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
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
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
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
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
Principles II. Of the End of all Things Page 5 CONFERENCE III I. Of Causes in general II. Whence it is that every one is zealous for his own Opinion though it be of no importance to him Page 12 CONFERENCE IV I. Of the First Matter II. Of Perpetual Motion Page 18 CONFERENCE V I. Of Resemblance II. Whether it behoveth to joyn Armes to Letters Page 24 CONFERENCE VI I. Of Fire II. Of the Vniversal Spirit Page 31 CONFERENCE VII I. Of the Air. II. Whether it be best for a State to have Slaves Page 38 CONFERENCE VIII I. Of Water II. Of Wine and whether it be necessary for Souldiers Page 44 CONFERENCE IX I. Of the Earth II. What it is that makes a Man wise Page 51 CONFERENCE X I. Of the Motion or Rest of the Earth II. Of two Monstrous Brethren living in the same Body which are to be seen in this City Page 57 CONFERENCE XI I. Of the little Hairy Girl lately seen in this City II. Whether it is more easie to resist Pleasure then Pain Page 64 CONFERENCE XII I. Of three Suns II. Whether an Affection can be without Interest Page 71 CONFERENCE XIII I. Whether Melancholy Persons are the most ingenious or prudent II. Which is most necessary in a State Reward or Punishment Page 77 CONFERENCE XIV I. Of the Seat of Folly II. Whether a Man or Woman be most inclin'd to Love Page 83 CONFERENCE XV I. How long a Man may continue without eating II. Of the Echo Page 89 CONFERENCE XVI I. How Spirits act upon Bodies II. Whether is more powerful Love or Hatred Page 95 CONFERENCE XVII I. Of the several fashions of wearing Mourning and why Black is us'd to that purpose rather then any other colour II. Why people are pleas'd with Musick Page 103 CONFERENCE XVIII I. Of the Original of Winds II. Why none are contented with their Condition Page 109 CONFERENCE XIX I. Of the Flowing and Ebbing of the Sea II. Of the Point of Honour Page 115 CONFERENCE XX I. Of the Original of Fountains II. Whether there be a commendable Ambition Page 121 CONFERENCE XXI I. Of Dreams II. Why Men are rather inclin'd to Vice then Virtue Page 127 CONFERENCE XXII I. Of Judiciary Astrologie II. Which is least blameable Covetousness or Prodigality Page 133 CONFERENCE XXIII I. Of Physiognomy II. Of Artificial Memory Page 139 CONFERENCE XXIV I. Which of the Five Senses is the most noble II. Of Laughter Page 144 CONFERENCE XXV I. Of the Diversity of Countenances II. Whether Man or Woman be the more noble Page 150 CONFERENCE XXVI I. Whether it be lawful for one to commend himself II. Of Beauty Page 157 CONFERENCE XXVII I. Whether the World grows old II. Of Jealousie Page 163 CONFERENCE XXVIII I. What is the greatest Delight of Man II. Of Cuckoldry Page 169 CONFERENCE XXIX I. Whence the saltness of the Sea proceeds II. Which is the best Food Flesh or Fish Page 174 CONFERENCE XXX I. Of the Terrestrial Paradise II. Of Embalmings and Mummies Page 180 CONFERENCE XXXI I. Whether the Life of Man may be prolong'd by Art II. Whether 't is better to be without Passions then to moderate them Page 185 CONFERENCE XXXII I. Sympathy and Antipathy II. Whether Love descending is stronger then ascending Page 191 CONFERENCE XXXIII I. Of those that walk in their sleep II. Which is the most excellent Moral Virtue Page 197 CONFERENCE XXXIV I. Of Lycanthropy II. Of the way to acquire Nobility Page 203 CONFERENCE XXXV I. Of feigned Diseases II. Of regulating the Poor Page 209 CONFERENCE XXXVI I. Of the tying of the Point II. Which is the greatest of all Vices Page 214 CONFERENCE XXXVII I. Of the Cabala II. Whether the Truth ought always to be spoken Page 220 CONFERENCE XXXVIII I. Of the Period called Fits of Fevers II. Of Friendship Page 226 CONFERENCE XXXIX I. Why all men naturally desire knowledge II. Whether Permutation or Exchange be more commodious then Buying and Selling Page 230 CONFERENCE XL I. Of Prognostication or Presaging by certain Animals II. Why all men love more to command then to obey Page 238 CONFERENCE XLI I. Of Comets II. Whether Pardon be better then Revenge Page 244 CONFERENCE XLII I. Of the Diversity of Languages II. Whether is to be preferr'd a great stature or a small Page 251 CONFERENCE XLIII I. Of the Philosophers stone II. Of Mont de piete or charitable provision for the Poor Page 256 CONFERENCE XLIV I. How Minerals grow II. Whether it be best to know a little of every thing or one thing exactly Page 262 CONFERENCE XLV I. Whether the Heavens be solid or liquid II. Whether it be harder to get then to preserve Page 268 CONFERENCE XLVI I. Of Vacuity II. Of the Extravagance of Women Page 274 CONFERENCE XLVII I. Of the Virtue of Numbers II. Of the Visible Species Page 280 CONFERENCE XLVIII I. Whether every thing that nourishes an Animal ought to have life II. Of Courage Page 286 CONFERENCE XLIX I. Whether there be Specifical remedies to every Disease II. Whether Tears proceed from Weakness Page 292 CONFERENCE L I. Whether Colours are real II. Whether is better to speak well or to write well Page 298 CONFERENCE LI I. At what time the year ought to begin II. Why the Load-stone draws Iron Page 309 CONFERENCE LII I. Of a Point II. Whether other Animals besides Man have the use of Reason Page 315 CONFERENCE LIII I. Whether there be more then five Senses II. Whether is better to speak or to be silent Page 319 CONFERENCE LIV I. Of Touch. II. Of Fortune Page 325 CONFERENCE LV I. Of the Taste II. Whether Poetry be useful Page 331 CONFERENCE LVI I. Of the Smelling II. Of Eloquence Page 337 CONFERENCE LVII I. Of the Hearing II. Of Harmony Page 343 CONFERENCE LVIII I. Of the Sight II. Of Painting Page 349 CONFERENCE LIX I. Of Light II. Of Age. Page 355 CONFERENCE LX I. Of Quintessence II. Which is the most in esteem Knowledge or Virtue Page 361 CONFERENCE LXI I. Which is hardest to endure Hunger or Thirst. II. Whether a General of an Army should endanger his person Page 367 CONFERENCE LXII I. Of Time II. Whether 't is best to overcome by open force or otherwise Page 373 CONFERENCE LXIII I. Of Motion II. Of Custome Page 379 CONFERENCE LXIV I. Of the Imagination II. Which is most powerful Hope or Fear Page 384 CONFERENCE LXV I. Of the Intellect II. Whether the Husband and Wife should be of the same humour Page 390 CONFERENCE LXVI I. Of Drunkenness II. Of Dancing Page 396 CONFERENCE LXVII I. Of Death II. Of the Will Page 402 CONFERENCE LXVIII I. Of the Magnetical Cure of Diseases II. Of Anger Page 408 CONFERENCE LXIX I. Of Life II. Of Fasting Page 414 CONFERENCE LXX I. Of Climacterical Years II. Of Shame Page 419 CONFERENCE LXXI I. Why motion produces heat II. Of Chastity Page 425 CONFERENCE LXXII I. Of Thunder II. Which of all the Arts is the most
else but an execess of heat which is a meer Accident as well in its little degrees as in its excesses More and less making no change in the species Our Fire then is an excessive heat which adheres to Things that have some crass and oleaginous humour in them and continues there by a continual efflux and successive Generation without any permanence like the Water of a River which Heat lasts so long till that humour be consumed If it be said that it ascends upwards seeking its own place I answer that 't is the Exhalation that carries it up yea that it descends too as we see in a Candle blown out and still smoaking if it be held beneath another burning one the flame descendeth along the smoak and lighteth it again So that the Fire is indifferent of it self where it goes for it lets it self be govern'd and carry'd by the Exhalation And it appears further That Fire is less subtile then Air for flame is not transparent and it engendreth soot which is very gross The Third added That indeed Fire cannot be a Substance because it hath a Contrary viz. The Water Besides every Substantial Form preserves its own Matter and acts not against it but Fire destroyes its own Moreover a certain degree of some Quality is never necessary to a Substantial Form as the Earth ceaseth not to be Earth though it be less cold or dry and so of the rest But Fire cannot be Fire unless the supreme degree of heat be in it Add hereunto that Fire may be produc'd in a Substance without corrupting it as we see in a Flint or a burning Bullet Now a Substantial Form is not produc'd in a Subject till the preceding be destroy'd the Generation of the one being the corruption of the other Lastly Every substance produceth by way of Generation an indivisible substantial Form But Fire produceth a divisible Quality For that which was cold becometh first warm then hot and by degrees becometh Fire which cannot be with a mixture of cold non consist therewith unless as degrees of qualities The Fourth said That Fire is a most perfect Element hot and dry according to Aristotle of the most perfect form and activity of all the Elements according to Plato the principal instrument of Nature according to Empedocles the Father of Things Whence it was that the Assyrians ador'd it The Persians carry'd it out of Honour before their Kings and at the head of their Armies The Romans made so great account of it that they assign'd it to the care of certain Virgins to be kept immortal Pythagoras believ'd it to be an Animal because it is nourish'd as Animals and for want of Aliment dyes And because a lighted Torch being cast into the Water the Fire extinguishing sendeth forth such a noyse as Animals do at the gasps of Death But he esteemed its natural place to be the Centre of the Subterranean World Whence it is said he that we see so many Volcanoes and other Fires issue out of the entrals of the Earth as those of Monte Vesuvio in the Kingdom of Naples Monte Gibello formerly Aetna in Sicily and Monte Hecla in Iseland and so many other burning Mountains The Fifth said That