and the holiest mysteries of Religion not onely by the Delians who accompany'd all their prayers with dancing and the Indians who ador'd the Sun by dancing and imitating the course of that luminary but also by the Prophet David before the Ark and by Saul who being full of the Spirit of God fell to dancing with the Children of the Prophets as also did Miriam the sister of Moses Judith when she had kill'd Holofernes and infinite others in testimony of their thanksgiving to God The Muses themselves are painted by the Poets dancing about their fountain upon Mount Helicon Apollo is call'd dancer by Pindar and the Graces are represented dancing Proteus so celebrated by the Poets became famous onely by this Art and which he so excell'd that his nimble in strange postures gave occasion to the fable of turning himself into all kind of shapes because sometimes he counterfeited the fluidity of the water sometimes the lightness of fire the bending of trees the rage of the Leopard the cruelty of the Lyon and in brief the nature of every sort of things The Third said That Dancing is compos'd of three parts Motion Gesture and Indication For there is first a stirring up and down then a representing things by the Gestures of the Body chiefly by the Hand which Art is call'd Chironomy and those which are expert in it Chirosophers that is wise by the Hands Hence Dancing is defin'd a motion of the Body according to rule and number imitating by gesture things or persons either with singing or without As Motion 't is very delightful to Nature which is as much pleas'd therein as rest is disagreeable to it Nor is it less so as it includes an harmonious proportion of measure having this correspondence with Musick Poetry Eloquence Painting Comedy and all other Arts whose end is the delight of man But as it is an imitation it delights marvellously we loving nothing so much as to imitate or to see some thing imitated Hence works of Art please us more then those of Nature because Art doth nothing but imitate her Besides its delightfulness 't is also profitable and honest It s usefulness is sufficiently known to Physitians who make it a part of their Gymnastick Physick which treats of the exercises and motions prescrib'd in order to health and is divided into Palestrical and Saltatory Moreover Galen affirms that he cur'd many Patients by appointing them to dance which is an exercise of all parts of the body whereas walking exercises onely the legs riding the intestines bowling the reins going by ship the stomack and brain 'T is also very honest or decorous since it formes and fashions the body giving it a good grace one of the principal points of handsomeness For the Soul having the Sciences to instruct the Understanding and the Moral Virtues to rectifie the Will the body its dear partner needs some habit to regulate its defects the rather because they have influence upon the Soul it being very difficult for the motions of the Soul to be regular so long as those of the body are not Therefore Plato in the seventh book of his Laws requires that the instructers of youth have equally care of the body and the soul and for this purpose teach them Musick to regulate the motions of the Soul and dancing to frame those of the body and give it gracefulness as wrastling gives it strength CONFERENCE LXVII I. Of Death II. Of the Will I. Of Death AS Being is the first and greatest good because the foundation of all other goods so speaking absolutely upon a natural account the first and greatest of all evils is the privation of that Being which is Death so terrible that not onely brutes abhor the sight of their dead fellows through fear of the same death of which they behold an image of their carcases but men likewise although their name of Mortals be a token of the necessity of their dying yet use all the vain attempts they can to avoid that death which they fear as the most terrible of terrble things Yea all their great and violent actions and passions take their source from this fear which is so much greater as the evil is phancy'd nearer Whence old or sick persons have more apprehension of it then then those that are young and in health The vulgar commonly labours onely through fear of starving A man that is decrepit yet is willing to part with a limb if he may by the loss respite his death apprehended so terrible by some that the fear of it has kill'd some criminals before execution and carry'd others to such madness as to kill themselves for fear of dying Nevertheless he that shall consider Death more nearly will find that being but a privation it is nothing and that what we fear so much is onely the way to this death or the sequel of it the former in respect of irrational animals and both in reference to man who apprehends in the other life the judgement of the actions of this Otherwise Death being onely a poynt and a moment which hath neither quantity nor extent but approaches to Nothing hath therefore nothing in it self for which it ought to be feared For so long as the Animal hath sense it is not dead and so soon as 't is dead it hath no more And because 't is a motion and passage from Being to not Being between which two there is no medium or middle therefore 't is a pure nothing and consequently hath no foundation saving in the troubled Phancy Since upon due perpension of things that which is not is no-wise to be fear'd by those that are insensible yea that exist no more The Second said That to maintain Death to be nothing is to accuse not onely all men of folly in fearing what exists not and consequently is not capable of producing any effects or passions but likewise Nature of imprudence in having imprinted this apprehension in all creatures for their preservation As therefore Reason and Experience teach us that there are substantial generations so the same shew us the true and substantial corruptions of all compounds which corruption in a thing endu'd with life is call'd Death which is the separation of the Soul from the Body For the Platonists are ridiculous when they make two kinds of this separation namely that of the Soul from the Body which they call Extasie and that of the Body from the Soul which alone they say is to be call'd Death For they are both one and the same thing and Extasie is not a separation of essence but of power hapning when the Soul is so glu'd to an object in the contemplation whereof it employes all its powers that there remains none for corporeal functions the Eyes not perceiving what is then presented to them Whence the Soul being more where it loves then where it lives is also more where it understands Now Death is either natural or violent The former caus'd by the consumption
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
his soul's immortality and by faith of his body's resurrection yet he seeks all ways he can imagine to render the memory of all his actions perpetual 'T is this desire of getting a death-less fame which causes us sometimes to dye immaturely by watchings and study and so cheerfully undergo hazards to eternize the memory of our names Anciently this desire of perpetuation was most visible in the care to keep the life-less body even amongst the vulgar and hence the Mummies of the Egyptians and other Nations remain to this day after three or four thousand years At present through the ignorance of Times this care is practis'd only amongst great persons and yet the effect answers very little to their intention For the Chirurgions do not Embalm a man now a days but only the bones and skin after they have taken away his principal parts the heart liver and brain which constituted him a man and not the rest the cause whereof must be attributed to defect of Invention and means fit to dry up the superfluous humidity which causes the corruption of body for that alone will keep them which can dry them with the moderation requisite to the preserving of their Colour and Figure The Fourth said There 's a resemblance of these Mummies in bodies struck with thunder which are free from corruption the Sulphur consuming the humidity and introducing dryness to resist putrifaction as Fire Salt Vitriol Nitre Chalk Alum Vinegar and Aqua-vitae do by their desiccative and astringing virtue Some poysons also do the same As Placentinus reports of a Venetian Lady who having been poyson'd her body became so stiff that it seem'd to be petrifi'd But the particular temper of every place is of great moment They who inhabit the Southern Countries are so dry that their bodies keep intire eight days after death And they have so little humidity that 't is no less a shame amongst them then of old amongst the Lacedemonians to spit or blow the Nose The Fifth said That the same natural inclination of men to preserve themselves the longest they can which heretofore instigated them to erect proud Mausolaeum's Pyramids and Marbles for eternizing their memory put them also upon the invention of Embalming their bodies which is a refuge after shipwreck a little way after death But as 't is a general law that all things which took their being by generation must lose it by corruption indeed by some artifice we may retard dissolution for a time but perfectly to hinder it is impossible For Heat determin'd to a certain degree by Cold is the Agent which mixes the Humid with the Dry and retains them in that mixture as long as it self remains intire and strong But if this Heat receive any diminution either being suffocated and inclos'd or or else drawn out by a greater Heat of the Air encompassing us the less Heat alwayes yielding and serving for Aliment to the greater this natural Heat being thus weakned presently the Humidity leaves the Dryness and carries away with it self that little Heat which remain'd whence this Humidity is heated it self and excites a stink and at last vanishing away the remainder turnes to powder Wherefore the moistest bodies are most easie to corrupt excessive humidity more easily extinguishing the Heat which retain'd it in its duty And the most solid bodies as Gold and Silver corrupt difficultly because they have very little Humidity and that little which they have is greatly incorporated and united with the Dryness But there are two sorts of Humidity One excrementitious and also alimentous which by the least defect of Heat is easily turn'd into putrefaction because it is not yet united and assimilated to the Body wherein it is found whence it is that foul Bodies Trees cut at Full Moon being full of their sap and Fruits gather'd before their maturity very easily corrupt The other is an Humidity already assimilated which links all the parts together and being substantial is not so easily corrupted as the other Wherefore they who would embalm Bodies well having two Humidities to repress must make use of several means The former Humidity must be absum'd by Hot Drugs amongst which Wormwood and Scordium hold the first place experience manifesting the one and Galen observing that the Bodies of the Graecians slain in a battel which touch'd Scordium were found intire many dayes after The latter Humidity must be preserv'd by Balsames Cold Dry and penetrating which may preserve the figure colour and consistence in the dead body CONFERENCE XXXI I. Whether the Life of Man may be prolong'd by Art II. Whether 't is better to be without Passion then to moderate them I. Whether the Life of a Man may be prolong'd by Art THe duration of a motion or action cannot be known unless the measure of it be known nor can they be measur'd unless they have known bounds Whence neither can it be known whether the Life may be prolong'd without knowing before-hand how long it lasts Now 't is impossible to know this duration For not to mention the long lives of the Fathers in the two first thousand years of the world God told Noah that the age of Man should be no more then but sixscore years Moses and David restrain it to seventy or eighty And yet as there are at this day some who come near a hundred so there are a hundred times as many who do not attain thirty And whereas no body can speak of Death by experience because they who speak of it have not felt it and they who have felt it cannot speak of it more the case is the same concerning Life Let a Man by good order or the use of remedies live as long as he will it will not be believ'd that his life ha's been prolong'd but on the contrary that his hour was not yet come Nevertheless 't is no less consistent with reason to say that he who would infallibly have dy'd of a Gangrene which invaded his Legg and thereby the rest of his Body hath had his life prolong'd by cutting off his Legg or that he who was wounded in the crural vein at which all his blood would have soon issu'd forth ha's been secur'd from death by the Chirurgion who stop'd the blood then to believe as we do that a Rope-maker lengthens his rope by adding new stuff to that which was ended that a Gold-smith makes a chain of Gold longer by fastning new links to it that a Smith causes his fire to last more by putting fresh coals to it And as in all this there is nothing which crosses our Reason so if a sick man who is visibly going to dye receives help and escapes do's he not owe the more glory to God for having not onely cur'd him by the hands of the Physitian or by spiritual Physick alone but also prolong'd his Life as he did to King Hezekias whose Life was lengthened fifteen years and of which our age wants not example If it be objected that this
may hold in violent deaths whereof the causes may be avoided but that 't is not credible that a decrepit old man who hath spun out his Life to the last can continue it the nature and Etymology of the radical moisture not admitting a possibility of restauration I answer that reasons taken from the original of words are not the strongest and that besides there are roots which endure more and others less according as they are well or ill cultivated And if the reason drawn from contraries be considerable being many poysons are so quick that they corrupt the radical moisture in an instant ought we to conceive Nature so much a step-dame as that she hath not produc'd something proper to restore it And that Humane Industry is so dull and little industrious in the thing which Man desires most which is long Life that it cannot reach to prepare some matter for the support yea for the restauration of that Original Humidity Considering that we are not reduc'd to live onely by what is about us as Plants and Plant-animals do but all the world is open and accessible to our search of Aliments and Medicines Moreover we have examples not onely of a Nestor who liv'd three ages of an Artephius who liv'd as many and many more and the Herb Moly the Nectar and Ambrosia of the Poets which kept their gods from growing old may well be taken for a figure of the Tree of Life which was design'd for separation of this Humidity but also of compositions proper to produce that effect Yea were it not actually so yet 't is not less possible and God hath not in vain promis'd as a Reward to such as honour their Superiors to prolong their dayes upon the earth The Second said If Medaea found Herbs as the Poets say to lengthen the Life of Aeson the Father of Jason the Daughters of Aelias miscarried of their purpose Indeed every thing that lives needs Heat for exercising its Actions and Humidity to sustain that Heat the duration of this Heat in the Humidity is Life which lasts as long as the one is maintain'd by the other like the lighted wiek in a Lamp Now Nature dispenses to every one from the Birth as much of this Heat and Moisture as she pleases to one for fifty to another for sixty seventy eighty years or more which ended the stock is spent Physick may husband it well but cannot produce it anew Aliments never repair it perfectly no more then Water doth Wine which it increases indeed but weakens too when mingled therewith The Third back'd this Suffrage with the opinion of Pythagoras who held that our Life is a strait line that the accidents which disturb it and at length bring Death constitute another and accordingly saith he as these two lines incline less or much towards one another Life is long or short because the Angle of their incidence and at which they cut which is our Death happens sooner or later and it would never happen if these two lines were parallel Now the meeting of these two lines cannot be deferr'd or put off The Fourth said 'T were a strange thing if Humane Art could repair all other defects of the Body and Mind excepting that whereof there is most need and all Ages have complain'd Brevity of Life For our Understanding hath much less need of an Art of Reasoning our tongue of an Art of speaking our legs of dancing then our Life of being continu'd since 't is the foundation of all the rest Besides Physick would seem