that we are incertain of it instead of answering with certainty or else to say that we know nothing of it since to know our ignorance of a thing is not to be wholly ignorant of it The Third said That the Sect of the Scepticks had more followers then any other doubters being incomparably more numerous then Doctors and is the more likely to be true For compare a Gorgias Leontinus or other Sophister of old time or one of the most vers'd in Philosophy in this age who glory of knowing all and of resolving all questions propounded with a Pyrrhonean the first will torture his wit into a thousand postures to feigen and perswade to the hearers what himself knows not and by distinctions cast dust in their eyes as the Cuttle-fish vomits Ink to soil the water when it finds it self caught On the contrary the Sceptick will freely confess the debt and whether you convince him or not will always shew that he has reason to doubt Nevertheless though this Sect be the easiest 't is not in every thing the truest For as 't is temerity and intolerable arrogance to pronounce sentence confidently upon things which are hid to us and whereof we have not any certain knowledge as the quadrature of the circle the duplication of the cube the perpetual motion the Philosophers Stone so 't is too gross stupidity to doubt of the existence of things to judge whereof we need no other help but perfect senses as that it is this day when the Sun shines that the fire burns and that the whole is greater then its parts The Fourth said That Philosophy being the desire of Wisdom or rather Wisdom it self which is nothing else but a store of all the virtues Intellectual and Moral that is the perfectest Philophy which renders those addicted to it most sure in their knowledge and inclin'd to virtue And because there was never sect but had some defect neither in the theory or the practice the best of all is not to be any but to imitate the Bee and gather what is good of each sort without espousing it which was the way of Potamon of Alexandria who as Diogenes Laertius records founded a Sect call'd Elective which allow'd every one to choose what was best in all Philosophies 'T is also the way that Aristotle held in all his Philosophy especially in his Physicks and Politicks which are nothing but a collection of opinions of the Ancients amongst whom he hath often taken whole pages out of Hippocrates though he name him not Nor are we more oblig'd to embrace Aristotle's Philosophy then he did that of his Predecessors it being free for us to frame one out of his precepts those of Raimond Lully Ramus and all others The Fifth said That amongst all sects the most excellent as also the most severe is that of the Stoicks whom Seneca ranks as much above other Philosophers as men above women Their manner of discoursing and arguing was so exquisite that if the Gods said one would reason with men they would make use of the Logick of Chrysippus the Stoick Their Physicks treated partly of bodies partly of incorporeal Beings Bodies according to them are either principles or elements which are ours Their principles are two God and Matter which are the same with the Unity and Binary of Pythagoras the fire and water of Thales They call God the cause and reason of all things and say that he is fire not the common and elementary but that which gives all things their being life and motion And they believ'd that there is one God supremely good bountiful and provident but that he is single in his essence herein following Pythagoras who said that God is not so much one as Unity it self Seneca saith that he is all that thou seest all intire in every part of the world which he sustaines by his power Briefly they conclude their natural knowledge of God as the sovereign cause by his Providence by Destiny which he hath establish'd in all things and by the Genii Heroes and Lares whom they constitute Angels and Ministers of this Supreme Providence The Second Principle Matter they make coeternal to God grounding their doctrine upon the Maxime of Democritus that as
so And therefore there are more fools then wise happy For the latter discerning the meaness and vanity of the goods of the world account it no happiness to possess them but strain their wits to find others more solid which they will never find in this world whereas the former live contented and happy in the quiet enjoyment of their present goods beyond which they wish no others Moreover our happiness and contentment depends upon our selves that is upon our own imagination as appears in the Hospitals of fools who are so far from resenting the horror and misery wherein they really are that on the contrary they flatter themselves with their agreeable phancies of being Kings Emperors and very gods from which they take more pleasure then they give to others As also in that Athenian who imagining all the ships in the Piraean Haven to be his rejoyc'd for their return and su'd his friends at Law for curing him of this agreeable folly In fine according to the meer sentiments of nature the people of the world addicting themselves to all sorts of pleasures are more happy then those who deny the same to themselves in obedience to the counsels of the Gospel and yet in the judgement of God who is the rule of true wisdom these are wise and the other fools Lastly the Law is favorable to fools in the