as the Sea is the Principle from whence all the Waters come and the end whether they return So the Sun is the Element of Fire from whence all other Fires come and whether at length they reascend as to their Source 1. For that all Effects Qualities and Properties of Fire agree particularly to the Sun seeing he heats burnes dryes and is the cause of all the Generations that are made here below 2. Because the Elements stay in their natural places Now the Fire not onely ascendeth from the Subterraneous places where it is detain'd by reason of a sulphureous and bituminous Matter which serves it for food but it passeth also beyond the Heavens of the Moon Mercury and Venus as appears by Comets which are igneous and particularly by that which appear'd in the year 1618. acknowledg'd by all the Astronomers upon the reasons of Opticks to have been above the said places The Sixth denyed That the Sun can be the Element of Fire 1. Because 't is a Coelestial and Incorruptible Body and by consequence not Igneous or Elementary 2. If all Fires come from the Sun it will follow that all his rayes are Igneous Bodies for there cannot be imagin'd other Fires to come from the Sun hither but his beams Now the Sun-beams are neither Bodies nor Igneous Not Bodies since Illumination and Eradiation being made in an instant it will follow that a Body cometh from Heaven to Earth in a Moment Which is absurd because No Motion is made in an instant Besides being those Rayes penetrate Glass and such other solid and diaphanous Bodies there would be a penetration of Dimensions which is impossible Nor are they Igneous seeing Fire being of its own nature light descendeth not but the beams of the Sun descend down hither Moreover Fire is actually hot but the Sun-beams are onely so in power viz. when they are reflected by an opake body as appears in the Middle Region of the Air where it is colder then upon the Earth though its beams are nearer Wherefore it is more reasonable to hold to the common opinion which placeth the Fire immediately under the Heaven of the Moon For there is no fear that that Fire how great soever can burn the World it s hear being allay'd and dull'd by the extreme humidity of the Air its Neighbour and by the great coldness of the same Air which is in the Middle Region and counter-checketh that heat which on one side hath already lost its violence and acrimony by its natural Rarity Nor is there any trouble to be taken for its nourishment for being in its own Centre and Empire it hath no enemies nor contraries and needeth no food for its support as our common Fire doth What if we behold it not 'T is not because there is none but because it is so rare and so pure that it cannot fall within the perception of our Senses As there is such a thing as Air though we see it not How many Colours Odours Sapours and Sounds are there which we never knew And as for what is observ'd in a Candle newly put out it is clear that the Fire descendeth not to it but inflameth the unctuous Matter which it toucheth and this the next even to the Candle from whence that Matter proceedeth II Of the Vniversal Spirit Upon the Second Point it was said That it must First be known what is meant by Universal Spirit 2. Whether there be one 3. What it is As for the First By the word Universal Spirit is understood some universal cause and principle of all the actions and motions which are made in Generation Just as they assign one same First Matter for the Subject of all Formes so they speak of an Vniversal Form which containes all the rest in
Mind or the Body being moderate and indifferently temper'd with each of those Liquors may be supported by Men Pleasure and Good as the more natural much more easily then Evil and Pain which are destructive to Nature But when both of them are extreme and the sweetness of Pleasures and contentments is not abated by some little gall nor the bitterness of displeasures sweetned by some little Honey then Men cannot rellish this Potion because they are not accustom'd to things pure and sincere but to confusion and mixture and cannot bear the excess of Grief or Joy the extremities of which are found to be fatal As first for Grief Licinius finding himself condemn'd for the crime of Cheating the publick dy'd with regret Q. Fabius because he was cited before the Tribunes of the People for violating the Law of Nations Caesar's Daughter at the sight of the bloody garments of her Husband Pompey And in the last Age one of the Sons of Gilbert Duke of Montpensier going into Italy dy'd with resentment at Puzzole upon the Sepulchre of his Father whom he went thither to see Then for Joy Diagoras Rhodius seeing his three Sons victorious in one day at the Olympick Games dy'd with Joy The same Fate befell Chilo the Lacedemonian upon the same victory of one of his Sons Dionysius the Tyrant of Sicily and the Poet Sophocles having heard that they had won the bayes for Tragedies dy'd both immediately And so did the Poet Philippides upon winning that for Comedies The Painter Zeuxis having made the portraiture of an old woman very odly dy'd with laughing at it To which Paulus Jovins produces two like examples of later date one of Sinas General of the Turk's Gallies upon the recovery of his onely Son whom he accounted lost and the other of Leo X. upon the taking of Milain which he had passionately desir'd both of which dy'd for Joy Thus each of these Passions have great resemblance in their excesses They equally transport a Man beyond the bounds of Reason The one by its pleasingness makes him forget himself the other by its bitterness leads him to despair Grief destroyes Life either by the violent agitation of the Spirits or by their condensation which stopping the passages hinders respiration From whence follows suffocation and death Pleasure and Joy produce the same effect by contrary causes namely by too great a dilatation of the Spirits which causes weakness and that weakness death It may be doubted under which rank they ought to be plac'd who dye for Love But the sweetness of this kind of death is too much extoll'd by the Poets that being to choose said he I should prefer it before the others The Second said They who dye for Joy are of a soft temper and rare contexture and their Hearts being too easily dilated and expanded by it the Spirits evaporating leave the same destitute of strength and so the Ventricles close together and they perish under this Passion On the contrary they who dye with grief and sadness have the Pores more closed but are of a very hot temper which requires room and freedom for the dilatation of the Heart which becoming compress'd by sadness which like Fear stops and refrigerates and renders the Spirits too much throng'd ad condens'd among themselves the Spirits having their avenues obstructed and their commerce with the Air hindred stifle the Heart That nevertheless the Passions of Joy are much less then those of Grief because Evil more vehemently moves the Appetite then Good For Grief destroyes the simple and absolute Existence of a thing Pleasure brings onely a transient and casual effect and is but a redundancy or surplusage An Animal hath its perfect essence without it but Grief puts its Being into evident danger and changes it essentially II. The preservation of an Animal for which Nature endu'd it with the Passion of Grief is the highest internal end whereunto also Pleasure is ordain'd as a means the pleasure of the Taste for the preservation of the Individual that of the Touch for the preservation of the species In fine Delectation is a Female Passion or rather but half a Passion for when its Object is present it is languid and asswag'd and hath no more but a bare union with the Object that is the present Good which is rather a Rest then a Motion of the Sensitive Appetite Whereas Grief which respects a present Evil is not onely redoubled by the presence of the same but summons all the other Passions to its Relief Anger Audacity Courage and all the Faculties to revenge it self The Third said That if we consider these two Passions as streams running within their ordinary channels and do not respect their inundations then Grief seemes to be more powerful then Joy for it causeth us to break through all difficulties that might stop us it rallies the Forces of Nature when there needs any extraordinary performance gives Armes to extremities and renders Necessity the Mistress of Fortune On the contrary Pleasure and Joy abate the greatness of the Courage enfeeble a Man by exhausting his Spirits and emptying his Heart too much thereof The Fourth said Pleasure and Grief are two Passions of the Concupiscible Appetite the former of which is the perception of an agreeable Object the latter of a displeasing one For all Sensation is made by a Mutation and that either from Good to Evil whence ariseth Grief and if it persisteth Sadness or from Evil to Good whence springeth Pleasure which if it be lasting causeth Joy which are to be carefully distinguish'd They easily succeed set off and give conspicuousness one to the other Socrates would never have found pleasure in scratching the place where his fetters fastned his Legs if he had not borne those shackles a long time in Prison Their vehemence hath commonly reference to the Temper Pleasure hath more dominion over the Sanguine The Melancholy Man makes more reflexion upon Grief But considering them absolutely it seemes to me more difficult to support Ease then Disease Joy then Sadness Pleasure then Grief First because Hope the harbinger of good and contentment hath greater effects then Fear which fore-runs Evil and causeth to undertake greater things for all glorious and Heroical Actions have Hope for their impulsive cause whereras commonly Fear produceth none but servile Actions Secondly a Passion is term'd strong or violent when by the impression of the species of the Object first upon the Senses and then upon the Phancy it becometh so much Mistress of Reason that it hinders the Man from freely exercising the functions of knowing aright and doing aright Now Pleasures and Contentments cause Men not to know themselves but to forget God and run into Vices whereas Grief and Afflictions usually retain them within their duty in the Fear of God and in the exercise of the Virtues of Patience Obedience and Humility Many persons have bravely and couragiously resisted torments and yet yielded to Pleasure And that Emperour of whom Saint