useless without this For though it serv'd only to asswage the pains of diseases which is a ridiculous opinion yet it would thereby protract the time of Death to which pain is the way The Fifth said That for the preservation of Life 't is requisite to continue the marriage of Heat and moisture Death alwayes hapning immediately upon their disjunction and leaving the contrary qualities in their room Cold and Dryness Now to know how Heat must be preserv'd we must observe how 't is destroy'd And that is four wayes I. By Cold which being moderate fights with it but violent wholly destroyes it II. By suffocation or smothering when the Pores are stop'd and the issue of fuliginous vapours hindred Thus Fire dyes for want of Air. III. By its dissipation which is caus'd by hot medicaments violent exercise and immoderate heat of the Sun or Fire Whence proceeds a Syncope or Deliquium of the Heart IV. By want of Aliment without which it can no more last a moment then Fire without wood or other combustible matter All agree that the three first Causes may be avoided or at least remedied And as for the Fourth which is doubled of I see nothing that hinders but that as the spirits of our bodies are perfectly repair'd by the Air we incessantly breathe so Aliments or some Specificks as as amongst others Gold dissolv'd in some water not corrosive may in some manner restore the fewel of our Heat And seeing there are found burning Mountains in which the Fire cannot consume so much matter apt for burning but it alwayes affords it self other new which makes it subsist for many Ages Why may not a matter be prepar'd for our Natural Heat which though not neer so perfect as that which it consum'd for were it so an Animal would be immortal yet may be more excellent then ordinary Aliments and by this means prolong our Lives And this must be sought after not judg'd impossible The Sixth said That Life consisting in the Harmony and proportion of the four first qualities and in the contemperation of the four Humours there 's no more requir'd for the prolonging of Life but to continue this Harmony Which may be done not onely by a good natural temper but also by the right use of external things as pure Air places healthful and exposed to the Eastern winds Aliments of good juice sleep sufficiently long exercises not violent passions well rul'd and the other things whose due administration must prolong Life by the same reason that their abuse or indiscreet usage diminishes it The Seventh said That Life consists in the salt which contains the Spirit that quickens it and is the preservative Balsame of all compounds The vivifying Spirit of Man is inclos'd in a very volatile Armoniack Salt which exhales easily by Heat and therefore needs incessant reparation by Aliments Now to preserve Life long it is requsite to fix this volatile salt which is done by means of another salt extracted by Chymistry which is not onely fix'd but also capable to fix the most volatile For the Chymists represent this salt incorruptible in it self and communicating its virtue to other bodies Upon which account they stile it Quintessence Aethereal Body Elixir and Radical Balsame which hath a propriety to preserve not onely living bodies many Ages but dead from corruption II. Whether 't is better to be without Passions then to moderate them Upon the Second Point it was said
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
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
Souldier of his Army pass by one after another Wherefore 't is no wonder if men who affect nothing so much as eternity and to be like God desire to know things as God doth to whom the future is present Moreover this inclination being natural to all persons they must have a power to exercise it in this life lest it be in vain Which is done principally when the Soul is loosned from the Body as in sleep extasie deep contemplation and the agonies of death in which dying persons commonly foretell things to come CONFERENCE LXXXI I. Of Chiromancy II. Which is the noblest part of the Body I. Of Chiromancy CHiromancy is Divination by inspection of the hand and consideration of its substance quantity quality and other accidents whereby the same affords indications of things past or to come It was practis'd by Sylla and Caesar this latter having by it discover'd the false Alexander who pretended himself Herod's Son from the true And an old Chiromancer of Albert of Mirandola Cousin to the great Picus fore-told the Duke of Nevers Nephew to Lewis XII being at Carpi in Italy ready to fight with the Vice-roy of Naples that he should win the battle but lose his own life as it came to pass So Paulus Jovius relates that Antiochus Tibertus of Cesena by this means advertis'd Guido Balneo of the death which befell him by one of his familiars and that Horatius Cocles fore-told Lucas Gauricus that he should be put to death by John Bontivoglio Prince of Bononia Many having seen Criminals lead to the gallows have observ'd that the two extremes of the line upon the last joynt of the thumb terminated at the root of the nail which is taken for the sign of the halter as when this line reaches not the nail but on one side it presages onely danger of hanging Now as diversity of outward shapes distinguishes species so it doth also individuals especially that of the hand the instrument of every one's fortune and the most temperate part of the Body whence the hollow of it is accounted the organ of Touching The Second said That the hand the subject of Chiromancy is compos'd as all other organical parts of three dissimular parts the wrist palm and fingers In the palm the Chiromancers consider the lines and eminences or hills The lines are those parts which variously divide the hand the five chief of which are the line of the wrist the line of life the natural mean the liver-line and the table-line The wrist-line is that which divides the hand from the arm and is commonly double sometimes trebble and quadruple The line of life or of the heart begins at the bottom of the tumour under the fore-finger and ends at the wrist-line having sometimes another line paralle call'd the sister of the line of life The natural mean or line of the head begins near the line of life under the fore-finger and passes over-thwart the hand to the hill of the Moon or pommel of the hand which line is thwarted by another call'd the liver or stomack-line and these two lines with the line of life form a triangle whose base is the liver line call'd the triangle of Mars which appears not in their hands whose middle line terminates at the table line or line of fortune which begins under the hill of Mercury at the bottom of the little finger and ends under the fore-finger with one two or three branches 'T is call'd the table line because the space between it and the middle line represents the table whence 't is call'd the table of the hand and line of fortune because it affords the certainest tokens of good or bad fortune The hills or risings of the hand are seven according to the Planets to which they are attributed namely the mount of Venus under the thumb indicating Love the mount of Jupiter under the fore-finger for Honours that of Saturn under the third or middle finger for felicities or misfortunes that of the Sun under the fourth or ring-finger for Riches that of Mercury under the little finger for Arts and Sciences that of the Moon which is in the pommel of the hand for afflictions and maladies of the mind lastly the mount of Mars in the foresaid triangle compriz'd under the lines of life the middle line and the liver line denotes war-like exploits And because the four principal fingers have twelve joynts which make as many sinuosities therefore the Chiromancers attribute to each of them a sign of the Zodiack and to each finger a season of the year as to the fore-finger the Spring and to its three joynts the three signes of that season assigning the uppermost joynt to Aries c. By which signes 't is known in what moneths the effects fore-told by the lines of the hand will happen The Third said That Chiromancy is a Conjectural Art not founded upon indubitable principles of eternal truth but upon many experiences from which the general precepts of this Art are deduc'd The chief whereof are that the rectitude continuity and lively colour of the lines and the eminence of the mounts are good signes as also the branching of these lines upwards towards the mounts of the fingers on the contrary their obliquity intersection livid or blackish colour and branching downwards are of ill augury The wideness of the table and the angles of the triangle of Mars well shap'd denote good Many lines cutting the chief which are in the palm of the hand shew a man intangled in affairs The lines of the wrist signifie that the person is to live so many times twenty years A double line of life is a sign of one very fortunate The lines which cross it are so many misfortunes and their breaking shews death or dangerous sickness One o in it denotes the loss of an Eye and two oo total blindness which Johannes de Indagine saith he found true in many and by his own experience Crooked lines upon the table line threaten water 'T is an ill sign when one of the chief lines especially the table line is wanting and when it hath inciâ—ions 't is a mark of various fortune Lines between the table line and middle line are so many diseases but not mortal And infinite such other rules The nails also are consider'd by the Chiromancers as to their colour shape largeness and little spots among which the round and white denote friends the others ill-willers The Fourth said That 't is requisite to prediction by the hands that nothing be on them but what is natural And if the lines of one hand suffice not recourse must be had to the other and if both agree the effects signifi'd by them are less doubtful When they differ these of the left hand are chiefly taken notice of both because 't is nearest the heart and because 't is less disfigur'd by working Yet 't is to be remember'd that as one sign evidences not the constitution and few diseases have one certain pathognomonical
but one life to lose yet this action could not pass for a virtue since Fortitude appears principally in sufferings and miseries which to avoid by death is rather cowardize and madness then true courage Wherefore the Poet justly blames Ajax for that after he had overcome Hector despis'd fire and flames yet he could not subdue his own choler to which he sacrific'd himself And Lucretia much blemish'd the lustre of her chastity by her own murder for if she was not consenting to Tarquin's crime why did she pollute her hands with the blood of an innocent and for the fault which another had committed punishments as well as offences being personal He who kills himself only through weariness of living is ingrateful for the benefits of nature of which life is the chief if he be a good man he wrongs his Country by depriving it of one and of the services which he owes to it as he wrongs Justice if he be a wicked person that hath committed some crime making himself his own witness Judge and Executioner Therefore the Prince of Poets places those in hell who kill'd themselves and all Laws have establish'd punishments against them depriving them of sepulture because saith Egesippus he that goes out of the world without his father's leave deserves not to be receiv'd into the bosom of his mother the earth I conclude therefore that the ignorant dreads death the timerous fears it the fool procures it to himself and the mad man executes it but the wise attends it The Third said That the generous resolution of those great men of antiquity ought rather to have the approbation then the scorn of a reasonable mind and 't is proper to low spirits to censure the examples which they cannot imitate 'T is not meet because we are soft to blame the courage of a Cato who as he was tearing his own bowels could not forbear laughing even while his soul was upon his lips for joy of his approaching deliverance nor the constancy of a Socrates who to shew with what contentedness he received death convers'd with it and digested what others call its bitterness without any trouble the space of forty days Sextius and Cleanthes the Philosopher follow'd almost the same course Only they had the more honour for that their deaths were purely voluntary For the will forc'd by an extrinsecal cause performs nothing above the vulgar who can obey the laws of necessity but when nothing forces us to dye but our selves and we have good cause for it this death is the most gallant and glorious Nor is it injust as is pretended any more then the Laws which suffer a man to cut off his leg for avoiding a Gangrene Why should not the Jugular Vein be as well at our choice as the Median For as I transgress not the Laws against Thieves when I cut my own Purse nor those against Incendiaries when I burn my own wood so neither am I within the Laws made against murtherers by depriving my self of life 't is my own good which I abandon the thred which I cut is my own And what is said that we are more the publick's then our own hath no ground but in our pride which makes us take our selves for such necessary pieces of the world as not to be dismember'd from it without a noble loss to that great body Besides were we so usefull to the world yet our own turn must be first serv'd Let us live then first for our selves if it be expedient next for others but when life becomes worse then death let us quit it as we do an inconvenient or unbecoming garment Is it not a sign of generosity to make Gouts Stones Aches and all other Plagues of life yield to the stroke of a victorious hand which alone blow puts an end to more maladies then all the simples of Galen and the Antidotes of Avicenna The Fourth said He could not approve the determination of the Stoicks who say that vulgar souls live as long as they can those of the wise as long as 't is fit departing out of life as we do from the table or from play when we are weary That the examples of Priseia who accompani'd her husband in death of Piso who dy'd to save his children of Sextus's daughter who kill'd her self for her father of Zeno who did as much to avoid the incommodities of old age which made it pass for piety at Rome a long time to cast decrepit old men head-long from a Bridge into Tiber are as culpable as he who surrenders a place when he is able to defend it For whereas Plato exempts such from the punishment against sui-cides who committed it to avoid infamy or intolerable necessity and what Pliny saith that nature hath for this end produc'd so many poysonous Plants for five or six sorts of Corn that there is but one way to enter into the world but infinite to go out of it the imputing it to stupidity not to go out of a prison when one hath the key adding that 't is lawful to execute that which 't is lawful to desire as S. Paul did his own death yea the example which is alledged of Sampson of Razias and of eleven thousand Virgins who precipitated themselves into the sea to save their chastity in the Church are effects of a particular inspiration not to be drawn into consequence and out of it examples of rage and despair disguis'd with the mask of true fortitude and magnanimity which consists chiefly in supporting evils as the presidents of so many religious souls attest to us CONFERENCE XC I. Of Hunting II. Which is to be prefer'd the weeping of Heraclitus or the laughing of Democritus I. Of Hunting IF the least of goods hath its attractions 't is no wonder if Hunting wherein are comprehended the three sorts of good honest profitable and delightful have a great interest in our affection being undoubtely preferrable before any other exercise either of body or mind For Play Women Wine and all the pleasure which Luxury can phancy in superfluity of Clothes Pictures Flowers Medals and such other passions not unfitly nam'd diseases of the soul are divertisements either so shameful or so weak that they cannot enter into comparison with hunting so honest that it hath been always the recreation of great persons whose martial courage us'd to be judg'd of by their inclination to this sport which Xenophon calls the apprentisage of War and recommends so much to Cyrus in his Institution as Julius Pollux doth to the Emperour Commodus It s profitableness is chiefly discern'd in that it renders the body dextrous and active preserves health and by inuring it to labour makes a firm constitution hindring it from being delicate consumes the superfluous humours the seeds of most diseases Lastly the pleasure of Hunting must needs be great since it makes the Hunters think light of all their pains and incommodities The mind has its pleasure in it by hope of the prey in such as