perpetration of great crimes their defect of will being their security For which reason we call them Innocents The Third said This Question is the harder to be determin'd because there is no judge but is a party But if we refer our selves to the wise as it belongs to them to determine things they will judge it to their own advantage And indeed to place felicity of the mind in the total alienation of the mind or in the several degrees of the same is no less preposterous then to place the pleasure of the body in pain or diseases For man's felicity or chief good consists not in opinion otherwise it were not true but only imaginary and so man alone amongst all the creatures could not be truly happy But this beatitude of man consists in his end this end is his action the action of man as man is that which renders him like to God by contemplation and vertue the two most perfect operations of the understanding and the will proceeding from principles to conclusions in the theory and from the means to the end in the practice of moral vertues which are not without prudence and reason because they consist in mediocrity which cannot be understood but by the comparison of the two extreams which is an action of the understanding Since therefore folly is a Laesion of the rational faculty whether this Reason be abolish'd deprav'd or diminish'd which are the several degrees of folly fools cannot be happy because they cannot live according to right reason in which the essence of this life's felicity consists As they are exempt from vices so they are incapable of vertues And if it be true that no man is happy but he that is contented and that contentment consists in the satisfaction we have in the enjoyment of some good which gives us rest fools cannot be happy since satisfaction of mind proceeds from its reflexion upon the excellence or goodnes of the thing which we possess Now reflexion is a most perfect act of the Intellect which returns upon its objects and it self So that what Civilians say of slaves that they cannot be happy in this world because they are not their own nor counted for any thing but reputed in the number of the dead the same may with much more reason be affirm'd of fools CONFERENCE XCII I. Which is most healthful moisture or dryness II. Which is to be preferr'd the contemplative life or the active I. Which is most healthful moisture or dryness THe Philosopher Thales had reason in affirming water to be the principle of all things whether he had learn'd out of the books of Moses that in the beginning the Spirit of God mov'd upon the face of the waters and so the water appear'd first of the Elements or else had observ'd in nature that no sublunary forms can subsist without moisture which Chymistry teaches us to extract out of the most acid bodies which neither can subsist without humidity tying and uniting their parts otherwise likely to fall into dust as it also serves to all generations those of Plants and Animals beginning always by humidity which is the cause why the Sea is more fruitful in Fish which likewise are more sound then the earth in its Animals of less bulk then the Marine For humidity is the food of their natural heat it also causes Leaves Flowers and Fruits to grow forth in Plants upon the earth and in the entrals thereof it forms Minerals the noblest of which are the most ductile and fusible which is a sign of their abundant humidity as the dryest and most earthy are the worst The dews of Heaven fertilize the earth whence God threatens his people to give them a heaven of brass and an earth of iron and when he promises great blessings he saith he will give dew in abundance which also was the blessing which Isaac gave his son Esau. The inundation of Nilus fattens the possessions of Egypt The Spring the most healthful and agreeable of all Seasons is moist Autumn on the contrary is the producer of diseases by reason of its drynesse Pearls are generated in the humidity of the Sea wherein also Venus was born Moisture is also the cause of plumpness and beauty which is never found in a lean face and a dry body and it hath so great an influence in our nature that we call a good one a good or pleasing humour The Moon governs all things by moisture upon which she hath a particular influence and the Planets are more benigne in moist Signs then in dry amongst which that of Virgo spoils the earth of all its beauties and of the Planets Mars and Saturn are the destroyers of nature by their drynesse In sine Humidity renders the Seasons Winds Places Ages more agreeable and Women more beautiful then Men. As Children who abound in humidity are more agreeable then dry old men And there 's no person but had rather live in a climate temper'd with humidity as between 40 and 50 degrees then in the sands and desarts of Libia more proper for the generation of Monsters then the habitation of men The Second said Although dry weather being the fairest and pleasantest hath more patrons then moist yet 't is more unhealthy The temperate Zones are pluvious and that Autumn which is commonly rainey is yet most unhealthy this proceeds from the inequality of its temperature and some other extraneous causes as the abundance of fruits which fill our bodies with crudities The Spring whose temperature is hot and moist is according to Hippocrates most healthy not subject to great diseases the matter whereof is evacuated