in this manner First Loves it in it self with a Love of Friendship and then afterwards judging it amiable applies it to it self and desires it So that there is a two-fold convenience or agreableness in every thing that is lov'd even with the Love of Concupiscence First the convenience of the Good with its proper subject And Secondly the convenience of the same Good with the thing or person whereunto it is desired The first convenience excites the Love of Friendship The second that of Concupiscence Wherefore it is more natural to Love without Interest then for it Besides Love follows Knowledge and we know things simply and in themselves sooner then such as are compounded and refer'd to another Lastly the Love of Friendship is the end of the motions of our Hearts which acquiesce and stop there The Love of Concupiscence is for the means which are posterior in the intention of Nature and as servants employ'd for the End The Third said That Love being one of the most noble acts of the Will or rather of the Soul which is created after the Image of God it hath some lineaments of that Divine Love Now God loves all things for his own sake In like manner we see all reasonable Creatures have an instinct and sympathy to such as are convenient to themselves and an abhorrence or antipathy to their contraries Moreover the Nature of Good which is the Object of Love shews that Love always precisely regards him that loves there being no Absolute Good but all is with convenience or relation without which it would not move us to affect it For no Love can be assign'd how perfect soever in which the person that loves hath not some interest Q. Curtius deliver'd Rome from an infection of the Pestilence by plunging himself into a great Vorago in the Earth but it was with a desire of glory and to be talk'd of A Father loves his Children but it is that he may perpetuate himself in them We love Virtue for the sweetness and delectation which it brings with it yea even Martyrs offer themselves couragiously to death that they may live eternally with him for whose sake they suffer And if seeing two Men play at Tennis both of them alike unknown unto me I yet wish that one may win rather then the other this proceeds from some convenience or agreeableness between us two though the reason of it be not then manifest to me The Fourth said That Disinterested Love which is the true intirely terminates in the thing lov'd purely and simply for the natural and supernatural goodness which is in it But that which reflects upon the person who loves for his Honour Profit or Pleasure is false and vicious Now although since the depravation of our Nature by sin the former sort of Love be very difficult yet is it not impossible For since there is a Relative Love there must also be an Absolute which serves for a contrary to the other It is much more hard to love an Enemy a thing commanded by God then to love another with a Disinteressed Love And though it be true that Pleasure is so essential to Love that it is inseparable from it whence one may infer that such Pleasure is an interest yet provided he who loves doth it not with reflection to his Pleasure or for the Pleasure which he takes in loving his Love is pure and simple and void of all interest So though he who loves goes out of himself to be united to the thing lov'd which is the property of Love and becomes a part of the whole which results from that union and consequently interessed for the preservation of the same Nevertheless provided he do not reflect upon himself as he is a part of that whole his love is always without interest The fifth said That as Reflex Knowledge is more excellent and perfect then direct So reflected Love which is produc'd by knowledge of the merits and perfections of the thing lov'd is more noble and judicious then that which is without any reflection and interest Gods Love towards Men ought to serve them for a rule Therefore Plato saith that when God design'd to create the World he transform'd himself into Love which is so much interessed that he hath made all things for his own Glory The Sixth said That true Love is like Virtue contented with it self and he that loves any thing for his particular interest doth not properly love that thing but himself to whom he judgeth it sutable In which respect Saint Bernard calls such kind of Love mercenary and illegitimate because true and pure Love is contented simply with loving and though it deserves reward yet that is not its motive but the sole consideration of the excellence and goodness of the thing lov'd Nor is this true Love so rare as is imagin'd there being examples of it found in all conditions of Men. Cleomenes King of Lacedaemon disguis'd himself on purpose to be slain as accordingly he was thereby to expiate to the Fate which was destinated to the loss either of the Chiestain or his Army Gracchus dy'd that his Wife Cornelia might live The Wife of Paetus slew her self for company to sweeten death to her Husband Histories are full of Fathers and Mothers that have prefer'd their own death before that of their Children At the Hour of Inventions One offering to speak of Amulets Philtres and other means to procure Love and mentioning the Hippomanes or flesh which is found in the fore-head of a young Colt whereof Virgil speaks he was interrupted by this intimation That the two most effectual means for causing Love were the graces of the Body and the Mind and to love those by whom we would be lov'd And these two points were propounded First Whether Melancholy persons are the most ingenious Secondly Which is most necessary in a State Reward or Punishment CONFERENCE XIII I. Whether Melancholy Persons are the most ingenious or prudent II. Which is most necessary in a State Reward or Punishment I. Whether Melancholy Men are the most ingenious THe First said That according to Galen Humane Actions to speak naturally depend on the complexion or composition of the Humours Which Opinion hath so far prevail'd that in common Speech the words Nature Temper and Humour signifie not onely the Inclination but the Aptitude and Disposition of persons to any thing So we say Alexander the Great was of an Ambitious and Martial Nature Mark Anthony of an Amorous Temper Cato of a severe Humour Of the Humours Melancholy whereof we are to speak is divided into the Natural wherewith the Spleen is nourish'd and that which is Preternatural called Atrabilis or black choler The one is like to a Lee or Sediment the other to the same Lee burnt and is caus'd by the adustion of all the Humours whereof the worst is that which is made of choler Again it is either innate or acquir'd by abuse of the six things which we call Non-natural
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
afforded before God had curs'd it and so inseparably connected man's labour with those fruits that now a days to express a hundred acres of Land we commonly say A hundred acres of Labour And as a place ceases to be the Court when the King is no longer in it so the Divine Benediction withdrawn from the Earth it ceas'd to be Paradise Yea Adam having ceas'd to be King of it and by his sin lost the Dominion which he had over all even the fiercest Creatures the Earth became no longer a Paradise to him But if I be requir'd to assign a particular place to this Paradise leaving the description of places which I never saw to the belief of Geographers I find none more fit for it then France Its Climate is temperate especially towards the East and South It hath four Rivers which bring into it Gold and all the other Commodities attributed unto Paradise by the first Historian It so abounds with all sorts of flowers that it hath taken three Lillies for its Arms And with fruits that it hath for it self and its Neighbours yea above any other it produces every Tree fair to look upon and good for food to use the Scripture-words One interpos'd That he should think 't was Normandie so fruitful of goodly Apples were it not that no Vines grow there whose fruit is so pleasant to behold The fourth said As there is no great certainty in the consequences drawn from Allegories so neither are Allegories very successfully drawn from Histories and substituted in their places I know not what History is if that of our first Father be not nor where to stop if people will subtilize upon the first circumstance of his Creation and what he did afterwards But if we find difficulty in according the Geographical Tables of the present time with the truth of that why do not we likewise make Allegories of the Creation and all its sequels which are so many Miracles If we see no Angel that guards the access to it no more did Balaam see that which stood in his way though visible to his Asse And being the space of the Garden of Eden is not determinately set down nothing hinders but that it might be of very vast extent and this takes away the scruple of those who object the distance which is between all those great Rivers Besides being Enoch and Elias were since Adam's fall transported into this Paradise where they must be till the coming of Antichrist 't is a certain Argument of its real subsistence II. Of Embalmings and Mummies Upon the second point it was said That the Ancients were much more careful then we not only to preserve the Images of their Fore-fathers but also to keep their Bodies which they variously embalmed The