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
the dead and into which they return But the most common and us'd throughout all Europe is Black which also was always worne by the Romans when they went into Mourning except during sixty years that they wore white The wearing of Mourning continu'd ten moneths at Rome the Athenians wore it but one moneth the Spartans no more but eleven dayes The reason why they have all chosen Black for denoting Sadness is because Black is the privation of White and proceedeth from the defect of Light so Death is the privation of Life and Light Possibly too the reason why the Cypress Tree was esteem'd a Funeral Tree was because the leaves were of a dark Green and the Nutts tincture Black and being cut it never puts forth again as also Beans were in regard of the blackness which appears in them and their flowers The Second said That Experience shews us sufficiently that the Black colour doth not onely put us in Mind of our griefs and sadnesses pass'd but also is apt excite new This is known to the Senses and unknown to Reason by a certain Divine Appointment which hath caus'd that what is manifest to the one is hidden to the other As appears for that nothing is so natural to the Sense of Seeing as Light and Colours But yet there is nothing in which our Mind sooner finds its weakness then in the enquiry into the Nature and properties of Colours and Light Now there are two sorts of blackness the one Internal when the Soul turning it self towards the Images upon report of which a judgement is made if that Image is Black and deform'd the Soul must conceive that the Objects represented by it are so also and thence ariseth horror and sadness the other external for the explicating of which I must crave leave to deflect a little from the ordinary opinion touching the Nature of Colours I affirm that Colour and Light are one and the same thing and differ onely in regard of the Subject so that the lustre of a simple Body is Light but the lustre of a mixt Body is call'd Colour By which account Light is the Colour of a simple Body and Colour is the Light of a mixt Body Whence Mixts approaching nearest to the simplicity of the Element predominant in them are all Luminous as precious stones which are a simple Earth and without mixture of other Element and rotten Wood which having lost the little Air and Fire it had its humidity also being absum'd by the putrefaction and there remaining nothing almost but Earth you see how it keeps its splendour amidst the darkness of the night And this in my conceit is the meaning of what Moses saith when he saith that God created the Light before the Sun For God having created the Elements in their natural purity they were sometimes in that state before mixture the Earth appeared not but the Water cover'd its whole Surface Every Element was in its own place and the purity of its Nature for which reason they had then their first Colour which is splendour But as soon as God had mingled them for the forming of Mixts their Light became clouded and chang'd into Colour And hence it was necessary to form a Sun in Heaven far from all sort of mixture and composition to the end he might alwayes preserve his Light and enlighten the world therewith The Fire preserves it self the most of all in its purity by reason of its great activity which consumes what ever approaches near it The other Elements would do so too if they could preserve themselves in their purity as well as the Fire But because they would be unprofitable should they remain such it is necessary that they be mingled one with another as well to serve for the production of Compounds as for their Aliment and several uses Hence their Light becomes chang'd into Colour which is nothing else but a Light extinguish'd more or less and accordingly we see some Colours more luminous then others The White is still wholly luminous the Red wholly resplendent the Green less and the Brown begins to grow dark Lastly the Black is nothing but Light wholly extinct and a kind of darkness and consequently hath nothing of reality but is a pure Privation which our Eyes perceive not As our Ear discerneth or perceiveth not silence but onely by not hearing any sound so neither doth the Sight behold Black and darkness but when it sees neither Colour nor Light So that to hear Silence and see darkness is to speak properly a vain attempt of the Soul which would fain exert its action of seeing and hearing and cannot Hence ariseth the sadness and terror which a deep silence and the sight of extreme blackness and darkness excites in the Soul For the Soul knows well that Life is nothing else but Exercise of its Faculties of which as soon as any thing is depriv'd there remains nothing to be expected but death She would fain exert her action and cannot she distinguishes not whether it be through default of the Object or whether her Faculty be lost but she finds a privation of her actions and represents to her self to be in the state of Death whence ariseth Sadness and Fear For as our Soul dreadeth nothing so much as Death so the least suspition the least sign and umbrage of Death is apt to put her into great dejection And this makes way for the Second Reason why the Soul becomes sad at the sight of a black Colour namely because it never appears in the Body but Death is at hand For this Colour is produc'd by the mortification and extinction of the Spirits as a Gangrene which is either caus'd by Adustion whereby Coals become black or by extreme coldness thus Old Men are of a leaden Colour tending to blackness Now the excess of heat and coldness is equally contrary to Life Wherefore as often as the Soul perceives blackness either in her own Body or in another she remembers the Qualities which produc'd it and are contrary to Life which she loves hence ariseth sadness And hence also it is that we naturally love a Countenance well proportion'd with an agreeable Colour wherein there is found a redness mingled with whiteness bright and lively with Spirits which is nothing else but an effect of the Love which our Soul bears to Life For knowing this to be the Colour of Health it affects the same even in another as on the other side it abhorreth Death Look upon a living Body it is full of brightness but a dead one is gloomy and dismal and at the instant that the Soul parts from the Body a dark shade seemes as it were to veil the Countenance Now that the Soul may understand it must become like to its Object Whence Aristotle said that the Intellect is potentially all things forasmuch as it can form it self into as many shapes as there are Objects So then it will perceive blackness it must become conformable to Black which it
or seen some ridiculous thing we many times laugh at it though the Object be not present 'T is also Disproportion that makes us laugh for we do not so when we behold a great Beauty but we do so when we look upon some odd ill-contriv'd countenance or when we find little sutableness between the Objects which are represented to us as an Old-man making Love a huge Hat upon a small Head one intending to make a graceful Reverence or cut a fine caper and falling all along in brief every thing that is said or done incongruously besides our expectation especially if no other more violent Passion interpose as Fear Respect and Pity which suppress Laughter We laugh at a Man that falls down but should he break his neck with the fall our Laughter would give place to Compassion In fine it appears that there is made a retraction of the Nerves during Laughter for we see a Convulsion causeth the same motion of the Muscles of the Face that Laughter doth whence cometh that malady which is called Risus Sardonicus in which by the retraction of the Nerves towards their Original the Patient seemes to laugh as he dyes The Third said He knew not whether of the two had most reason Democritus the Laugher or Heraclitus the Weeper For though the Faculty of Laughing be peculiar to Man and inseparable from Reason yet immoderate Laughter is as unacceptable as continual Tears And whereas we read in the Holy Scripture that our Lord sometimes wept but not that he ever laught this may be resolv'd That nothing was new to him The same being recorded of Heathens so stay'd and reserv'd that they were never seen to laugh as Crassus Cato the Censor Phocion and some others There is more difficulty in stating the Cause of Laughter Aristotle attributes it to the Diaphragme which is dilated by heat But seeing we laugh less in a Fever when the Diaphragme is most heated it is certain either that every heat of the Diaphragme doth not produce this effect or some other cause must be joyned with it Which I conceive to be an impression made in our Senses and by them in our Phancy of some agreeable unusual and un-foreseen Object when the same slips into it unawares Which Object exciting Joy in us by the Dilatation of the Spirits which is made first in the Arteries of the Brain and thereby insinuated into these of the Heart which opens to that Joy those dilated Spirits swell the Blood in the Veins which accompanies them so that not being containable in their own place the Veins and Arteries swell till they make a reflux in the Brain Diaphragme Lungs Face and all the parts of the Body where they cause the concussion and agitation observ'd in excessive Laughter and sometimes Tears by the compression of the Brain whilst it is not possible for any to check the eruption what ever respect be presented to them yea sometimes the Spirits are so rarifi'd that they evaporate whence follows sudden death as it befell Chrysippus of old who seeing an Ass eat figgs at the end of his table fell into so vehement Laughter that he dy'd immediately The Fourth said Laughter is a motion of the Body which follows that of the Soul Its Object is a sudden Joy surprizing us as a pleasant word after a serious discourse The scorn we make of any one causeth Laughter likewise because Contempt is a kind of Anger made up of Pleasure and Grief When the Pleasure happens to be greater then the Grief as it happens when our Enemy is so weak that we can be reveng'd on him when we list this contentment causeth us to laugh And hence it is that Sleighting is more offensive then Hatred alone Joubertus thinks Laughter is excited when Pleasure expands the Heart which by that dilatation gives motion to the Diaphragme and this consequently draws the Muscles of the Lipps Aristotle saith that by tickling a motion is caused in the Spirits which go and come to the place where the Man feels the Pleasure which Spirits passing and repassing light upon the Nerves who being too sensible and sollicited by the continual motion and agitation thereof endeavour to drive the same away and to that purpose contract themselves and draw unto themselves the parts into which they are inserted Hence in a great Laughter a Man is forc'd to compress himself and the sides ake with much laughing by reason of the tension of the Muscles and Nerves which are most agitated in that place Wherefore in my judgement Laughter is caus'd in this sort The sudden Pleasure or Titillation excites a motion of the Spirits which being very subtile are easily carry'd up to the Head there their agitation and motion importunes the Nerves and the Brain so that in the midst of this Pleasure there is caus'd a kind of Convulsive Motion And for that this agitation is chiefly inward therefore the internal parts first feel the effects of that gentle Convulsion the Diaphragme being more pliant and receiving more Nerves of the sixth Conjugation is agitated the most vehemently In profuse Laughter the Nerves of the whole Body sympathize with this disposition of the Brain their Common Original which being importun'd by those Spirits who though but natural are yet able to incommode the same by their too great agitation it contracts it self to be discharged of them attracting the Nerves to it self as much as it can whence proceeds this kind of Convulsion The Fifth said That the cause of Laughter is two-fold namely its Object which is of great latitude as good news unexpected joy which it is impossible to receive without laughing and its Subject which is indeed the Diaphragme for they who are wounded in that part seem to dye laughing as Hippocrates in the seventh of his Epidemicks observes to have befallen one Plychon for the same cause And this is no otherwise then as a certain kind of Ranunculus an Herb we call Crowfoot being eaten causeth loss of the Spirits and by the contraction of the Lips represents the Convulsion which is made during Laughter CONFERENCE XXV I. Of the Diversity of Countenances II. Whether Man or Woman be the more noble I. Of the Diversity of Countenances IDentity is so disagreeable that in all the objects of the Senses it displeases us Our Taste is glutted with alwayes eating the same Bread The most excellent Odour at length causeth the Head-ake To look too wistly upon the same object or to be too long together beheld by the same Eye fixed upon us is troublesome The Ear is tyr'd with twice hearing the same Tune and being continually struck upon by one and the same discourse how excellent soever it be The Touch the grossest of all the Senses is weary of one and the same temper of Air whence is drawn a certain consequence That the people under the Equinoctial or other Climate alwayes like to it self are sooner weary of living then others who have not leasure to be
greater vertues in times past then they have at the present as it is found amongst others in that Antidote made of tops of Rue a Nut and a Fig wherewith Mithridates preserv'd himself from all poysons and which is now out of credit but much more in man then other animals For besides the diminution which befalls him as a mixt body because he draws his nourishment from the substance of plants and animals he hath besides in himself a double ground of this decay of his strength every thing partaking of nature and its food Hence it is that we are much more short-liv'd then our fathers of old who in the flower of the world's age to speak with Plato who makes it an animal liv'd almost a thousand years and since the Deluge by the corruption which its waters overflowing the earth caus'd in the whole Universe they liv'd six hundred years but at present few attain to eighty Nor do we see any Gyants now a days though they were very frequent in old time Men's minds likewise have a great share of this deterioration in the exercise of vertues and arts Besides that there was never so great a multitude of Laws and Ordinances which are certain evidence of the depravation of manners The fourth said Besides that 't is dubious whether the years of our first Fathers were of equal length with ours the cause of their long life may be attributed to a special priviledge of God to the end they might by their long experience invent Arts and Sciences and people the world Moreover 't is above 4000 years since the term of 70 and 80 years became the common standard of humane life Our age is not more corrupted then the first made infamous by Fratricides Sodomites Incests Treasons and such other enormous sins so much the more detestable in that they had no example of them as their posterity hath had since And as for the inferior bodies since their actions are at present altogether the same with what they perform'd in the beginning of the world the Fire for example not burning less nor the Water cooling less then in Adam's time it must be concluded that they are not chang'd but remain always in the same state The Fifth said That as in the Microcosme we may judge of the corruption of the Body by the least alteration of its parts and fore-tell its death by the disorder observ'd in the most noble so we may make the like Judgement in the Maerocosme in which we see no Mixt Bodies but what are corruptible For things are no longer then they act action being the measure of their being And therefore seeing nothing can act perpetually because the virtue of every thing is bounded and finite nothing can be perpetual As Knives and the like instruments are blunted with much cutting so the qualities incessantly acting must of necessity be weakned and at length become impotent But the surest sign of the worlds corruption is the annihilation of corporeal formes the noblest parts of the universe For as for spiritual formes when they are separated from the Body they are no longer consider'd as parts of the world The Sixth confirm'd this opinion by the abundance of new diseases sprang up in these last Ages and unknown to the preceding as the Neapolitane Malady the Scurvy and sundry others which cannot proceed but from the corruption of Humours and Tempers and this from that of the Elements The Seventh said That the world is so far from growing worse that on the contrary it becomes more