in the temperate zones a thousand leagues or more on either side and this will be the sole Eclipse for this half year If the New Moon be made within ten degrees before the Dragon's head there will be onely this Eclipse in this half year which which will be total sometimes in the torrid zone sometimes in the southern temperate zone and partial a thousand leagues or more every way The like will happen if the New Moon be made within ten degrees after the Dragon's head but a total Eclipse will be seen in the torrid zone or else in northern temperate But if in the same half year the New Moon be made between ten and twenty degrees before the head there will be an Eclipse in the cold zone and at the extremity of the temperate southern zone But then the New Moon immediately following will be made between ten and twenty degrees after the head and there will be another Eclipse seen in the frigid zone and at the extremity of the northern temperate zone which two Eclipses most commonly are but partial The same must be said of the other half year in which the Sun passes by the Dragons tail saving that the parts which precede the taile regard the northern part of the Earth and those which follow the southern which happens quite contrary at the head Which we must observe is diametrically opposite to the taile and that they remain not alwayes in the same place but move round the Heaven regularly in about nineteen years contrary to the order of the signes from Aries to Pisces and from thence to Aquarius backwards As for the Eclipse of the Moon we must consider the shadow of the Earth which is cast into the Ecliptick in the part opposite to the Sun and because the same is 400000. leagues long it follows that it crosses the Heaven of the Moon and beyond so that although it be diminish'd at the Heaven of the Moon yet in that place it hath near one degree a half diametre the Moon not having much more then one degree And consequently if the Moon be at the Full either in the head or the taile of the Dragon or else in thirty degrees before or after the Moon will pass into the shadow of the Earth and be either wholly eclips'd or in part according as she shall enter wholly into the perfect shadow For here the imperfect shadow is not considerable the Moon not being eclips'd so long as she receives the rayes of any part of the Sun whence it follows that the Moon naturally loses her light but not the Sun which the inposition of the Moon onely keeps from our Eyes that the Eclipse of the Moon is seen at the same time by all those who can see it And that there can be but two in one year namely one in every six moneths sometimes but one in a year and sometimes none at all namely when the Full Moon happens between thirteen and seventeen degrees before or after the head or the taile of the Dragon II. Whether all Sciences may be profitably reduc'd to one Upon the Second Point it was said That the desire of knowing is very charming but mans life is too short to satisfie the same unless the great number of Sciences be reduc'd into one their multitude requiring a volumn to contain their names alone and this with their length being the principal causes of the little fruit gather'd from them and the distaste which they beget The way of abridgment would be to retrench out of each all matters unprofitable or not pertaining to the Science as are most Metaphysical Questions which are treated of in Logick Natural in Medicine Moral Natural and Juridical in Divinity to avoid repetitions And thus the fifth and sixth Books of Euclid might be reduc'd into one since in the latter he demonstrates by number what before he had demonstrated by lines yea the 117 Propositions of his tenth Book might be demonstrated in another order and compris'd in less then thirty as the five following Books the three of Candalus the Sphericks of Theodosius the Conicks of Apollonius the Principles of Archimedes and others which make above 500 Propositions might be reduc'd profitably to less then a hundred But above all 't would be requisite to be careful of laying down good Principles and teaching these Sciences with order and for this purpose to retrench all unprofitable Books whose numerousness causes confusion and is now more hurtful then their scarcity was heretofore according to Justinian's example who reduc'd all the Law-books of his time into two Volumns the Digests and the Code and that of the Jews who compris'd all things that can be known in one single Science call'd Cabbala as the Druids did their Disciplines under certain Maximes and Aphorisms and Lullie's Art teaches to know and speak of all things which might be done if instead of spending the fittest time of our Age as we do unprofitably in learning to speak Latine and Greek we employ'd it by the example of the Ancients upon the Mathematicks History and all Sciences depending more upon memory and phancy then solidity of Judgment which might afterwards be form'd in a short time by Logick in order to its being exercis'd in the knowledg of things natural supernatural and moral which might easily be obtain'd in less then five years if all superfluities were retrench'd The Second said Because the possibility of a thing must first be understood before the means of attaining it sought 't is requisite first to agree whether all Sciences