Grecians wash'd them in Wine mingled with warm Water and then put them them into oyl of Olives Honey or Wax The Aethyopians first salted them and then put them into Vessels of Glass In the Canary Islands they season them in the Sea and afterwards dry them in the Sun The Scythians place them upon Mountains cover'd with snow or in the coolest Caves Indeed every one knows there is a Cave at Tholouze which hath a particular virtue to preserve carkasses from corruption and in which is seen at this day the entire body of the fair Saint Baume and many others dead above 200 years ago The Indians cover'd them with ashes The Aegyptians conceiving that bodies corrupted rose not again and that the Soul was sensible of the Bodies corruption did not yield to any people in curiosity of preserving them they fill'd with Myrrhe Cinamon and other Spices or with Oyl of Cedar then they salted them with Nitre whose aerimony consumes all the superfluous humidities which cause putrifaction 'T is from these bodies that we have that excellent Mummie whose admirable effects I ascribe to sympathy But concerning what is affirm'd that being transported by Sea they cause tempests and strange agitations in the Ship 't is an effect which is to be attributed to a more occult cause The Second said Man is so admirable an Edifice that even his Ruines have their use His Fat is one of the most excellent Anodynes His Skull serves against the Epilepsic This liquor which is drawn from his Tomb hath several vertues and the reasons of the great and admirable effects imputed to it as the healing of inwards Ulcers and Contusions of Blood arriving to such as have fallen from on high seem to me imputable to three Causes a Spiritual a Celestial and an Elementary The first ariseth hence that so perfect a Form as the reasonable Soul having inform'd part of this Compositum which by the mixture of some Ingredients as Myrrhe and Aloes hath been preserv'd from corruption the same thing arrives to it which the Chymists say doth to their white Gold when they have extracted its Sulphur and Tincture For being re-joyn'd to other Gold it easily resumes the same form and is sooner and more inseparably combin'd with it then any other thing as having been of the same species So when you put Mummie into a body of the same species it takes part with the nature whence it proceeded and siding with it incounters the disease and its symptomes like Succour coming to relieve a besieged City with provisions and ammunition The Celestial cause is drawn from the Heavens for that the light and influence of superiour bodies act upon all the sublunary but by the consent of all none is so susceptible of their actions as man and if his soul be not subject thereunto yet his body is undoubtedly to each part of which each part of Heaven not only answers as some hold but the whole to all Whence is seen the diversity of disposition inclinations and manners such and so great that 't is a palpable mistake to attribute the same to the meer mixture of the Elements Now Mummie having receiv'd not only while it was animated but afterwards all the influences whereof the humane body is susceptible it becomes as it were the abstract of all the Celestial powers and better then Talismanical figures communicates the same to him that uses it The last reason drawn from the mixture of the Elements and their qualities might suffice alone without the preceding For Man being the abridgement of the world ought also to contain all the faculties of it and his Mummie being inanimate but having liv'd the life of a plant an animal and a man it contains all these natures eminently The Third said That Man affecting nothing so much as immortality because he fears nothing more then death and being unable to secure himself from it do's all that he can to perpetuate himself in some fashion since he cannot wholly The desire of supporting his Individual person and defending it from all inconveniences which may abridge his life makes him count nothing difficult In Propagation he seeks the eternity of his species And though he is assur'd by Reason of
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
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
made for man the greatest happiness that can befall them is to serve him in something though by the loss of their lives But this is rather a fair excuse to cover our cruelty and luxury seeing Animals are no more proper then Plants to nourish man Witness our first Fathers before the flood who were so long-liv'd although they liv'd not of flesh Whence 't is inferr'd too that inanimate things may nourish us better then Plants For the taste is an ill judge in this cause the Eele amongst animals and the Peach amongst fruits affording the worst nourishment though they rellish most deliciously The Similitude of substance is of little consideration for Animals live not of their like and the Cannibals are ordinarily all Leprous That a thing may be food 't is sufficient that it have an humidity or substance proportionate to ours in what order of things soever it be found And nature has had no less care of nourishing an animal then of healing it but she has endu'd all sublunary bodies with properties medicinal to man Lastly we cannot reckon among Plants those excrescenses which we call Truffes and are held to be produc'd by thunder in some kinds of earth whence they are gather'd and yet they nourish extremely The Sixth said When that which enters into the Stomack is alter'd by it 't is call'd aliment for heat is the chief Agent by which it is united and assimulated whence it comes to pass that according to the diversity of this heat Hemlock serves for nourishment to the Starlings but kills man Now to judge whether that which hath had life be more proper for nutrition then that which hath not we need only consider upon which of the two the natural faculty which disperses this heat acts most powerfully which no doubt it doth upon that which hath had life since it hath the conditions requisite to food being in some sort like as having been alive and also qualifi'd to become so again because when a form forsakes its subject it leaves dispositions in it for a like form to ensue 't is also in some sort unlike being actually destitute of life Wherefore as that which hath life really cannot nourish a living thing because of its total resemblance and there is no action between things alike otherwise a thing might act against it self since nothing is more like to any thing then it self So that which never had life cannot nourish an animal by reason of its intire dissimilitude and because between things wholly unlike there is no action II. Of Courage Upon the second Point If 't is worthy admiration that amongst Animals a little dog gives chase to a multitude of Oxen whence the Hebrews call a Dog Cheleb that is to say All heart in regard of his courage 't is more to be wonder'd that amongst men who are of the same species and fram'd after the same manner one puts to flight three others greater stronger and oftentimes more dextrous then himself The cause hereof is attributed to heat but besides that we see many sufficiently heated in every other action but cold when it comes to fighting as they say there are good Grey-hounds of all sizes so there are great courages of all tempers and although the hair complexion stature and habit of body are the most sure witnesses yet every body knows that there are valiant men found of all hairs and statures yea of all Ages the seeds of courage being manifest in children and the remainders in old men It seems therefore that courage proceeds from the fitting and well proportion'd temper and structure of the heart and arteries for when these are too large the spirits are more languid and the actions less vigorous either to repell present dangers or meet those which are future Yet the Cholerick are naturally more dispos'd to magnanimity the Phlegmatick and Melancholy less and the Sanguine are between both Education also and custom are of great moment as we see Rope-dancers and Climbers perform strange feats with inimitable boldness because they have been us'd to walk upon Ropes and climb the Spires of Churches from their youth So a child that has been accustom'd to dangers from his infancy will not fear any Moreover Honour and Anger are great spurs to valour especially when the latter is sharpned by the desire of revenge which is excited by injury derision or ingratitude Exhortations too are very effectual And therefore when ever Caesar's Souldiers did not behave themselves well he observes that he had not had time to make a speech to them Nor is Necessity and the consideration of present danger to be omitted for the greatest cowards oftentimes give proofs of courage upon urgent occasions when there 's no hope of flight and one of the best wiles of a General is to take from his Souldiers all hope of retreat and safety otherwise then in victory Example also prevails much both as to flying and to fighting Wherefore those that run first ought to be punish'd without mercy as they who first enter a breach or are farthest engag'd amongst the enemies deserve great acknowledgement of their vertue But particularly amongst persons acquainted and mutually affectionate courage is redoubled by the presence of the thing belov'd witness the sacred Legion of the Thebans But the desire of honour and hope of reward are the most powerful incitements to valour Upon which account the King's presence is always counted equivalent as all his Troops together The Second said Courage is a vertue plac'd between boldness and fear Yet it is chiefly conversant in moderating fear which is an expectation of evil Amongst the evils and adversities which cause terrour to men some are to be fear'd by all and cannot be slighted by a vertuous man as ignominy punishment for a crime or other infamy Others may be fear'd or despis'd without blame if our selves be not the causes of them as Poverty Exile and Sickness And yet a man is never the more couragious for not fearing them For a Prodigal is not couragious for not fearing Poverty an impudent fellow that hath lost all shame may easily despise banishment as Diogenes did and a Sot will be insensible of an incurable disease which a wise man supports patiently Lastly some evils are to be contemn'd as all dangers and misfortunes which necessarily come to pass in life and death it self in the despising of which the greatness of courage principally appears especially in that which happens in the wars fighting for one's Prince and Country as being the most honourable and glorious of all The Third said No vertue can keep us from fearing death which gave so great apprehension to the most wise and to our Lord himself and which Aristotle deservedly calls the most terrible of terribles the same Philosopher also teaching us that a vertuous man infinitely desires to live and ought to fear death because he accounts himself worthy of long life during which he may do service to others and he knows