perfect as 't is proper to things created from a small beginning to increase and at length attain their perfection which the world having attain'd doth not decline because it is not an organiz'd body whose property it is to do so after it hath attain'd its State This is visible in Metals and particularly in Gold which the longer they remain in the Earth the more concoction and perfection they acquire Moreover the Wits of Men are more refin'd then ever For what could be more ignorant then the Age of our first Parents for whom God himself was fain to make Clothes those of their own making being onely fig-leaves In the Ages following you see nothing so gross as what was then accounted the highest degree of subtlety as the Learning of the Rabbins among the Jews and the Druids among the Gauls the best skill'd of whom might come to school to our Batchelors But their gross ignorance in Handy-crafts appears amongst others in our Flowers de Luce the figure whereof stamp'd on their Coin resembles any thing rather then a Flower de Luce. II. Of Jealousie Upon the Second Point it was said That Jealousie is very hard to be defin'd If you rank it under the Genius of Fear how comes it to make Rivals so venturous in attempting and executing If 't is a sort of Anger and Indignation whence do's it make them so pale If you assign this Passion to Man alone how do's it metamorphose them into beasts taking from them all exercise of reason If you admit it in beasts too how do's it render Men so ingenious I think they should speak best who should term it a Rage since the most Tragical Histories are fullest of its actions Yet you shall meet with some that make a laughter of it and if a Mistress changes them they also change their Mistress who when they are marry'd alwayes knock at the door though it be wide open for fear of finding what they do not seek Whereas others are jealous even of the sheets of their own bed Let us therefore rank it amongst the caprichious Passions or rather let us do like the Physitians who having given names to all the Veins and Bones term some which they know not how to call otherwise Innominate and sine pari So this Passion shall be the nameless and peerless Passion The Second said This Passion seem'd to depend on the Climates Northern people being very little subject to it whereas they of the South cannot hear Mass or Sermon unless there be a wall between the Men and the Women And Bodin saith 't was one of the things which Mendoza Gondamor the Spanish Ambassador wonder'd at most in France and England why Men went with Women into Churches Likewise Caesar saith of the English that twelve of them were contented with one Woman and agreed peaceably whereas the Indians and Africans have troops of Wives and yet Puna King of the Indians did not think his secure amongst his Eunuchs till he had disfigur'd them and cut off their Arms. The Third said that Jealousie may be compar'd to the Syrian Cow of whom the Proverb saith that indeed she fill'd the pail with her Milk but presently overturn'd it with a kick It gives Love and it gives Ruine And yet this Passion is so inseparable and so necessarily a companion of Love that it do's the same office to it which the bellows do to the furnace which it kindles For imagine a
Fifth said 'T is more fit to admire these secret motions which depend only on the good pleasure of Nature who alone knows wherein consists the proportion correspondence which makes bodies symbolize one with another then to seek the true cause of them unprofitably And Aristotle himself confesses that he knew not whereunto to refer the Antipathy which is between the Wolf and the Sheep so strange that even after their deaths the strings of Instruments made of their guts never agree together as the feathers of the Eagle consume those of other Birds Likewise the subtile Scaliger after much time unprofitably spent acknowledges that he understands it not They who go about to give reasons of it are not less ignorant but more vain then others The Sixth said Words are frequently abus'd as for example when 't is attributed to Antipathy that the Dog runs after the Hare whereas 't is for the pleasure that he takes in his smelling which is an effect of Sympathy But they who refer almost every thing to Occult Proprieties are like the Country-man who not seeing the springs of a Watch thinks it moves by an occult vertue or who being ask'd why it thunders answers simply because it pleases God Wherefore instead of imitating the ignorant vulgar who are contented to admire an Eclipse without seeking the cause the difficulty ought to inflame our desire as we use more care and diligence to discover a hidden treasure nothing seeming impossible to the Sagacious wits of these times The Seventh said That according to Plato the reason of Sympathies and Antipathies is taken from the correspondence and congruity or from the disproportion which inferior bodies have with the superiour which according as they are more or less in terrestrial bodies and according to the various manner of their being so the same have more or less sympathy For as inferior things take their source from above so they have one to the other here below the same correspondence which is common to them with the celestial bodies according to the Axiom that things which agree in one third agree also among themselves Thus amongst stones those which are call'd Helites and Selenites Sun-stone and Moon-stone are luminous because they partake of the rayes of those Luminaries and the Helioselene imitates by its figure the Conjunction of the Sun and Moon Amongst Plants the Lote or Nettle-tree the Mari-gold and the Heliotrope or Sun-flower follow the motion of the Sun Amongst Solar Animals the Cock and the Lyon are the most noble and the Cock more then the Lyon he alwayes gives applauses to the Sun when he perceives him approaching our Horizon or Zenith Whereupon the Lyon fears and respects him because things which are inferior to others in one and the same degree yield to them though they surpass them in strength and bigness as the arms which fury hath put into the hands of a mutinous multitude fall out of them at the presence of some man of respect and authority though they be a thousand against one II. Whether Love descending be stronger then ascending Upon the second Point it was said Although this be a common saying and it seems that Love ought rather to descend then ascend yea that Fathers are oblig'd to love their children even with the hatred of themselves yet I conceive that the love of children towards their fathers surpasses that of fathers towards their children inasmuch as the latter proceeds from the love which the fathers bear to themselves being desirous to have support and assistance from those whom they bring into the world and in them to perpetuate their names honours estates and part of themselves But the love of children to Fathers is pure and dis-interested as may be observ'd in many who having no hope of a patrimony love and honour their parents with most respectful kindness Moreover the supream authority and absolute power of life and death which the Romans and our ancient Gaules frequently us'd against their children shows their little affection For not to speak of those Nations who sacrific'd theirs to false gods nor of Manlius Mithridates Philip II. King of Spain and infinite others who put them to death Fathers anciently held them of worse condition then their slaves For a slave once sold never return'd more into the Seller's power whereas a son sold and set at liberty return'd thrice into the power of his Father As also at this day in Moscovia Russia and particularly in Cyprus Rhodes and Candia where 't is an ordinary thing for fathers to sell their sons to marry their daughter which made Augustus say having heard that Herod had kill'd his own son that it was better to be the Swine then son of a Jew But Patricide was unknown to ancient Legislators and Lycurgus never ordain'd any punishment against such criminals not imagining that such a crime could come into the mind of a lawful child whom the Persians conceiv'd to declare himself a bastard by such an action For that foolish custom which reign'd some time at Rome of precipitating men of sixty years old from the bridge into Tyber is no sign of the cruelty of children towards their fathers since they imagin'd that they did an act of piety and religion therein by delivering them from the miseries of this life The Second said None can know how great a love a father bears his children but he that hath been a Father Paternal tenderness is so vehement that all the passions and affections of the soul give place to it Prudence and Philosophy may preach to us restraint and moderation but a father's love admitting no rule caus'd a King of Sparta to run with a stick between his legs a Grand Cosmo to whip a top and the wisest of all the Grecians to play at Cob-nut to make pastime to their children experiences sufficient to gain the cause to paternal love though it were not back'd by these reasons 1. That love being the issue of knowledge the more there is of knowledge the more there is of love Therefore fathers having more knowledge then their children have also more love 2. As man desires nothing so much as immortality so he loves that thing especially which procures the same to him and hating death more then any thing in the world extreamly loves what seems to keep him from dying as his children do in whom he seems to revive Whence also the Pelican feeds its young at the expence of its own blood On the contrary Man being the most ambitious of all creatures hates nothing so much as to see himself subjected to another Wherefore children that the benefits which they receive from their fathers may oblige them to gratitude and subjections they perform the same indeed but with much less love then their fathers 3. God ha's given no commandment to fathers to love their children knowing that they lov'd them but too much but he hath to children to love and honour their fathers as having need to be invited
thereunto even by promise of reward 4. We naturally love that which proceeds from us be it the most imperfect in the world The Workman loves his work more then that loves him as the Creator loves his creature better then he is lov'd by it Moreover we find in Scripture fathers who desir'd and obtain'd the raising of their children from the dead but no child that pray'd God to raise his father yea one that desir'd leave to go and bury his To conclude our will is carri'd to an object by the opinion true or false which it conceives of it and accordingly we see that a man's only believing himself to be a father inspires this paternal love into him though he be not The Third said In this sweet debate between fathers and children I conceive the former ought to yield to the latter as in all other cases the latter to the former And as the whole goes not to seek its part but the part its whole so the child who is part of his father loves him more tenderly and is more willingly lead towards him then the father towards his child If fathers love their children because they resemble them the resemblance is common to both and so children shall love them as much for the same reason And the being which fathers give their children is as much an effect of the love which they bear to themselves as of that which they bear to their children Indeed if love be a fire as the Poets say it must according to its natural motion rather ascend then descend and if in humane love the lover is less perfect then the loved the child who hath less perfection then the father must be the lover and the father the subject of his love And this the examples of Filial love sufficiently manifest For not to speak of Aeneas who sav'd his father from the fire and sack of Troy nor of Amphinomus and Anapias who went to draw theirs out of the midst of Aetna's flames nor of Cimon the son of Miltiades who sold his liberty to redeem the dead body of his father which was retain'd for debts and to give it an honourable burial nor of Athamanes King of Crete who voluntarily brought death upon himself that he might prolong his fathers life according to the answer of the Oracle Appius alone decides the question He had the choice of leaving either his father or his own family in evident danger he chose rather to be a good son then a good father and husband abandoning his wife and children to the proscription of the Triumvirate that he might secure his father from it The Fourth said It seems that Filial love is rather a payment of a debt an acknowledgement of a benefit and shunning of ingratitude then a free and natural affection such as that of the father is Besides he who gives loves more then he who receives Yea it seems that he who began to do good is oblig'd to continue it that his work be not imperfect Now fathers give not only being which nevertheless is the foundation of well-being but also usually education and their riches acquir'd by their labours induc'd so to do by the sole consideration of honesty upon which their love being grounded is much more noble and admirable then that of children which is commonly establish'd upon the profit which they receive from their fathers The Fifth said 'T is not so much the being a father or a son that causes the amity as the being a good father or good son otherwise all fathers should love their children in the same manner and all children their fathers which do's not hold Nature casts the seeds of it co-habitation cultivates it custom cherishes it example fashions it but above all compassion enforces it Thus fathers seeing the weakness of their children ha's need of their aid love them the more And for this reason Grand-fathers love their Nephews more tenderly then their own children And when fathers through sicknesses or decrepit age become objects of compassion to their children their kindness is redoubled bur 't is not usually so strong as that of fathers towards them CONFERENCE XXXIII I. Of those that walk in their sleep II. Which is the most excellent Moral Virtue I. Of those that walk in sleep SLeep-walkers call'd by the Greeks Hypnobatae are such as rising out of their beds in the night walk about in their sleep and do the same things as if they were awake then return to bed again and think not that they were out of it unless in a dream This affection is rank'd under the symptomes of the animal faculty and particularly of the common sense and though it be not a disease yet it seems in some sort to be against nature For since men sleep for the resting of their senses and motion and wake to exercise the same whatever hinders and alters the one or the other as to move when we should rest is against nature And if it be strange persons remain stupid when they are awake as Exstaticks do 't is no less to see a man in sleep do as much or more then if he were awake I ascribe the natural causes hereof 1. To the Imagination which receives the impression of objects no less during sleep then waking yea it represents them to it self much greater then they are as it hapned to him whose leg being become paralytical in his sleep he dream'd that he had a leg of stone Now these species being strong act so powerfully upon the Imagination of the Hypnobatae that they constrain them to move and go towards the things represented therein For though sense be hindred in sleep yet motion is not as appears by Respiration which is always free and by infants who stir in their mothers belly though they sleep continually For the hinder part of the head destinated to motion is full of abundance of spirits especially at the beginning of the Spinal Marrow where there is a very apparent Cavity which cannot be stop'd by vapours as the anterior part of the head is in which the organs of the senses are which being stop'd by vapours can have no perception during sleep Wherefore 't is groundless to say with Aristotle that sleep-walkers see as well as if they were awake for 't is impossible for one not awake to see because visible objects make a more lively impression in their organ then any other and a man asleep is not distinguish'd from another but by cessation of the sense of seeing For one may Hear Taste Smell and Touch without waking but not See 2. The thick and tenacious vapours seising upon the brain and obstructing its out-lets contribute much to this effect For since the smoak of Tobacco is sometimes kept in our bodies two whole days the same may happen to the gross and viscous vapours rais'd from the humours or aliments 3. The particular constitution of their bodies is of some moment towards it as an active hot dry and robust