are reducible into one before the ways to do it be inquir'd And although at first sight it seem possible because they presuppose one another and there is such a connection in their principles that some depend upon the demonstration of others yet I conceive this re-union of all into one would seem rather a monster or a thing like the confusion and disorder of the ancient Chaos then a true and legitimate Discipline For 't is easier to destroy the present method then to establish a better Moreover how is this union possible since the foundations and principles of Sciences are controverted by the Masters who profess them For setting aside those indemonstrable principles which are very few and need only be heard that they may be granted and may be learn'd in less then an hour if we make an induction through all the Sciences we shall find nothing certain in them Has Morality whose chief object is Beatitude found one sole point wherein to establish it Are not part of Aristotle's opinions overthrown by Galen who on the other side is counter-check'd by Paracelsus and all the Chymists who pretend to cure diseases by their likes as the former doth by their contraries Law being founded upon the instability of humane will hath as little certainty And Divinity it self which is the Science of Verities is divided by the Sects of the Nominals of Scotus and Thomas not to speak of the Heresies which
never put into the same subject an internal and radical principal of two contrary desires as that of Man is to that of Woman the one consisting in action the other in passion the one in giving the other in receiving they cannot belong to one single individual which should also be both Agent and Patient contrary to the common Axiom founded upon the first Principle that a thing cannot be and not be at the same time Moreover the qualities of the Genitures being contrary that of the Woman cold and moist and that of the Man hot and dry they cannot meet in the same subject in so excellent a degree as is requir'd to generation For the strength divided is never so vigorous as united especially when its subjects are different No Hermaphrodites ever us'd both sexes perfectly but at least one of them weakly and abusively and consequently they are justly punish'd by the Laws For were both parts equally fit for Generation 't were contrary to policy to hinder them from using the same propagations being the chief Nerves of a State But these people are oblig'd to make choice of one Sex that by this election it may be konwn which they exercise best and may be prohibited the abuse of the other The Third said There 's nothing in Nature so disunited but is rejoyn'd by some medium As there are Spirits apart and Bodies apart so there are animated Bodies consisting of both Amongst beasts Leopards Mules Doggs and many others partake of two different Natures the Bat is between a beast and a bird as Frogs Ducks and other amphibious creatures partly Fish and partly Terrestial Animals The Bonaretz is a plant and an animal the Mushrome is between earth and a plant So since there is Man and Woman there may also be some nature containing both As to the cause of them besides nature's general inclination to reunite different things it seems that the same which produces monsters produces also Hermaprodites especially when the matter is more then needs a single Man or Woman and too little for two Nature herein imitating a Founder who casting his metal in a mould if there be any over-plus it sticks to the Piece which he intended to form Unless you had rather say that if both the seeds be of equal power and neither predominant over the other the Formative Virtue then produces both sexes which it would have distinguish'd into two Twins had there been matter sufficient for two Twins Whereunto also the Imagination of the Mother may also contribute For since some have been born with Virilities sticking at the end of their Nose and other places of the Countenance Nature seems less extravagant when she places them in their true situation there being no likelyhood in the Astrologers account that the conjunction of Mercury and Venus in the eight house which they assign to births is the cause hereof The Fourth said That Hermaphrodites being of those rare and extraordinary effects which fall no more under Law then under Reason 't is very difficult to assign the true natural causes of them Yea if there be nothing less known then forms and their original even when Nature acts regularly we cannot but be more at a loss in the combinations of forms and species and coupling of sexes which are deviations from the rule of Nature Hermaphrodites who have both sexes are of four sorts for they have Virilities in the ordinary place and muliebrities either in the perinaeum or the scrotum or else the feminine parts being in their right place the masculine appear above them as is seen many times in Goats or lastly the Virilities lying hid in the middle of the other at length come forth as ha's hapned to many Girls and Women turn'd into Men as to Marie Germain by the relation of Montagne to Arescon a Native of Argos who was sirnam'd Arescusa according to Martianus And Hippocrates affirms in 6. Epid. that a Woman nam'd Phaetusa who after she had had Children by her Husband Pytheus the Abderite this her Husband being long absent from her she came