more extinct it turns into other colours as the Blew which we behold in a clear Sky and forward into others till it come to black which is no colour but a privation of it as darkness is nothing but the privation of light So that to dispute the reality of colours is to question whether the clearest thing in the world viz. Light be real The Seventh said Light and Colour differ in that Light is the act of the Diaphanous body inasmuch as 't is Diaphanous and Colour the extremity of the Diaphanum as it is terminated For no Diaphanum whilst it remains such is colour'd but colour ariseth from the condensation and thickness of the Diaphanum which terminates our sight And though colour be as much in the inside of bodies as in their surface yet 't is not call'd colour saving when 't is visible and 't is visible only in the surface Light is incorporeal and immaterial colour on the contrary is a material and corporeal quality Light makes colour to be seen but makes it self seen by its own vertue Yet there is this resemblance between them that every thing which we see colour'd we see it as luminous whence Plato in his Timaeus call's colour a flame issuing out of bodies and every thing that we see luminous we see it inasmuch as 't is colour'd Whence the Stars appear to us of a pale yellow or red colour And as that which is terminated is seen by means of the illuminated Diaphanum so this Diaphanum is seen because 't is terminated For when we see the colour of a terminated body we judge that there must be a transparent and diaphanous body between it and our eye Wherefore as the Intellect doth not know it self but by another so the eye doth not see the Diaphanum but by seeing that which is not diaphanous But both the one and the other seems partly real and partly imaginary and arising from the various relation and proportion of the eye to the object and the medium since as for colours not only some Pictures represent several personages but one and the same Taffeta changes colour according to the divers situation of the spectator's eye And as for light you shall have a worm that appears great and shines in the night but is little and grey in the day II. Whether is better to speak well or to write well Upon the second Point it was said There is so great an affinity between Speech and Reason that the Greeks have given the same name to both As Reason is peculiar to man so is Speech and therefore saith Aristotle he alone has a large soft and moveable tongue not only for the distinguishing of Tastes as other Animals but for the uttering of words which are the interpreters of his thoughts call'd words of the mind as the other are external words 'T is this Speech which protects Innocence accuses Crimes appeases popular Tumults and Seditions inflames Courage excites to Vertue disswades from Vice and gives praise to God and vertuous Men. Writing it self hath not much force unless it be animated by Speech which gives weight and grace even to the least things This was imply'd by the Ancients when they feign'd that Orpheus assembled even Trees and Rocks by the sound of his Harp which is the Emblem of Speech And therefore I judge Speech to have the precedence of Writing The Second said There are persons who speak well and write ill others on the contrary write better then they speak others but very few do both well And yet if it be not through fault of the outward Organs it seems hard to conceive how 't is possible for a man to write well and speak ill since 't is the same judge which dictates to both Clerks the hand and the tongue For though one ordinarily goes swister then the other yet they must both express the same thought But 't is oftentimes with Speech as 't is with faces which seem handsome if you behold but a glance of them whereas fixing your eye more wistly to consider them you discern even the least faults so a discourse upon which you have not leisure to reflect may seem elegant yet displease you when 't is unfurnish'd of its external ornaments Pronunciation and Gesture Moreover we see how little effectual a Letter is in comparison of animated words to which I also give the precedence 'T is of little importance to an Advocate whom his want of Eloquence causes to dye of hunger whether his reputation be made to live after his death Nor was it from the eyes or hands of our Gallic Hercules that our Fathers made the golden chains proceed which drew the people by the ears 't was from the tongue And 't was with the voice that the Father of Roman Eloquence oversway'd the mind of Caesar and Demosthenes that of all Greece The Third said I much more prize Writing which refines and polishes our conceptions which otherwise escape from great persons but ill digested Whence arose the saying That second thoughts are usually the best Moreover Writing is of long duration and is communicated to many how remote soever in time and place Which astonish'd the people of the new world when they saw that the letters which the Spaniards carri'd to their comrades communicated the mind of one to another and they thought them to be familiar spirits But when this Writing is well perform'd it hath great weight with Posterity too whence it is that we still admire the brave conceptions of antiquity which would have perish'd had they been deliver'd only in words which dye as they are born The Fourth said Writing hath this inconvenience that it cannot be comprehended by more then one or two persons at a time whereas the Voice reaches to many thousand together without receiving any diminution which is some resemblance of Divinity and consequently is the more noble The Fifth said If we judge of the preeminence of Speech or Writing by the difficulty there is in either according to the Proverb which saith that the most difficult things are the most excellent the question will remain undecided For there was never either a perfect Pen-man or perfect Orator but if we judge of the advantage by the effects 't is certain that Writing hath more weight then Speech and is therefore much more considerable And though words once utter'd cannot be recall'd no more then a written thing be retracted yet being consign'd to a very flitting and inconstant element they are of little duration whereas being written they last to eternity Which consideration so highly incens'd M. Anthonie against Cicero for publishing his Philippicks against him and made Bubalus hang himself for what Hippanax had written against him as Lycambes did upon Archilochus's Jambicks For the benefits and mischiefs of Writing are great Which makes for it since the more excellent a thing is the more hurtful the abuse of it is and according to Aristotle Men abuse every thing except Vertue The
be a corporeal substance and Democritus and Epicurus conceiv'd saying that Light is an Emanation of particles or little bodies from a lucid body or as they who make it a species of fire which they divide into That which burnes and shines That which burns and shines not and That which shines but burns not which is this Light For no natural body is mov'd in an instant nor in all sorts of places as Light is but they have all a certain difference of position or tendency some towards the centre others towards the circumference and others circularly The Sixth said 'T is true Light is not of the nature of our sublunary bodies for it is not generated and corrupted as they are It is not generated since generation is effected by corruption of one form and introduction of another But we have instances of incorruptible Light even here below as that in the Temple of Venus which could not be extinguish'd nor consum'd though neither oyle nor wick were put to it and that other found in a Sepulchre where it had burn'd for fifteen hundred years but as soon as it took Air went out And indeed the subtilety and activity of Fire is such that it may be reasonably conceiv'd to attract the sulphurous vapours for its subsistence which are in all parts of the Air but especially in Mines whose various qualities produce the diversity of subterraneal fires as to their lasting continuance and interval which some compare to the intermitting fevers excited in our bodies by a praeternatural heat II. Of Age. Of the Second Point it was said That Age is the measure of the Natural Changes whereunto Man is subject by the principles of his being which are various according to every ones particular constitution some being puberes having a beard or grey haires or such other tokens sooner then others according to the diversity of their first conformation Whence ariseth that of their division Aristotle following Hippocrates divides them into Youth Middle Age and Old Age or according to Galen into Infancy or Child-hood vigour or Man-hood or old age or according to most they are divided