consequent of a servile spirit Hence the Persians were not contented to cause the children of their Kings to be instructed above all things always to speak the truth but they erected Temples and Altars to this Vertue as to a Deity and ador'd it under the name of Oromagdes which signifies the God of Truth And therefore 't is my judgement that truth ought always to be spoken although it be to one's own damage The Second said If it be necessary always to speak truth and that it be the conformity of our words with our thoughts mine is that it is not always to be spoken This Nature teaches us whilest she discovers to us only the surface of the earth but hath hid all the treasures of it as all the parts of man especially the more noble are conceal'd under the skin That which vilifies mysteries is the publishing of them call'd Prophanation That which hinders the effect of State-Counsels whereof secrecy is the soul is the letting of them be discover'd which is Treason That which takes away the credit from all arts and professions is the rendring them common And Physick amongst others knows the advantage of concealment whilst the welfare of the Patient many times depends upon his ignorance Would you see what difference there is between a wise man and a fool a Civil Man and a Clown it do's not consist in knowledge for they oftentimes have the same thoughts and inclinations but the Fool speaks all that he thinks the Wise man doth not as the Clown will declare by Gesture and if he can do every thing that comes into his phancie but the better bred man uses restraint upon himself The Comoedian therefore wanted not reason to say that Truth begets Hatred and the Scripture teaches us that God built houses for the wise Egyptian women who ly'd to Pharaoh when they were commanded to murther the Hebrew children at the birth but obey'd not For though some hold that God pardon'd them the lye in regard of the good office which they render'd to his Church and that 't was for this good office that God dealt well with them yet leaving this subtilety to the Schoolmen 't is evident that their dissimulation was approv'd in this case The Third said There 's great difference between Lying and not speaking all the truth which is expected from us the former being vicious the other not whence S. Athanasius being ask'd by the Arrians who pursu'd him whether he had seen Athanasius told them that he went that way a little while since but did not tell them that himself was the person And S. Francis being ask'd whether he did not see a robber pass by shew'd his sleeve and said that he did not pass that way The Fourth said As only weak and distemper'd eyes are unable to bear the light of the Sun so none but weak and sickly minds cannot suffer the lustre of truth All men are oblig'd to speak it but particularly that which is dictated from God's mouth and we ought rather to choose Martyrdom then renounce the belief of it Less ought they to conceal it who are bound to it by their condition as Preachers and Witnesses provided they have regard to place time and persons Without which circumstances 'tis as inacceptable and absur'd as to carry a Queen to an Ale-house Yet in two cases particularly the telling of truth may be dispens'd with I. when the safety of the Prince or good of the State is concern'd for which Plato in his Commonwealth saith it is lawful to lye sometimes and the Angel Raphael told Tobias that 't is good to hide the secrets of Kings II. When our own life is concern'd or that of our Father Mother and Kindred against whom although we certainly know them guilty of a Crime we are not oblig'd to declare it provided nevertheless that it be with the respect due to the Magistrate and that we beware of speaking lyes whilst we intend onely to decline discovery of the Truth 'T is the opinion of the Civilians and amongst others of Paulus in l. 9. ff de Test. that a Father cannot be constrain'd to bear witness against his Son nor a Son against his Father except in the case of High Treason The Fifth said That these three things must not be confounded To lye To speak or tell a lye and to do or act one To lye is to go against our own meaning as when I know a thing and not onely conceal it but speak the contrary This action according to some is alwayes evil inasmuch say they as 't is never lawful to do evil that good may come of it According to others 't is qualifi'd according to the diversity of its end For he who tells a lye to save a Traveller's life who is pursu'd by Thieves seemes to do better then if he expos'd him to their Cruelty by his discovery The Physitian who dissembles to his Patient the danger of his disease and thinks it enough to acquaint his domesticks therewith do's better then if he cast him into despair by a down-right dismal prognostication and when he chears him up in fitting time and place by some pleasant made Story what he speaks can scarce be reckon'd amongst idle words But he who lyes for his Profit as most Trades-men do sins proportionably to the deceit which he thereby causes but he is most culpable who lyes to the Magistrate One may tell or speak a lye without lying namely when one speaks a false thing conceiving it to be true To do or speak a lye is to lead a life contrary to ones profession as he who preaches well and lives ill Whence I conclude that many precautions are requisite to lye without committing an offence that a lye is to be spoken as little as possible and never to be done or acted at all CONFERENCE XXXVIII I. Of the Period called Fits of Fevers II. Of Friendship I. Of the Fits of Agues A Fever is a Heat contrary to Nature kindled in the Heart and from thence sent by the Arteries and Veins into the whole Body with a manifest laesion or disturbance of the action It is so inseparable from the Heart in case of any injury that being we cannot dye without the Heart be mis-affected therefore many have thought that we cannot dye without a Fever though 't were of a violent death And for that there are three subjects which receive this Heat viz. the Parts the Humours and the Spirits thence ariseth the distinction of Fevers into three kinds the Hectick the Humoral and the Ephemera or One-day Fever The first is in the solid parts and is call'd Hectick or Habitual because it resides in the whole habit of the Body and is of very long continuance yea ordinarily lasts till Death The second call'd Humoral is when the Humours are enflam'd either through a bare excess of Heat without other alteration in their substance or with corruption and putrefaction which happens most frequently The third
them by the underminings of the wicked and envious who are the greatest number then obtain new by performing as much good as he will either because they who are able to reward him are not always well inform'd thereof or because they want both the means and the will to do it Therefore although God would have us hope for Paradise yet he requires that we serve him in fear and draw neer to him with trembling So that the thing we most hope for eternal life mixing our hope with fear 't is not credible that any other thing is exempt from it Yet there are some fears without any hope Now the passion which acts powerfully alone is stronger then that which acts onely in the company of another The Second said That if the greatness of causes is to be judg'd by that of their effects that Passion must be strongest which leads us to the greatest attempts And so Hope will carry it above Fear since 't is that which makes a Souldier run up a breach and which hath induc'd so many illustrious men both ancient and modern to generous actions whereas Fear by its coldness chilling the spirits and penning them within renders them incapable of any action For all our actions depending on the dispositions of the spirits the instruments of all motions both Internal and External if these spirits be heated active and nimble as they are render'd by Hope then the Mind is boldly carry'd to the most difficult actions On the contrary if they be cool'd and fix'd by Fear then the soul finding her self enfeebled can do nothing but what is mean and pusillanimous The Third said To examine the power of Hope and Fear aright we must look upon them as two Champions who are to encounter But Fear already shews by the paleness of its Countenance that it wants Heart and yields to Hope which animates it self to the pursuite of the good it aims at by driving away all sort of Fear which would cause apprehension of obstacles and crosses opposing the enjoyment of that good Moreover Fear is contemptible and not found but in abject spirits whereas Hope resides in sublime souls where it produces actions worthy of its grandeur and original which is Heaven towards which men naturally lift their eyes in their adversities as Fear derives its original from below towards which it depresses the bodies and minds of those whom it possesses So that to compare Hope with Fear is to put Heaven in parallel with Earth The Fourth said That both these Passions belong to the Irascible Appetite both of them look to the future and are employ'd to surmount the difficulties which are presented to the Concupiscible Appetite Hope is the expectation of a good hard to be obtain'd yet apprehended possible It is found most frequently in young men because they live onely upon the future and 't is the Anchor of all unfortunate persons none of which are out of Hope of being deliver'd from their miseries 'T is Physick to all our evils never abandoning the most desperately sick so long as they breathe Yea 't is the refuge of all man-kind of what sex age or condition soever herein the more miserable in that being destitute of real good there remains no more for them but imaginary and phantastick Hence the Hebrews denote Hope and Folly by the same word Chesel The truth is as if the evils that oppress us were not numerous enough our souls frame and phancy infinite more through Fear which dreads as well that which is not as that which is being properly the Expectation of an approaching evil which gives horrour to our senses and cannot easily be avoided For men fear not the greatest evils but those which are most contrary to their nature Whence it is that they more apprehend the halter the gallies or infamy then falling into vices or losing the Grace of God For although these be the greatest evils of the world yet men do not acknowledge them such but by a reflection of the Understanding Hence also the wicked fear the wheel more then Hell because Gods punishments of sin are accounted slow and those of men speedy But to judge of the strength of Hope and Fear by their proper essence we must consider that Good being much less delightful to Nature then Evil is painful and sensible because Good onely gives a better being Evil absolutely destroyes being Fear which is the expectation of this Evil is much more powerful then Hope which is the expectation of that Good Which appears further by its effects far more violent then those of Hope for it makes the Hair stand an end and hath sometimes turn'd it white in one night it makes the Countenance pale the whole body quake and tremble the Heart beat and not onely alters the whole habit of it but perverts Reason abolishes Reason and Memory intercepts the use of Speech and of all the Senses so that it hath caus'd sudden death to divers persons But Hope never gave life to any Fear adds wings wherewith to avoid an Evil Hope barely excites to move towards Good In a word Fear needs sometimes the whole strength of all the Virtues to repress its violence and check its disorders CONFERENCE LXV I. Of the Intellect II. Whether the Husband and Wife should be of the same humour I. Of the Intellect THe Intellect is a Faculty of the Soul whereby we understand For of the Faculties some are without knowledge as the natural common to man and inanimate bodies and the vegetative which he hath in common with plants namely the powers of Nutrition Accretion and Generation others are with the knowledge And these again are either exercis'd without the use of Reason as the Internal and External Senses or else stand in need of Reason as the Intellect and the Rational Appetite which is the Will the former to distinguish true from false the latter good from evil Now as the Understanding acquires its notions from the inferior powers so it imitates their manner of perception and as sensible perception is passion so is intellectual and the intelligible species are receiv'd in the Intellect after the same manner that the sensible are in the organs of the outward senses For as their organs must be free from all the qualities whereof they are to judge so must the Understanding which is to judge of every thing be from all intelligible species yea more then the organs of the Senses For the Crystalline humour of the Eye hath tangible qualities the hand visible because the former is not destinated to touch withall nor the latter to see But the Intellect being to understand every thing because every thing is intelligible must be wholly clear of all Anticipations contrary to Plato's opinion who admitting a Transmigration of souls conceiv'd that entring into other bodies they carryed with them the species of things which they had known before but darkn'd and veil'd with the clouds and humidities of the bodies which recloth'd them
shew'd thereby that death is not the most terrible thing since they embrac'd it as a remedy to their misfortunes But that which renders our experience as well as our reasoning weak in this matter is that none can give account of it either before or after trial for while we live it is not yet and when it is we are no longer Nevertheless Plato in his Timaeus affirms that violent death caus'd by diseases or wounds is painful but not that which comes of old age which he saith happens by dissolution of the triangles which retain the Soul in the Body For the former being against nature is as troublesome to it as the other which following the course of nature is agreeable to it because the soul having finish'd its task begins now to resent some foretastes of beatitude and hence it begins also to have some knowledge of future things At least this sort of death is very little sensible being caus'd slowly and equally and by consequence without pain Yea if it be true that the Heart is the last part that dyes the brain losing sense before the Heart cannot communicate the same to the whole body which consequently feels not the pains of death but those which lead to it and which make their pangs more felt by those that bear up against them by reason of the resistance of their strength then when the strength is overcome and fails whence those that have Apoplexies endure no pain during the course of their malady And such as have been taken down half dead from the Gallows agree that they endur'd nothing but fear For which cause this kind of death is accounted very easie and without any sense the brain being depriv'd thereof by compression of the Carotides Arteries which carry the spirits to it and become apoplectical by the quantity of blood which is included in it as also the heart being stifl'd falls into deliquium and the principal parts are depriv'd of sense by the constriction of the Nerves of the sixth pair Those whom a Gangrene in the leg or arm parts more sensible then those within brings to their end affirm that oftentimes death comes upon them without pain Indeed since life ends as it begins and the soul goes out of the body after the same manner that it enter'd into it therefore as at its entrance it first exercises the vegetative operations afterwards the sensitive so the vegetative faculty remains last subsists in the dying creature when all the rest are extinct and is lost without sense in the same manner as in Plants For the convulsive motions of dying persons argue not their having of sense since those that are in an Epileptical fit suffer much greater without pain II. Of the Will Upon the second Point it was said That every created thing having a tendency towards its chief natural good hath also faculties whereby to attain the same This chief good is the supream perfection of its being And because that of man consists in knowing truth loving good and being united by enjoyment to both the one and the other he hath been likewise furnish'd with powers for this end two wherewith to know and as many to love according to the two sorts of goods whereof he is capable as compos'd of a sensitive part and an intellectual He knows sensible good by help of the Senses which gust the same in its whole latitude and honest good by the Understanding He loves sensible good by the sensitive appetite and honest good by the Will which is a rational desire of good For it loves not any good which hath not first been judg'd such by reason which serves it in stead of eyes being a blind faculty of it self that is without knowledge whence they say knowing must