to have a beard and the other badges of virility The same he also testifies to have hapned to Namysia the wife of Gorippus in the Isle of Thasus Of which effects we shall easily find the reason if we say with Galen that Woman is an imperfect Animal and a fragment of Mankind and so 't will be no wonder to see a Woman become a Man then to see all other things acquire the perfection due to their Nature which they ought to attain lest their inclination thereunto be in vain Moreover 't is certain that a Woman desires a Man as Matter doth Form Power Act Imperfection Perfection Deformity Beauty in a word the Female the Male Nature affording us many examples of these changes of sexes and metamorphoses So Metals and Elements are turn'd one into another Wheat into Cockle Rye into Wheat Barley into Oats Origanum into Wild Thyme Sisymbrium into Mint Which caus'd Anaxagoras to say That every thing is in every thing According to which principle the Male is actually in his Female and Hermaphrodites are no more saving 't is more conspicuous So that the Ancients left us some truths under the figures of a god Lunus and the Moon and of a bearded Venus to whom the Dames of Athens sacrific'd in mens clothes The Fifth said That the transmutation of sexes is impossible by reason of the diversity of the Genitories in Men and Women which is greater then is here fit to be display'd But those Maidens who have been thought to change their Sex were Hermaphrodites who retain'd the marks of the Feminine sex onely till a certain age as that of Puberty when the increased heat driving the Virilities forth did the same thing as it doth in Children whom it enables to speak at a certain age Unless you will say that the Clitoris caus'd the mistake by its resemblance as it happens in that symptome call'd by Aegineta Cereosis or Cauda which makes Tribades pass for Hermaprodites The change of Men into Women not like that of Nero and Sardanapalus but of Tiresias mention'd by the Poets is more impossible unlesse they suppos'd that some causes destroying the heat of the Genital parts and weakning the strength the Virilities came to wither and retire inwards as the Umbilical vessels do after the faetus is born and that Nature conform'd to the cold temper superven'd in the whole body FINIS Ludus Literarius Ludi-Magistri Nihil est ex omni parte beatum Jupiter est quodcunque vides quodcunque movetur Lucan Id quod inserius est sicut illud quod est superius You may see the figure of these Parhelij in Des Cartes Meteors Splen ridere facit Mundus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quasi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ornatus Eclesiasticus Sign Weeping Oderint dum mutuant * Guy fig. Misletoe
chastisement and blame ought to follow the Offenders This being done then onely when the precepts which were necessary to his education shall have taken such deep root in his Mind as not to be stifled by the multitude of others My Method proceeds to furnish him with those of the Liberal Sciences But with this order again that for the same reason the Rules be not confounded to him with Exceptions but that these latter be then onely taught him after he ha's well comprehended the former For conclusion there was an overture of a Way to teach by Playing from the A B C to the sublimest Sciences The Proposers reason was that the best Method of Sciences is that which takes away Difficulties the principal of which is The tediousness of Study That there is nothing less tedious then Play for the sake of which both great and small oftentimes lose their rest and food That 't was the intention of the first Authors that Children should learn as it were playing instead of the great rigors which cause them to study against their inclination with the loss of time and other inconveniences observ'd therein That hence the Place of Learning retains still in Latine the name of the Play of Letters and the Regents Masters of the Play Then he desired of the Company of Commissioners to receive their Judgement upon the Book which he had made upon this Subject and the same was deliver'd into their hands for them to make their report thereof that day seven night After which all were desired that they would please to report there at the following Conferences the Inventions which they conceiv'd likely to profit the publick with assurance that the honour and benefit thereof should be secur'd to themselves and so the Company was dismiss'd CONFERENCE II. I. Of Principles II. Of the End of all Things I. Of Principles THese five several acceptions of Principle were first considered I. As it is taken for a Cause especially the Efficient even that of all Things and which hath no Beginning namely God who also being the End of all is upon that account called Alpha and Omega II. For the beginning of quantity as a point is the beginning of a Line III. For the beginning of some Action as the first step is the beginning of the race IV. For that which is not made of it self nor any other but of which all things are made V. For that of which a thing is made is compos'd and is known Which definition comprehendeth the Principles of Generation Composition and Cognition For according to the Order of Nature a thing is made before it is and it is before it is known The Second said That the Principles of Entity and Cognition are the same