into Adolescence Youth the Age of Consistence and Old Age. Adolescence comprehends Infancy which reacheth to the seventh year Puerility which reacheth to the fourteenth year Puberty which reacheth to the eighteenth and that which is call'd by the general name Adolescence reaching to the five and twentieth Youth which is the flower of Age is reckon'd from twenty five to thirty three years of age Virile and Consistent Age from thirty five to forty eight where Old Age begins which is either green middle or decrepit These Four Ages are the Four Wheeles of our Life whose mutations they denote the First being nearest the original hot and moist symbolizing with the blood the Second hot and dry with Choler the Third cold and dry with melancholy the Fourth cold and moist with Phlegme which being contrary to the radical humidity leads to death Now if it be true that they say that life is a punishment and an Abridgement of miseries Old Age as being nearest the haven and the end of infelicities is the most desirable Moreover being the most perfect by its experiences and alone capable to judge of the goodnesse of Ages 't is fit we refer our selves to the goodnesse of its judgement as well in this point as in all others The Second said Since to live is to act the most perfect and delightful of all the Ages of life is that in which the functions of body and mind whereof we consist are best exercis'd as they are in Youth which alone seems to dispute preheminence with Old Age not onely by reason of the bodily health and vigor which it possesses in perfection and which supplies Spirits and Courage for brave deeds whereof that declining Age which is it self a necessary and incurable malady is incapable but also in regard of the actions of the mind which is far more lively inventive and industrious in young persons then in old whose wit wears out grows worse with the body whence came that so true Proverb That old men are twice children For 't is a disparagement to the original of wisdom to deduce it from infirmity to name that ripe which is rotten and to believe that good counsels can come only from the defect of natural heat since according to his judgement who hath best described wisdom old age causes as many wrinkles in the mind as in the face and we see no souls but as they grow old smell sowre and musty and acquire abundance of vices and evil habits of which Covetousness alone inseparable from old age which shews its weakness of judgement to scrape together with infinite travel what must shortly be forsaken is not less hurtful to the State then all the irregularities of youth Now if the supream good be in the Sciences then the young men must infallibly carry the cause since sharpness of wit strength of phancy and goodness of memory of which old men are wholly destitute and ability to undergo the tediousness of Lucubration are requisite to their acquisition If it consists in a secret complacency which we receive from the exercise of vertuous actions then young men who according to Chancellor Bacon excel in morality will carry it from old men it being certain that the best actions of life are perform'd between twenty and thirty years of age or thereabouts which was the age at which Adam was created in Paradise as our Lord accomplish'd the mystery of our Redemption at the age of 33 years which shall also be the age at which the blessed shall rise up to glory when every one shall enjoy a perfect youth such as given to the Angels and put off old age which being not much different from death may as well as that be call'd the wages of sin since if our first Parent had persisted in the state of Innocence we should have possess'd the glory of perpetual undeclining Youth Moreover 't is at this Age that the greatest personages have manifested themselves we have seen but few old Conquerors and if there be any he hath this of Alexander that he aspires to the conquest of another world not having long to live in this Wherefore in stead of pretending any advantage over the other ages old men should rather be contented that people do not use them as those of Cea and the Massagetes who knock'd them on the head or the ancient Romans who cast them head-long from a Bridge into Tiber accounting it an act of piety to deliver them from life whose length was displeasing to the Patriarchs the Scripture saying that they dy'd full of days The Third said That the innocence of Infants should make us desire their age considering that our Lord requires that we be like them if we would enter into his Kingdom and the Word of God speaks to us as we do to children Moreover since Nature could not perpetuate infancy she
and their duration is their age the second are successive whose duration is time For duration follows the existence of every thing as necessarily as existence follows essence Existence is the term of production Duration is the term of conservation So that to doubt whether there be such a real thing in Nature as Time is to doubt of the duration and existence of every thing although the Scripture should not assure us that God made the day and the night which are parts of time Moreover the contrary reasons prove nothing saving that time is not of the nature of continuous beings but of successive which consists in having no parts really present This Time is defin'd by the Philosopher The Number of Motion according to its prior and posterior parts that is to say by means of time we know how long the motion lasted when it begun and when it ended For being Number may serve for Measure and Measure for number therefore they are both taken for one and the same thing Indeed when a thing is mov'd 't is over some space whose first parts answer to the first parts of motion and the latter parts of the space to the latter parts of the motion and from this succession of the latter parts of the motion to the former ariseth a duration which is time long or short according to the slowness or quickness of this motion And because by means of this duration we number and measure that of motions and of all our actions therefore it is call'd Number or Measure although it be onely a Propriety of Time to serve for a Measure and no ways of its essence The Fourth said That to understand time 't is requisite to understand the motion and two moments one whereof was at the beginning of that motion and the other at the end and then to imagine the middle or distance between those two extreams which middle is Time Therefore man alone being able to make comparison of those two extreams only he of all animals understands and computes time Hence they who wake out of a deep and long sleep think it but a small while since they first lay down to rest because they took no notice of the intermediate motions and think the moment wherein they fell asleep and that wherein they wak'd is but one single moment The same also happens to those who are so intent upon any action or contemplation that they heed not the duration of motions Now not only the motions of the body but those of the mind are measured by time Therefore in the dark he that should perceive no outward motion not even in his own body might yet conceive time by the duration of his soul's actions his thoughts desires and other spiritual motion And as Time is the Measure of Motion so it is likewise of rest since the reason of contraries is the same And consequently motion and rest being the causes of all things time which is their duration is also their universal cause The Fifth said That 't is ordinary to men to attribute the effects whereof they know not the causes to other known causes though indeed they be nothing less so they attribute misfortunes losses death oblivion and such other things to Heaven to Time or to place although they cannot be the causes thereof Hence some certain days have been superstitiously accounted fortunate or unfortunate as by the Persians the third and sixth of August in regard of the losses which they had suffer'd upon those days the first of April by Darius and the Carthaginians because upon the same day he had lost a Battle to Alexander and these were driven out of Sicily by Timoleon who was always observ'd to have had some good fortune upon his birth day Moreover the Genethliacks affirm that the day of Nativity is always discriminated by some remarkable accident for which they alledge the example of Charles V. whose birth day the 24th of February was made remarkable to him by his election to the Empire and the taking of Francis I. before Pavia Such was also that day afterwards solemniz'd in which Philip of Macedon receiv'd his three good tidings But as there is no hour much less day but is signaliz'd by some strange accidents so there is not any but hath been both fortunate and unfortunate As was that of Alexander's birth who saw Diana's Temple at Ephesus burnt by Herostratus and the Persians put wholly to the rout Yet the same Alexander as likewise Attalus Pompey and many others dy'd upon the day of their Nativity so did Augustus upon that of his Inauguration Wherefore 't is no less ridiculous to refer all these accidents to Time then to attribute to it the mutation oblivion and death of all things whereof it is not the cause although for this purpose Saturn was painted with a sickle in his hand with which he hew'd every thing down and devour'd his own children For Time as well as Place being quantities which are no ways active they cannot be the causes of any things The Sixth said Time is diversly taken and distinguish'd according to the diversity of Professions Historians divide it into the four Monarchies of the Medes the Persians the Greeks and the Romans and the States and Empires which have succeeded them The Church into Working-days and Festivals the Lawyers into Terms and Vacations the Naturalists consider them simply as a property of natural body Astronomers as an effect of Heaven Physitians as one of the