go before loving And 't is not necessary that this good be truly such of its own nature if it be apprehended as such this is sufficient to render it the object of our will Nevertheless being good but in appearance it only takes the will for a while but do's not satiate it as honest good doth towards which we have a natural inclination Whence it is that such as have deviated from it as soon as their understanding is rectifi'd resent an inward grief thereupon which is that dictate of Reason call'd Synteresis The Second said That the Will is the mistress of all the animal powers which it causes to operate and forbear as it pleases exercising its dominion too over the Understanding which it commands to take notice of and contemplate one object rather then another Nevertheless as the pores subject to it are disserent so is the empire distinct which it exercises over them For that which it hath over the loco-motive faculty is a despotical empire such as a Master hath over his servant that which it hath over the sensitive appetite and other faculties is Political like that of a Magistrate over his fellow Citizens who obey him so that yet they forbear not to do many things without him and even against his will The motions of the sensitive appetite being herein like those of the Celestial Spheres which follow that of their superior Sphere and nevertheless have a contrary one of their own And this Appetite is carri'd not only to its particular object without the command of the Will but also towards things wholly contrary to it and this for punishment of the sin whereby the will rebelling against God deserv'd that the appetite at first subject to it should become rebellious to it destroying the agreeable harmony which appear'd in the state of innocence Which contrariety is the greater in as much as the object of the will is honest which is commonly difficult and that of the sensitive appetite delectable which two being opposite draw it several ways and hence arise the conflicts of the flesh against the spirit yea the same man at the same time and for the same thing feels contrary motions in himself a certain evidence of their real difference The Third said 'T is the Will alone that makes us happy or unhappy since it makes us good or bad and nothing is such unless it be voluntary and free Hence it hath so great a power that it alone over-rules the Stars which govern all being capable of having inclinations contrary to theirs It is known as other faculties are by its actions which are either extrinsecal as commanding the animal faculties or within it self as willing or not willing pursuing or aversion joying or grieving For the property of man being to know his end as such if this end be good he wills it if evil he wills it not if absent he pursues it if present he enjoys it if the evil be absent he averts from it if present he is afflicted by it But before the will attain this end it proposes consults and deliberates of the means to arrive thereunto which it compares together in order to find which is most expedient and is carri'd to the
then the Sword as recover it according to the advice of the Arabians and other Physitians who all acknowledge intemperance for their best friend and are wont to prescribe Diet in the first place to which belong primarily Fasting then Medicaments and lastly Cauteries There is also a moral fast which is a vertue which in eating observes a measure sutable to nature and right reason for the taming of the sensual appetite and encreasing the vigour of mind which is enervated by plenty of meats A vertue which S. Austin calls the keeper of the memory and Judgement Mistress of the Mind Nurse of Learning and Knowledge But the Fast of Religion is the most excellent of all because it refers immediately to God who by this means is satisfi'd for sins because it abates the lust of the flesh and raises the spirit to contemplation of sublime things purifying the soul and subduing the flesh to the spirit but particularly that of Lent whose sutableness is manifest in that this time is the tenth part of the year which we offer to God as from all antiquity the tenths of every thing were dedicated to him Moreover 't is observ'd that Moses and Elias who fasted forty days the longest fast mention'd in Scripture merited to be present at our Lord's Transfiguration The Second said Fasting is an abstinence from food as to quantity or quality As to the first some have abstain'd long from all kind of food as Histories assure us and Pliny tells of the Astomi a people of India neer the River Ganges who have no mouths but live only upon smells But 't is abstinence too when we eat little and soberly and only so much as is needful for support of life such as were the abstinences of the Persians and the Lacedemonians with whom it was a shameful thing to belch or blow the Nose these being signs of having taken more food then nature is able to digest The Gymnosophists Magi and Brachmans rigorously observ'd these fasts In quality we abstain from some certain meats Thus the Jews abstain'd from all animals except such as chew'd the Cud and were cloven hoof'd And amongst them the Nazarites were forbidden by God to drink Wine or any inebriating liquor as the Essceans a Sect of Monasticks besides Wine abstain'd from flesh and women Pythagoras abhorr'd Beans as much as he lov'd Figs either because the first were us'd in condemning criminals or because they excited lust by their flatuosity None of this Sect touch'd fish out of reverence to the silence of this animal and they made conscience of killing other creatures in regard of their resemblance with us which was also observ'd by the first men before the Flood for 2000 years together the Law of Nature which then bore sway making the same abhor'd But this fast is much harder in our diversity of fare then when only Acorns serv'd for food to our first Fathers when the Athenians liv'd of Figs alone the Argians and Tirynthians of pears the Medes of Almonds the Aethiopians of Shrimps and the fruits of Reeds the Persians of Cardamomes the Babylonians of Dates the Egyptians of Lote as the Icthyophagi of Fish of which dry'd and ground to powder many Barbarians make bread at this day and their meat of the fresh For in those days people liv'd not to eat as many do in these luxurious times but eat to live The Third said That fasting is as contrary to the health of the body as conducive to that of the mind The best temper which is hot and moist is an enemy to the souls operations which require a temper cold and dry which is acquir'd by fasting hence choler being hot and dry gives dexterity and vivacity blood hot and moist renders men foolish and stupid and the cold and dry melancholy humour is the cause of prudence But this is to be understood of fasting whereby less food is taken then nature is able to assimilate not of that which observes a mediocrity always commendable and good for health Moreover the right end of fasting is to afflict and macerate that body by abstaining from the aliments which it naturally desires But as in drinking and eating so in abstinence from either there is no certain rule but regard must be had to the nature of the aliments some of which are more nutritive then others to that of the body to the season custom exercises and other circumstances so they who eat plentifully of ill-nourishing meats or whose stomacks and livers are very large and hot or who are accustom'd to eat much will fast longer then those that eat little but of good juice or who have not much heat and use but little exercise Growing persons as children though plentiful feeders yet oftentimes will fast more then those that eat less In Winter and Spring when the bowels are hotter and sleep longer fasting is more insupportable because the natural heat being now stronger then in Summer and Autumn consumes more nourishment Wherefore only discretion can prescribe rules for fasting If it be for health so much must be given Nature as she requires and no more the first precept of Hippocrates for health being Never to satiate one's self with food If 't is intended to purge the soul then 't is requisite to deny something to nature the sucking which is felt in the stomack serving to admonish reason of the right use of abstinence For temperance must not be turn'd into murder and fasting only macerate not destroy the body The Fourth said That by fasting Socrates preserv'd himself from the Plague against which we are erroneously taught to make repletion an Antidote when 't is manifest man's fasting spittle is found to be an enemy to poysons to kill Vipers and mortifie Quick-silver Moreover we may impute the false consequence which is drawn from the true Aphorisme of Hippocrates That Eunuchs Women and Children never have the Gout and the production of so many modern diseases to gluttony and the frequency of meals our fore-fathers being so well satisfi'd with one that Plato wonder'd how the Sicilians could eat twice a day CONFERENCE LXX I. Of Climacterical Years II. Of Shame I. Of Climacterical Years MAn's life is a Comedy whereof the Theatre or Stage is the World Men the Actors and God the Moderator who ends the Play and draws the Curtain when it seems good to him When 't is play'd to the end it hath five Acts Infancy or Childhood Adolescence Virility or Manhood consisting of middle age and old age each of 14 years which multiply'd by 5 make 70 years the term assign'd to humane life by the Royal Prophet These acts are divided into two Scenes of as many septenaries in either of which considerable alterations both in body goods and mind also are observ'd to come to pass For seeing many persons incur great accidents at one certain number of years rather then another and if they scape death fall again into other dangers at certain times and so from one degree
quantity of the Exhalations which cannot all get forth but in a long time or are not strong enough to break the gates of their prison The Fifth said That to move the most ponderous Body the Earth requires the most active of all Agents which is fire whose centre the Pythagoreans therefore plac'd in the middle of the Earth because the noblest Element deserves the noblest place which is the middle and for that 't is necessary to the generations which are made there Hence Maritime places where most Vulcano's are observ'd whose Fire is fed with the oylie and unctuous humours of the adjacent Sea are more obnoxious to Earthquakes and the last eruption of Mount Vesuvius was preceded by a horrible Earthquake As likewise the Island Sacrea above mention'd being first lifted up with a great noise and concussion open'd it self and cast forth flame and ashes as far as the City Lipara and some others of Italy Now according to the different matter of these Fires the concussions which they produce by attenuation of the inflam'd Air are different if it be nitrous they are very violent because Salt Petre being very Dry is suddenly fir'd in all its parts and being of a terrestrial nature takes up more room when inflam'd then Sulphur which is fat and aerious and consequently not so quickly inflameable in the whole but only in its surface by reason of its extreme humidity which checks the Fire and when it is inflam'd it takes not up so much room being of it self aerious and consequently needing less space when it is rarifi'd to be converted into Fire whence the tremors caus'd by it are less But when the matter which feeds those Fires is bituminous the tremors are moderate because Bitumen is of a middle nature between the two former Now because these materials when they begin to be inflam'd have not strength enough to make the Earth tremble till their Fire be increas'd proportionately to the enormous weight of the load which they are to move their first effect reaches no farther then to trouble and infect by their vapors the springs of Subterranean Waters as most susceptible of impression Hence according to the different taste smell and consistence of the water of Fountains and Wells some have fore-told Earthquakes as Apollonius saith that Pherecides having tasted the water of a spring in Scyros fore-told one which hapned three dayes after Moreover if these vapors infect the Air too the Earthquakes are follow'd by contagions The Sixth said That without determining the famous Question of the Earth's Motion it may be said that it moves about the Heaven as a stone in a circle it would have the same tremors and titubatious as those which Astronomers attribute to the Bodies of the Planets besides the regular motions of their spheres of which Agitations 't is not strange if Men who are mov'd with it discern not the differences so well as they do those of the Heavens since they who are in a Ship do not so well discern their own motion as that of others II. Of Envy Upon the Second Poynt it was said That 't is no wonder Man is so miserable since not onely the evil but also the good of others render him equally unhappy For if we think them unworthy of it it afflicts us and raises indignation If it begets sadnesse in us for not having obtain'd as much it causes Emulation but if this good disgusts us meerly because we are sorry that another enjoyes it it produces Envy and these several affections are not to be confounded For the two former are not any wayes vicious but oftentimes virtuous and signes of a Soul well dispos'd whereas the last is a grosse vice directly opposite to Charity which is the life of the Soul and to Humane Society violating virtue which is the principal bond of it and when the same is so bright and manifest as not to fear its assaults whose lustre it obscures as much as possible by its stinking breath and black calumnies Pride is the Mother of it Self-love the Father Treachery Dissimulation Detraction and Ruine its Daughters And as 't is the eldest of all vices so 't is the most enormous having cast Lucifer and millions of Angels out of Heaven and by his snares caus'd the fall of Man through the perswasion of the Woman who was ambitious to become a Goddess and who as more weak and proud is more inclin'd to this passion then Man Therefore Aristotle saith that the Peacock the proudest is also the most envious of all Animals The Second said Other Vices have alwayes some sort of pretext Covetousnesse the fear of want and Ambition doing service to the publick but Envy cannot find any because it malignes what ever is laudable and good out of it self herein much more pernicious then all other vices each of which is opposite but to one good as Lust to Continence Pride to Humility But this sets it self to ruine if it can all the goods of the Body of Forutne and of the Mind and so is a sworn Enemy of Mankind Such it was in extremity in that Man-hater Timon who invited all his fellow Citizens to come and hang themselves upon his Fig-tree before he cut it down to build with in one Mutius a Roman who being very sad it was said of him Either some Evill is hapned to Mutius or some good to some other For the Envious looks only askew upon others prosperity the thought of which incessantly gnaws his heart and consumes him by drying up the blood in his veins Which made the Poets represent Envy in the shape of a squinting woman with a dull dejected countenance of a livid complexion her head wreath'd with vipers and all the rest of the body lean and ugly Physitians say Melancholy persons are most subject to it by reason of that black humour which produces and is produc'd by it 'T was through envy that Tyberius put to death an excellent Architect being unable to behold with a good eye a pendant Porch which he had built and much less his invention of malleable Glass and it so tormented the spirit of Caligula that he burnt all he could of Virgil's Works and he could not endure the sight of handsome youths but caus'd their goodly locks to be cut off that they might become deform'd The Third said That envy as vicious as it is hath nevertheless some utility not only amongst private persons to excite emulation amongst Artists and make them strive who shall sell the best peny-worths but also for the State it being held a political maxime to hinder as much as possible the grandeur of neighbouring States And the Ostracism of Athens although a balance to preserve democratical equality was nevertheless an effect of Envy against such as had gotten most credit and authority in the City whom they banish'd for ten years Yea had envy no other good in it but to afford occasion of exercising vertue it were not unprofitable The attempt to