For in that they constitute the thing they are called the Principles of Entity and inasmuch as Conclusions are drawn from them they are called Principles of Cognition Nevertheless deriving their original the one from the other As from this Principle of Cognition Nothing is made out of nothing it is concluded That then there must be a First Matter The Third said That that distinction of the Three Principles of Generation viz. Privation Matter and Form whereof the first and the last are contraries two onely of Composition viz. the two last do's not signifie that there are three Principles of the thing which is made Seeing that in the instant that a thing is made to be making fieri and to be made factum esse are the same Since then the thing made hath but two Principles that which is in making hath no more Privation being but a Condition requisite to Generation as the Agent the End and some other External Principles are The Fourth said That our Mind alone doth not make distinction between those three Principles but they differ in reality Those who say Privation is more a Principle of Generation then the rest are mistaken in that they make Generation participate more of Non-entity then of Entity But it is not seeing it ariseth out of the former to tend to the latter being in truth neither the one nor the other He added that the Principle of Cognition is either First or Second The First proves all and is prov'd by none 't is the basis of all Sciences and hath two conditions namely that it can neither be deny'd nor prov'd As it cannot be deny'd That of two Contradictories one is true and the other false Neither can the same be prov'd because there is nothing beyond it or more clear and evident The Second Principles are those of the Sciences which they prove as themselves are prov'd by the first Principle For example That Principle of Physick Contraries are cured by their Contraries proves this Evacuation cureth the diseases caused by plenitude and it self is proved by that other Principle of Natural Philosophy to which it is subordinate that Action is onely between Contraries which is again prov'd by this That Action tendeth to render the Patient like to the Agent Which if it be deny'd 't is answer'd that if the Agent do not render the Patient like to it self then this latter would not be altered and so not be a Patient Which cannot be by the first Principle of Knowledge That a thing cannot be and not be at the same time The Fift divided Principles into those of Logick which constitute a Definition viz. The Genus and the Difference into those of Physicks which constitute corporeal things viz. Matter and Form into those of Metaphysicks which are Act and Power Essence and Existence and the Nature and Inherence in all Accidents And lastly into Principles Mathematical which are a point in continu'd quantities and an Vnite in Numbers The sixth fram'd this Question Since every thing that hath a Beginning hath also an End how is Number which hath a Unite for its Beginning Infinite It was answer'd by another That that infinity of Number is not in Act as its Beginning is but onely in Power For when 't is said That there is no Number so great but may be made greater to infinity this ought not to be accounted more strange then that other Proposition which is also true viz. That a Quantity which hath a Beginning may be divided without End There being no Body so small but may be divided again into a less For that some thing cannot be resolv'd into nothing as of nothing cannot be made some thing naturally This matter was ended with another division of Principles into General and Particular The General said they are some times but indiscreetly confounded with Causes and Elements For every Principle is not a Cause nor every Cause an Element nor any Element a Principle Although every Element be a Cause and every Cause be a Principle External or Internal That every Principle is not a Cause appears by Privation which is a Principle notwithstanding what hath been otherwise argu'd by the Maxim above alledg'd That Action is onely between Contraries Principles then
it self and causes them to act and move in the Matter rightly dispos'd As for the Second Like as they argue that the world is finite round and corruptible because its parts are so So also it may be said that the world hath a Spirit which enlivens it since all its principal parts have a particular one for their Conservation Action and Motion the parts being of the same Nature with the whole This Universal Spirit is prov'd by the impotency of the Matter which of it self having no activity or principle of Life and Motion needeth some other to animate and quicken it Now particular Forms cannot do that for then they would be principles of that Virtue that is to say principles of themselves which is impossible Wherefore there must be some Superiour Form which is the Universal Spirit the principle of Action and Motion the Uniter of the Matter and the Form the Life of all Nature and the Universal Soul of the World Whence it may confidently be affirm'd that the World is animated but with what Soul or Spirit is the difficulty For if we prove by Local Motion or by that of Generation that a Plant or Animal are animated why may we not say the same of all the World since its more noble and principal parts afford evidence thereof As for the