principal circumstances of Diseases which they divide into most acute acute and chronical or long which exceed 40 days and each of them into their beginning augmentation state and declination as distinguish'd by the common indicatory and critical days II. Whether 't is best to overcome by open force or otherwise Upon the second Point it was said That Force being that which first caus'd obedience and admiration in the world the strongest having ever over-mastered others it cannot enter into comparison with a thing that passes for a Vice and even amongst Women as sleight and and subtlety doth and crafts in any action otherwise glorious greatly diminisheth its lustre So Hercules is more esteem'd for having slain the Nemaean Lion with his club then Lysimachus for having taken away the life of another by dextrously thrusting his hand wrap'd up in a piece of cloth into his open'd throat and so strangling him of which no other reason can be given but that the former kil'd him by his cunning and the other by plain strength Moreover General things are made of Particular duels and single fights are little pictures of battles Now every one knows what difference there is between him that overcomes his Enemy without any foul play and another that makes use of some invention or artisice to get advantage of him For though Duels are justly odious to all good men yet he that hath behav'd himself gallantly therein even when he is overcome gains more Honour then he that by some fraud
decrepit Parents instead of believing themselves parricides call us cruel for letting ours continue so long in the miseries of age Infinite like instances have caus'd some to say that 't is another nature but I hold it stronger then nature since by it Mithridates render'd poyson innoxious to himself and some whole Nations of India live upon Toads Lizards and Spiders Yea it hath made death as lovely and desireable as life amongst great Nations whereas Philosophy with all its pompous discourses hath labour'd much to render the same indifferent to a few persons 'T is call'd by Pindar the Emperess of the world and caus'd Seneca to say that we govern not our selves by reason but by custom accounting that most honest which is most practis'd and error serves us for a law when it is become publick Lastly 't is stronger then the laws themselves since it gives them all the power and authority which they have The Fifth said That Vertue it self is nothing but a custom For we have it not by nature as Plato holds in his Menander because of those things which we have by nature the faculties are found in us before the actions So the power of seeing hearing and speaking is in man before these acts but we perform vertuous actions before we have the habit of vertue Moreover these vertues are for this reason call'd moral because they are implanted by custom and as an Architect learns his Art by frequent building so by constant performance of acts of justice or courage men become just or courageous Therefore the true way to become virtuous is to be accustom'd to vertue from one's infancy and hence Fathers are so careful to have their children well instructed and to give them good examples For being nothing but difficulty keeps men off from the practice of virtue if this difficulty were remov'd by custom which makes the hardest things easie vertue which seems so knotty would be delightful and pass into nature And 't is a token of perfect vertue when men take pleasure in exercising it CONFERENCE LXIV I. Of the Imagination II. Which is most powerful Hope or Fear I. Of the Imagination BEcause the knowledge of the present suffic'd not for the preservation of animals but requir'd also that of the past and the future therefore Nature hath made provision for the same giving them not only five Outward Senses whereby they know their objects present for every sensation is a sort of knowledge but likewise a Common Sense to Distinguish those objects an Imagination to represent the same to it when they are absent and a Memory to preserve the Species Now as amongst the external Senses those are exercis'd most perfectly whose organs are best dispos'd so amongst the internal those are most vigorous which are found in a brain best temper'd for their action If its constitution be humid then the Common Sense acts most perfectly if dry the Memory is most tenacious if hot the Phancy or Imagination is strongest But if the temper of the same Brain be cold and dry then Prudence reigns in it as we see in old men and melancholy persons For 't is more reasonable to say that the Organ of these faculties is the whole Brain then any one part of it And what is brought for proof of the contrary that oftimes one of the faculties is hurt while the rest are entire some having a sound Memory when their Imagination is deprav'd argues not that they have different seats but as the natural faculty in the whole Liver sometimes attracts but cannot retain retains but cannot digest or separate excrements so the animal faculty equally dispers'd through the whole substance of the Brain sometimes judges well of the difference of objects acknowledges conveniences and disconveniences receives the true species but yet cannot retain them on the contrary the Memory will be sometimes entire although the Imagination be disorder'd because the constitution which is then found in the whole Brain is fit for the exercise of one of those functions not of the other Moreover it happens not unusually that those faculties are wounded although the Ventricles assign'd for their residence be not as in the head-ach or distemper of the Brain and in Phrensies caus'd only by inflammation of the Meninges without any laesion of the Ventricles The Second said That the Imagination is not distinct from the other faculties but our soul resembles the Sun which in the continuity of the same action hath different effects not acting in the diaphanous parts of Heaven refrigerating the middle region of the air heating the lower and again herein corrupting some bodies producing and giving life to others The conservation of the species and their reception not being two different actions but rather as the wax by one and the same action receives a figure and retains it so the Imagination which receives the species of objects must not be distinguish'd from it self when it preserves and retains them unless by reason or mental discrimination whereby we call Memory it self an action although it be but the continuation and preservation of the first The Third said The effects of the Imagination are so marvellous that most of those are ascrib'd to it whereof we can find no other reason As the likeness of Children to their Fathers although they be only putatives because the apprehension of disloyal Wives of being surpriz'd by their Husbands makes them conceive them always present the production of most Monsters the marks imprinted upon the Child in the Womb and the like But that it is the Mistress of Reason and the Will deserves most admiration For the Soul imagining no danger or proposing to it self a good greater then the mischief of the danger carries the body upon the ridges of houses upon ropes and breaches even upon the mouths of Canons makes some swim cross rivers asleep who destroy and drown themselves and are frighted where they have least cause namely when they awake or find themselves alone in the dark so soon as their Phancy proposes some terrible object to them how absurd soever it be Wherefore they who desire to encourage Souldiers heat their Brains with Wine which keeps their imagination from representing the danger to them or raise some extraordinary boldness in them by generous discourses whose new impressions drive their bodies upon dangers Hence the Turks disorder the imagination of their Souldiers by Opium the effect whereof in the quantity wherein they take it is contrary to that whereby it casts sick persons into a sleep in this climate Reason never acquiesces in the propositions which our Imagination hath not apprehended as true and therefore weak minds are less capable of relinquishing an error wherewith they have been imbu'd Offences are not such but so far as our phancy conceives them such For a great hurt which we have receiv'd if an excuse follow it offends us not whereas an indifferent word a coldness a gesture which we interpret for a scorn even a privation
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
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