longitude which under the Aequator makes sixty English miles and so also if you erre four minutes of an hour either in the time of the Tables or in the time of the observations and if the error of time be double treble or quadruple the error in longitude will likewise be multipli'd Now the Tables neither are nor can ever be exact nor the observations made punctually enough for this operation The reason of which latter is that 't is not sufficient to observe the Moon but you must at the same time with her observe one or two fix'd Stars And which is most difficult you must not only observe the body of the Moon but her Centre Now to have the Moon 's Centre you must have her Diametre which appears at the same time greater to some and lesser to others according as the observer's sight is more or less acute And the Parallaxes with the Refractions interposing too render this practice unprofitable for these parallaxes and refractions are different in the very body of the Moon the inferior part having greater refraction and parallax then the superior Whence we never have any sure knowledge from the said refractions and parallaxes For as for Parallaxes we have indeed very handsome Theories of them but such as cannot be reduc'd into practice with the preciseness requisite for Longitudes And as for the refractions of the air they are yet more incertain considering that we neither have nor ever can have any theory of them by reason of the continual variation of the density and rarity of vapours So that 't were requisite to have Tables for every Horizon made by the experience of many years and yet they would be very uncertain because the mutations hapning in the air would render them unprofitable Whence not only at sea but also at land 't is impossible to have exact observations of the Moon 's Centre so that Cespeda a Spanish Author had reason to say that this operation requir'd the assistance of an Angel From the defect of observations proceeds in part the defect of the Tables of the Moon 's motion I say in part for supposing the observations were exact yet we could not have exact Tables unless we had the true Hypothesis of the Moon 's motion and course Whence the Tables will be different among themselves which are made upon the same observations but several Hypotheses Thus we see Origanus and Kepler agree not in their Ephemerides but differ sometimes ten minutes though both made them upon the same observations of Tycho Brahe but upon different Hypotheses And thus there being no true Hypothesis of the Moon we can never have exact Tables though the observations should be such and consequently since the ways of finding Longitudes by the Moon are Observations and Tables and neither the one nor the other can be so exact as they ought men can never find Longitudes this way unless God afford them some other light of which they have not hitherto the least glimmering Wherefore Appian Veret Kepler Metius and many others who have spoken of the means of ascertaining Navigation by the Moon had reason to judge the practice thereof impossible as was remonstrated two years ago to one that here made a proposal of it as his own of which we are not likely to see the execution The most sure way we have to find these Longitudes is by help of the Lunar Eclipses For the beginning of them being observ'd in two different places the difference of the times of their beginnings will give the difference of the Meridians But this is an expedient more profitable to rectifie Geographical Charts then serviceable to Navigation CONFERENCE LXXV I. Of the Leprosie why it is not so common in this Age as formerly II. Of the ways to render a place populous I. Of the Leprosie FOr right understanding the nature of this disease 't is requisite to know that as the Brain is the source of cold diseases so the Liver is the furnace of hot such as this is although its debilitation of the faculties makes some account it cold For albeit the first qualities be rather the supposed then true parents of diseases yet being more perceptible to us then other causes and always accompanying them therefore our reason more readily pitches upon them Now the Liver either by its own fault or that of the preceding concoction which it cannot correct begets adust blood and this by further adustion in the Veins through the same excess of heat which it derives into them becoming atrabilarious is as such attracted and retain'd by every part of the body yet not assimilated as it ought to be in colour and consistence but turn'd into a scurfie black and putri'd flesh If that impure blood be carri'd but to one part and make a tumour in it it makes a Cancer in it either open or occult and not ulcerated which Hippocrates accounted so desperate an evil that he counsels not to meddle with it whence 't is vulgarly call'd Noli me tangere So that what a Cancer is in some part of the body as in the Paps or Breasts by reason of their spungy substance more dispos'd thereunto that is a Leprosie in the whole body The Second said No humours in the body are so malignant as to cause a Leprosie unless they be infected with some venomous quality The melancholy humour in whatever quantity causes only Quartan Agues or if it degenerate into black choler it causes that kind of folly which they call melancholy The bilious humour causes Frenzy never the Leprosie how adust soever it be without a pestilential and contagious quality whence Fernelius defines it a venemous disease in the earthy substance of the body whose nature it wholly alters For the melancholy earthy humour having once conceiv'd this poyson derives it to the bowels and all other parts which being corrupted and infected with it by degrees turn all food into a juice alike venemous wherewith the whole body being nourish'd acquires a like nature and retains the same till death that gross humour being more apt then any other to retain the qualities once imprinted on it Now this disease comes either by birth or by contagion or by the proper vitiosity of the body As for the first 't is certain if the Parents be infected with this venemous disease they transmit the same to their children the formative faculty not being able to make any thing but sutably to the matter it works upon Many hold but groundlesly that women conceiving during their purgations bring forth leprous children As for the second Leprosie hath this common with all other contagious diseases to communicate it self not only by contact of bodies but also by inspiration of the air infected with the breath of the leprous or the virulent smell of their Ulcers As for the third which is the proper vitiosity of the body 't is produc'd when a great quantity of black choler putrifies and becomes venemous And there are
directly contrary to the felicity of a City which consists not onely in a society of Men but of Men of different conditions the meanest of which being commonly most necessary in a State would not be exercis'd if all were equally rich and powerful And if the necessity of Hunger which sometimes taught Pies and Crows to speak at Rome had not press'd most of the first inventors of Arts the same would be yet to discover Nothing is more beautiful in Nature then Variety nor yet in Cities Besides Men being apt to neglect the publick in comparison of their private interest were goods common they would be careless of preserving or increasing them and rely upon the industry of others Thus this equality would beget laziness whilst they that labour'd most could hope for no more then they that did nothing at all Moreover if Wives and Children were common as Socrates in Plato would have them it would be a great hindrance to propagation Children would not own their Parents nor these their Children and so there would be no paternal filial nor conjugal love which yet are the surest foundations of humane society Incests and Parricides would be frequent and there would be no place for the exercise of most virtues as of Chastity and Friendship the most perfect of all virtues much less of Liberality and Magnificence since nothing should be given but what belongs alike to all nor would any be capable of receiving The Third said That in a City which is a society of companions some things must be necessarily injoy'd in common as Publick Places Havens Fairs Priviledges Walls Town-houses Fortresses and publick charges But not all things in regard of the inconveniences which would follow thereupon and therefore Plato was forc'd to reform his first imaginary Republick and make another more sutable to the humours of men permitting every one the possession of some goods yet with this restriction that he would not have any become too unproportionably rich The Fourth said That Plato's design in his Republick was to conjoyn action and contemplation he would have a City first Mistress of her self then of the world more venerable then formidable to its neighbours less rich then just but sober temperate chaste and especially religious And to render it such he conceiv'd that by removing all impediments from within by equality of goods he trac'd out the way to contemplation which is the supreme good whereunto men aspire and therefore community of goods which is conducive thereunto cannot be too highly esteem'd But in this Age it would deprive all goods of that name by rendring them common and there would be no common good if there were none particular CONFERENCE LXXVII I. Of Sorcerers II. Of Erotick or Amorous Madness I. Of Sorcerers THe malignant Spirit 's irreconcilable to humane nature exalted above his own is such that he is not contented with doing all the mischief he can by himself but imployes his Ministers and Officers to that purpose as God whose Ape he is imployes his holy Spirits in his works These Officers are Magicians and Sorcerers The former are such as being either immediately instructed by the Devil or by Books of Magick use characters figures and conjurations which they accompany either with barbarous and insignificant words or some perversely taken out of the Holy Scripture by which means they make the Devil appear or else give some answer by sound word figure picture or other sign making particular profession of Divination Sorcerers are their servants aiming onely to do mischief and Sorcery is a species of Magick by which one hurts another by the Devils help And as the operation of the Devil is requisite thereunto so is the consent of the Sorcerers and Gods permission without which one hair falls not from our heads This consent is grounded upon a compact either express or tacite the former whereof is made by rendring homage either immediately to the Evil Spirit or to the Magician in his name or by addressing a request to him Commonly they take an oath of fidelity in a circle describ'd upon the ground the Devil herein as in other things imitating the Deity which is represented by a Circle A tacite compact is when one makes use of such means learn'd from a Magician or magical books known to be such or sometimes ignorantly But the most ordinary means which they use in their witchcrafts are powders which they mingle with food or else infect the body clothes water or air Amongst which the black powders are design'd to procure death the grey or red to cause sickness and the white to cure either when they are forc'd to it or in order to some greater mischief although this virtue depend not any ways upon their colour nor always upon their qualities Sometimes they perform their witcheries with words either threatnings or praises Not that these have any virtue in themselves any more then straws herbs and other things wherewith they bewitch people but because the Devil is by covenant to produce such or such effects by the presence of these things shewing himself a faithful performer in certain things to the intent he may at last deceive them in all The Second said That the charms of Sorcerers differ according to the end whereunto they are design'd some cause sleep and that by potions charmes and other enchantments the most usual of which are pieces of a dead body fastned to the house enchanted candles made of a particular wiek and fat or of the feet and hands of dead persons anointed with Oyle which the Devil gives them these they either light up or place candles at each finger and so long as this dismal light lasts they in the house remain in a deep sleep Other enchantments are to procure Love some of which act either within or without the body consisting of what is most sacred in Religion and most filthy in Nature so abominable is this practice and done in hatred of the Creator some likewise procure hatred hinder generation make women miscarry increase their pains of child-bearing dry up the milk breed thornes pieces of glass and iron knives hair and such other preternatural things in the body Of all which magical effects some indeed are real but the most part are prestigious The real are when the Devil makes use of natural causes for such an effect by applying actives to passives according to the most perfect knowledge which he hath of every things essence and properties having lost no gifts of Nature by sin but onely those of Grace But when the effect is above his power or God permits it not then he makes use of delusions to cover his impotence making appearance of what is not and hindring perception of what really is Such was Gyges's ring which render'd him invisible when he pleas'd and Pasetus's feasts from which the guests departed with intollerable hunger as also the money wherewith he pay'd his Merchants who found nothing at night in their bags And that
the soul corporeal there would be a penetration of dimensions in its union with the body consequently 't is no Element nor any Compound of them as Empedocles and Plato phanci'd upon this ground that the soul being to judge of all things should therefore have all their principles and elements in it self Which is absurd for it knows divers things not compos'd of the Elements as the Angels and Heavens So that the soul must be concluded in the number of those things which 't is easier to affirm what they are not then what they are The Fifth said That the soul is a fire whose centre is Heaven and God the source who is call'd by the name of fire in the Holy Text. Hence life an effect of the soul is nothing else but heat and death cold Moreover as fire makes bodies lighter so living bodies are less heavy then dead And the Hebrews call man Isch from the word Esch fire as the Greeks do Phôs which signifies light which is a species of fire lucid but not ardent which light appears upon bodies whilst living and dis-aspears as soon as they are dead Now the different sorts of souls are produc'd of different lights Those of Plants are form'd of that of the air whence they have no sensible heat as the sensitive have which are generated of the Sun which also gives them local motion rational souls are beams diffus'd from God who inhabits light inaccessible And as waters ascend as high as their springs so the souls of Plants exalt themselves into the air whose mutations they follow those of Beasts return into the Sun and those of men are reflected towards God having this common with light that they perish not but return to the place of their nativity Agreeably whereunto Solomon saith That there is nothing new under the Sun since even the forms of things are not new but only appear in their turn one after another as when light forsakes our Hemisphere it no more perishes then shadow but they both make a continual circle which follows that of the Sun II. Of the Apparition of Spirits Upon the second Point it was said That the perfection of the Universe requires the existence of Intellectual Creatures such as Angels and Rational Souls A truth acknowledg'd by Aristotle who assigns nine Spirits subservient to the First Mover according to the number of heavens which they are to move although Mercurius Trismegistus acknowledges but two which hold the Arctick and Antarctick Poles Which Avicenna also denoted by his Chain of Intelligences Amongst these Spirits some are destinated for the preservation of men as Guardian Angels call'd by the Apostle ministring Spirits which were the Genii of the ancients by which they made their greatest Oathes Others have continual war with mankind as the Devils Others animate bodies as Rational Souls which after the bodies dissolution are happy or miserable according as they have done good or evil As for Angels and Demons History both sacred and prophane testifies their frequent apparition to men Daily experience proves the same of the souls of the dead though some question it But besides that 't is presumption to dis-believe all antiquity which tells us of a Ghost which spoke to Brutus one which shew'd a Sceleton in chains to Athenodorus the Philosopher and that of Cleonice which tormented Pausanias who had slain her as long as he liv'd as also the Ghost of Agrippina did her son Nero. The authority of Holy Scripture instructs us of the return of Samuel Moses and Elias and the same reason which makes the soul loath to part from