Heaven and the Stars they are in continual Motion which the more â—ober Opinion at this day confesseth to produce from their Internal Form rather then from the Intelligences which some would have fastned to the Spheres as a Potter to his wheel The Sun besides his own Motion which some call in controversie gives Life to all things by his heat and influences The Air Water and Earth afford also instances of this Life in the production and nourishing of Plants and Animals Thus the principal parts being animated this sufficeth for the Denomination of the whole seeing even in Man there are found some parts not animated as the Hair and the Nails As for the Last Point which is to know what this Universal Soul is there are many Opinions The Rabbins and Cabalists say that it is the RVAH ELOHIM that is the Spirit of God which moved upon Waters Trismegistus saith that it is a Corporeal Spirit or a Spiritual Body and elsewhere calleth it the Blessed GreenWood or the Green Lyon which causeth all things to grow Plato affirmeth it to be the Ideas The Peripateticks a certain Quintessence above the Four Elements Heraclitus and after him the Chymists that it is a certain Aethereal Fire For my part I conceive that if by this Spirit they mean a thing which gives Life and Spirit and Motion to all which is found every where and on which all depends there is no doubt but 't is the Spirit of God or rather God himself in whom and through whom we live and move But if we will seek another in created Nature we must not seek it elsewhere then in that corporeal creature which hath most resemblance with the Deity The Sun who more lively represents the same then any other by his Light Heat Figure and Power And therefore the Sun is that Spirit of the World which causeth to move and act here below all that hath Life and Motion The Second said That that Soul is a certain common Form diffus'd through all things which are moved by it as the wind of the Bellows maketh the Organs to play applying them to that whereunto they are proper and according to their natural condition So this Spirit with the Matter of Fire maketh Fire with that of Air maketh Air and so of the rest Some give it the name of Love for that it serves as a link or tye between all Bodies into which it insinuates it self with incredible Subtility which Opinion will not be rejected by the Poets and the Amorous who attribute so great power to it The Third said That the Soul being the First Act of an Organical Body and the word Life being taken onely for Vegetation Sensation and Ratiocination the world cannot be animated since the Heavens the Elements and the greatest part of Mixed Bodies want such a Soul and such Life That the Stoicks never attributed a Soul to this world but onely a Body which by reason of its Subtility is called Spirit and for that it is expanded through all the parts of the world is termed Vniversal which is the cause of all Motions and is the same thing with what the Ancients call'd Nature which they defined the Principle of Motion The reason of the Stoicks for this Universal Spirit is drawn from the Rarefaction and Condensation of Bodies For if Rarefaction be made by the insinuation of an other subtile Body and Condensation by its pressing out it follows that since all the Elements and mixt Bodies are rarifi'd and condens'd there is some Body more subtile then those Elements and mixts which insinuating it self into the parts rarifies them and makes them take up greater space and going forth is the Cause that they close together and take up less Now Rarefaction is alwayes made by the entrance of a more subtile Body and Condensation by its going out This is seen in a very thick Vessel of Iron or Brass which being fill'd with hot Water or heated Air and being well stop'd if you set it into the cold it will condense what is contain'd therein which by that means must fill less space then before Now either there must be a Vacuum in the Vessel which Nature abhorreth or some subtile Body must enter into it which comes out of the Air or the Water which fills that space Which Body also must be more subtile then the Elements which cannot penetrate through the thickness of the Vessel There is also seen an Instance of this in the Sun-beams which penetrate the most solid Bodies if they be never so little diaphanous which yet are impenetrable by any Element how subtile soever And because a great part of the Hour design'd for Inventions was found to have slip'd away during the Reciprocation of other reasons brought for and against this opinion some curiosities were onely mention'd and the examination of them referr'd to the next Conference In which it was determin'd first to treat of the Air and then to debate that Question Whether it is expedient in a State to have Slaves CONFERENCE VII I. Of the Air. II. Whether it be best for a State to have Slaves I. Of the Air. THe First said That he thought fit to step aside a little out of the ordinary way not so much to impugne the Maximes of the School as to clear them and that for this end he propros'd That the Air is not distinguish'd from the Water because they are chang'd one into the other For what else are those Vapours which are drawn up from the Water by the power of the Sun and those which arise in an Alembic or from boyling Water if we do not call them Air Now those Vapours are