its body argues it desirous to visit the same or the places and persons wherewith it was most delighted Nor is it more difficult to conceive how a separated soul can move it self then how it moves the body which it animates the one and the other being equally incomprehensible The Second said Spectres exist not saving in the Phancy those who think they see them conceding that they are not palpable nor beheld alike of all by standers and men being prone to acquiesce in their own imaginations though misguided by the passions of fear hope love desire especially children and women who are more susceptible of all impressions because their phancies are so weak as to be no less mov'd with its own fictions then real external representations by the Senses But strong minds are not subject to such delusions The Third said He is too sensual who believes nought but what he sees for according to this account nothing but accidents which alone fall under the cognizance of sense should be admitted So the Saduces and all Libertines deny spirits whilst they appeal only to Sense Although it be an universal Doctrine of all sober antiquity that there are spirits and that they appear oftentimes to men in cases of necessity wherewith according to Aristotle himself the souls of the dead friends are affected a manifest argument of the soul's immortality which he believ'd only by the light of nature As Apuleius reports the Platonists make three sorts of Spirits First Demons or Genii which are souls whilst they animate bodies Second Lares or Penates the souls of such as had liv'd well and after death were accounted tutelary gods of the houses which they had inhabited Third Lemures or Hobgoblins the souls of the wicked given to do mischief or folly after death as they did during their life Some others especially the Poets conceiv'd man compos'd of three parts Body Soul and Shadow which latter appeared after dissolution of the two former the body returning into its elements and the soul going either to Heaven or Hell as the shadow did into the Elysian fields from whence it had no liberty to return but only wander'd up and down so long as the body wanted burial The Fourth said We must distinguish between Vision and Apparition The former is when we think we behold a thing which afterwards comes accordingly to pass as it appear'd the latter is when some visible forms present themselves to us either waking or asleep and 't is of three sorts intellectual imaginary and corporeal The intellectual is when separated substances insinuate themselves into the mind without borrowing any external shape The imaginary is when they imprint some strange forms or species in the phancy and by this means make themselves known to us The corporeal is when they present themselves to our outward senses To omit the first which is rare and an image of the Beatifical Vision the imaginary apparition of souls is caus'd when Angels or Demons according to the quality of the souls pourtray in our phancy the species and signs of their countenance and personage which they had during life which appears sad cover'd with black whilst they yet indure the punishments of their sins but cheerful and in white habit when they are deliver'd from the same And although this apparition is imaginary yet 't is real too Thus Judas Maccabaeus knew Onias and
which makes water ascend in the Pneumaticks whereof Hero writ a Treatise rendring the same melodious and resembling the singing of birds in the Hydraulicks It makes use of the four Elements which are the causes of the motions of engines as of Fire in Granadoes Air in Artificial Fountains both Fire and Air by their compression which water not admitting since we see a vessel full of water can contain nothing more its violence consists in its gravity when it descends from high places The Earth is also the cause of motion by its gravity when 't is out of Aequilibrium as also of rest when 't is equally poiz'd as is seen in weights The Second said The wit of Man could never preserve the dominion given him by God over other creatures without help of the Mechanicks but by this art he hath brought the most savage and rebellious Animals to his service Moreover by help of mechanical inventions the four Elements are his slaves and as it were at his pay to do his works Thus we see by means of the Hydraulicks or engines moving by water wheels and pumps are set continually at work the Wind is made to turn a Mill manag'd by the admirable Art of Navigation or employ'd to other uses by Aealipila's Fire the noblest of all Elements becomes the vassal of the meanest Artisans or serves to delight the sight by the pleasant inventions of some Ingineer or employes its violence to arm our thunders more powerfully then the ancient machines of Demetrius The Earth is the Theatre of all these inventions and Archimedes boasted he could move that too had he place where to fix his engine By its means the Sun descends to the Earth and by the artificial union of his rayes is enabled to effect more then he can do in his own sphere The curiosity of man hath carry'd him even to Heaven by his Astrological Instrumens so that nothing is now done in that republick of the stars but what he knows and keeps in record The Third said That since Arts need Instruments to perform their works they owe all they can do to the Mechanicks which supply them with utensils and inventions 'T was the Mechanicks which furnish'd the Smith with a hammer and an anvil the Carpenter with a saw and a wedge the Architect with a rule the Mason with a square the Geometrician with a compass the Astronomer with an astrolabe the Souldier with sword and musket in brief they have in a manner given man other hands Hence came paper writing printing the mariner's box the gun in these latter ages and in the preceding the Helepoles or takecities flying bridges ambulatory towers rams and other engines of war which gives law to the world Hence Archimedes easily drew a ship to him which all the strength of Sicily could not stir fram'd a heaven of glass in which all the celestial motions were to be seen according to which model the representation of the sphere remains to us at this day Hence he burnt the Roman ships even in their harbour defended the City of Syracuse for a long time against the Roman Army conducted by the brave Marcellus And indeed I wonder not that this great Archimedes was in so high in Reputaion For if men be valued according to their strength is it not a miracle that one single man by help of mechanicks could lift as much as ten a hundred yea a thousand others And his pretension to move the whole Earth were a poynt given him out of it where to stand will not seem presumptuous though the supposition be impossible to such as know his screw without-end or of wheels plac'd one above another for by addition of new wheels the strength of the same might be so multiply'd that no humane power could resist it yea a child might by this means displace the whole City of Paris and France it self were it upon a moveable plane But the greatest wonder is the simplicity of the means employ'd by this Queen of Arts to produce such excellent effects For Aristotle who writ a book of mechanicks assignes no other principles thereof but the Lever its Hypomoclion or Support and a balance it being certain that of these three multiply'd proceed all Machines both Automata and such as are mov'd by force of wind fire water or animals as wind-mills water-mills horse-mills a turn-broch by smoak and as many other inventions as things in the world CONFERENCE LXXXVII I. Whether the Soul's Immortality is demonstrable by Natural Reasons II. Whether Travel be necessary to an Ingenuous Man I. Whether the Soul's Immortality is demonstrable by Natural Reasons NAtural Philosophy considers natural bodies as they are subject to alteration and treats not of the Soul but so far as it informes the Body and either partakes or is the cause of such alteration And therefore they are injust who require this Science to prove supernatural things as the Soul's Immortality is Although its admirable effects the vast extent of its thoughts even beyond the imaginary spaces its manner of acting and vigor in old age the terrors of future judgement the satisfaction or remorse of Conscience and Gods Justice which not punishing all sins in this life presupposes another are sufficiently valid testimonies thereof should not the universal consent of heathens themselves some of which have hastned their deaths to enjoy this immortality and man 's particular external shape infer the particular excellence of his internal form So that by the Philosophical Maxime which requires that there be contraries in every species of things if the souls of beasts joyn'd to bodies die there must be others joyn'd to other bodies free from death when separated from the same And the Harmony of the world which permits not things to pass from on extreme to another without some mean requires as that there are pure spirits and intelligences which are immortal and substances corporeal and mortal so there be a middle nature between these two Man call'd by the Platonists upon this account the horizon of the Universe because he serves for a link and medium uniting the hemisphere of the Angelical Nature with the inferior hemisphere of corporeal nature But there is difference between that which is and that which may be demonstrated by Humane Reason which falls short in proving the most sensible things as the specifical proprieties of things and much less can it prove what it sees not or demonstrate the attribute of a subject which it sees not For to prove the Immortality of the Soul 't is requisite at least to know the two termes of this proportion The Soul is immortal But neither of them is known to natural reason not immortality for it denotes a thing which shall never have end but infinitie surpasses the reach of humane wit which is finite And the term Soul is so obscure that no Philosophy hath yet been able to determine truly whether it be a Spirit or something corporeal a substance or an accident single
to their conservation tutelary Angels being nothing but the organs of Divine Providence which embraces all things The Second said That the Genii produce in us those effects whereof we know not the cause every one finding motions in himself to good or evil proceeding from some external power yea otherwise then he had resolved Simonides was no sooner gone out of a house but it fell upon all the company and 't is said that as Socrates was going in the fields he caus'd his friends who were gone before him to be recall'd saying that his familiar spirit forbad him to go that way which those that would not listen to were all mired and some torn and hurt by a herd of swine Two persons formerly unknown love at the first sight allies not knowing one another oftimes feel themselves seiz'd with unusual joy one man is alwayes unfortunate to another every thing succeeds well which cannot proceed but from the favour or opposition of some Genii Hence also some Genii are of greater power then others and give men such authority over other men that they are respected and fear'd by them Such was the Genius of Augustus in comparison of Mark Antonie and that of J. Caesar against Pompey But though nothing is more common then the word Genius yet 't is not easie to understand the true meaning of it Plato saith 't is the guardian of our lives Epictetus the over-seer and sentinel of the Soul The Greeks call it the Mystagogue or imitator of life which is our guardian Angel The Stoicks made two sorts one singular the Soul of every one the other universal the Soul of the world Varro as Saint Augustine reports in his eighth book of the City of God having divided the immortal Souls which are in the Air and mortal which are in the Water and Earth saith that between the Moon and the middle region of the Air there are aerious Souls call'd Heroes Lares and Genii of which an Ancient said it is as full as the Air is full of flies in Summer as Pythagoras said that the Air is full of Souls which is not dissonant from the Catholick Faith which holds that Spirits are infinitely more numerous then corporeal substances because as celestial bodies are incomparably more excellent and ample then sublunary so pure Spirits being the noblest works of God ought to be in greater number then other creatures What the Poets say of the Genius which they feign to be the Son of Jupiter and the earth representing him sometimes in the figure of a serpent as Virgil do's that which appear'd to Aenaeas sometimes of a horn of plenty which was principally the representation of the Genius of the Prince by which his flatterers us'd to swear and their sacrificing Wine and Flowers to him is as mysterious as all the rest The Third said That the Genius is nothing but the temperament of every thing which consists in a certain harmonious mixture of the four qualities and being never altogether alike but more perfect in some then in others is the cause of the diversity of actions The Genius of a place is its temperature which being seconded with celestial influences call'd by some the superior Genii is the cause of all productions herein Prepensed crimes proceed from the melancholy humour the Genius of anger and murders is the bilious humour that of idleness and the vices it draws after it is phlegme and the Genius of love is the sanguine humour Whence to follow one's Genius is to follow one's natural inclinations either to good or to evil II. Whether the Suicide of the Pagans be justifiable Upon the Second Point 't was said That evil appears such onely by comparison and he that sees himself threatned with greater evils then that of death ought not onely to attend it without fear but seek it as the onely sovereign medicine of a desperate malady What then if death be nothing as the Pagans believ'd and leave nothing after it For we must distinguish Paganisme and Man consider'd in his pure state of nature from Christianity and the state of Grace In the former I think Diogenes had reason when meeting Speusippus languishing with an incurable disease who gave him the good day he answer'd I wish not you the like since thou sufferest an evil from which thou maist deliver thy self as accordingly he did when he returned home For all that they fear'd in their Religion after death was Not-Being what their Fasti taught them of the state of souls in the other life being so little believ'd that they reckon'd it amongst the Fables of the Poets Or if they thought they left any thing behind them 't was only their renown of which a couragious man that kill'd himself had more hope then the soft and effeminate The same is still the custom of those great Sea Captains who blow themselves up with Gun-powder to avoid falling into the enemies hands Yet there 's none but more esteems their resolution then the demeanor of cowards who yield at mercy This is the sole means of making great Captains and good Souldiers by their example to teach them not to fear death not to hold it with poltron Philosophers the most terrible of terribles And to judge well of both compare we the abjectness of a Perseus a slave led in triumph with the generosity of a Brutus or a Cato Vticensis For 't were more generous to endure patiently the incommodities of the body the injuries of an enemy and the infamy of death if man had a spirit proof against the strokes of fortune But he though he may ward himself with his courage yet he can never surmount all sort of evils and according to the opinion of the same Philosopher all fear is not to be rejected Some evils are so vehement that they cannot be disposed without stupidity as torments of the body fire the wheel the loss of honour and the like which 't is oftentimes better to abandon then vainly to strive to overcome them Wherefore as 't is weakness to have recourse to death for any pain whatsoever so 't was an ignominious cowardize amongst the Pagans to live only for grief The Second said That nature having given all individuals a particular instinct for self-preservation their design is unnatural who commit homicide upon themselves And if civil intestine wars are worse then forreign then the most dangerous of all is that which we make to our selves Wherefore the ancients who would have this brutality pass for a virtue were ridiculous because acknowledging the tenure of their lives from some Deity 't was temerity in them to believe they could dispose thereof to any then the donor and before he demanded it In which they were as culpable as a Souldier that should quit his rank without his Captain 's leave or depart from his station where he was plac'd Sentinel And did not virtue which is a habit require many reiterated acts which cannot be found in Suicide since we have