to another till they be come to the last step of the Ladder which is call'd Climax by the Greeks hence the name of Climacterical comes to be given to the years at which these changes are observ'd The most general opinion refers them to that number of seven though some have attributed them to the ninth others to every other second year but especially to the product of the one multiply'd by the other which is sixty three compos'd of nine times seven or seven times nine and therefore the most dangerous For seven and nine as Fermicus Maternus saith being very pernicious of themselves their malignity is conjoyn'd in that number of sixty three call'd upon this account the grand Climacterical as 7 14 21 28 35 41 49. very considerable amongst them for being the square of seven and 56. are call'd less Climactericals but 126. the greatest Climacterical of all because it contains the grand one twice being compos'd of eighteen Septenaries Now all these Climactericals are call'd Hebdomaticks because they go upon seven as those which are counted by nine are call'd Enneaticks amongst which the less are 9 18 27 36 45 and 54 the grand one is again 63 made also of nine multiply'd by seven the rest are 72 81 very notable too for being the square of nine 90 99 and so to the greatest Climaterical 126 made of twice nine Septenaries Amongst all which years 't is further observ'd that those are the most dangerous which ascend either by three weeks or three novenaries of years as 21 42 63 in the Hebdomaticks and 27 54 81 in the Ennecaticks The Second said That as the Septenary is considerable so is that of Nine for the number of the Hierarchies and Celestial Spheres together with the common number of moneths of womens pregnancy the time between the conception and the birth having a great resemblance with the remainder of Man's Life Likewise the Ternary proper to the Deity being multiply'd by it self must contain what ever wonder and efficacy there can be found in numbers since it belongs to innumerable things and nothing can be consider'd but with its three dimensions and its three parts beginning middle and end past present and future hence the assigning of three faces to Janus three names and three powers to the Moon according to its own that of Diana and that of Hecate together with the fiction of three Graces In brief as the three greatest changes came to pass in each of the three times of the world before the Law under the Law and after the Law so it seems just that this ternary number divide the actions of the less world as it hath done of the great The Third said That he accounted it more reasonable to make this division by the quaternary number comprehended in the ineffable name of four Letters the Elements and Humours to the contract or amity of which we owe our health our diseases death and all the accidents of our lives And the slowest motion of the dullest and most malignant of these humours is made in four dayes the reduplication whereof hath given ground to the error which attributes the Crises and indications of diseases to other numbers The fourth day is acknowledg'd the first of Natures motion and serves for a measure and foundation of all others The Crises of diseases are unanimously attributed to the Moon which hath but four quarters distinguish'd by as many faces which being denominated from the quaternary argue its power over that Planet and consequently over every thing that depends upon it And as there are four noble parts in Man comprehending with Galen those which preserve the species so there are four in the world East West North and South four parts of the earth Europe Asia Africa and America and four Monarchies But the considerableness of this number appears in that our Lord having been ask'd five questions namely of the time of his Death his Ascension the Calling of the Gentiles and the destruction of Jerusalem they were accomplish'd in the number of four times ten For he continu'd dead 40 hours he ascended into Heaven at the end of 40 dayes the vocation of the Gentiles typifi'd by the vision of unclean beasts offer'd by the Angel to Saint Peter to eat was at the end of 40 moneths which are about 3 years and a half so long also as Antichrist is to continue and the destruction of Jerusalem came to pass at the end of 40 years Whence some suspect that the end of the world which was another question made to him will probably happen after 40 times 40 years which added to the preceding would fall about the year 1640. Moreover the quaternary is not onely a square number but causing all others to be denominated such the cause of the change which happens in this number is for that a Cube cannot be vari'd and mov'd but with difficulty so that great causes are requisite to produce those changes which producing great effects become more sensible and remarkable then the ordinary ones which more easily cause variation in other numbers remote from the cubick figure The Fourth said That the Prince of Physitians having affirm'd that the Septenary is the dispenser of life and author of all its changes seven must be the true Climacterical For in seven hours the Geniture receives its first disposition to conception in seven dayes it is coagulated in seven weeks it is distinguish'd into members The Infant cannot come forth alive sooner then the seventh moneth and anciently it was not nam'd till after seven dayes being not accounted fully to have life till it had attaind that periodical day The Teeth spring out at the seventh moneth they shed and are renew'd in the seventh year at which time the Child begins to speak articulately and to be capable of Discipline At twice seven years it is pubes At twenty one the beard sprouts forth At twenty eight growing ceases At thirty five a Man is fit for marriage and the warrs At forty two he is wise or never At 49 he is in his Apogee or highest pitch after which he grows old and changes alwayes by Septenaries till he have accomplish'd the years of his life which Hippocrates for this reason distributes into seven Ages The virtue of this Number appears likewise in divine things God having sanctifi'd the seventh day by his own rest and ours and all Nations measuring their time by weeks But 't is not without mystery that Enoch the seventh after Adam was translated into Heaven that Jesus Christ is the seventy seventh in a direct line from the first Man that he spoke seven times upon the Cross on which he was seven hours that he appear'd seven times and after seven times seven dayes sent the Holy Ghost That in the Lords prayer there are seven Petitions contain'd in seven times seven words The Apostles chose seven Deacons All the mysteries of the Apocalypse are within this number mention being there made of seven seals
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
so well obey'd as on the contrary Nerva's mildness weakned and enervated the Roman Commonwealth Was ever King more severe and better obey'd then Tamberlane or any family more powerfully establish'd then that of the Ottamans which owes all its grandeur to severity and rigour the sole upholder of Military Discipline a good Captain never pardoning any in war For the misery of inferiors whether true or imaginary joyn'd with the natural desire of liberty easily carries them to rebellion if fear and rigour tye not their hands Thus the war undertaken by the Servants against their Masters at Rome was the effect of mildness nor was there any other means to repress it but by blood and slaughter as another Nation once routed an Army of their Slaves with Whips and Stirrup-leathers the sight of which reviving the memory of their former scars was more effectual then ordinary weapons Therefore when the Law gave power of life and death over slaves it intended not to authorize homicide being sufficiently careful of men's lives but judg'd it expedient to retain these persons in their duty by the apprehension of death The reason which once oblig'd the Senate to put 600 innocent slaves to death for an example to others The Second said whatever security there may be in severity it hath effects too violent to be durable Man's mind is too delicate a piece and whatever difference fortune hath put between men their spirit which is the same in all is too noble to be curb'd with a cudgel and biting of brutish severity which on the other side causes hatred as mildness doth love and is therefore to be prefer'd there being none but had rather be lov'd then hated and no way to be belov'd but by loving For the same Proverb which reckons servants amongst necessary evils reckons a wife so too and the tyrannical Aphorism So many servants so many enemies is not true but in those who have cause given them to be so And indeed a Master's condition would be the worst of all if he must live always at home upon his guard as in a den of Lyons or Tygres For what is alledg'd that servants are ill bred and ill-natur'd and seldom acknowledge the obligations they have to their Masters is indeed too true in the most eminent conditions but that which we call ingratitude in them comes especially from the rigour of our deportments which offuscate the benefits and commodities they receive from us Their low fortune is unpleasant enough without making them desperate to our prejudice And indeed the Laws which have allow'd most severity to Masters over their slaves have sometimes been insufficient to secure them from the fatal strokes of their discontent as many Histories of Roman Masters murder'd by their slaves notwithstanding that rigour of Silanus's Law and the dangerous revolts of Spartacus and others in the Provinces sufficiently testifie Whence it appears that a man must be in as much fear of his servants as he would be fear'd by them and that suspicion and diffidence is as well the mother of treacheries as of safety since it seems to leave those whom we distrust to do all the mischief they can For to pretend severity for avoidance of contempt and too great familiarity in my judgement speaks great weakness of mind and as if dominion and majesty could not be more agreeably maintain'd by clemency and gravity affected by rigour is as ridiculous as odious yea 't is to fall into an extremity too vicious to make one's self hated for fear of being sleighted and to appear cruel to avoid being familiar The Third said That although gentleness be more acceptable then severity yet 't is also more dangerous witness that of Lewis the Debonnaire and Eli the chief Priest towards their children for whom the Wiseman recommends the rod as Aristotle doth discipline for servants and slaves and the indulgence of good husbands to their wives is the most apparent cause of the luxury reigning in that Sex to say no worse A family is a kind of Republick and the principles of Occonomy and Policy are much alike Now we see States are preserv'd by the exact severity of Laws signifi'd by the Rods Axes Maces and naked Swords born by Magistrates and the Scepters of Kings But no Magistrates have Ensigns of gentleness as being more dangerous because directly oppos'd to justice all whose rights and priviledges are preserv'd by severity And hence clemency is not permitted to be us'd by inferior Judges but that it may be more rare 't is reserv'd to Princes themselves who are above Laws and Customs The Fourth said It belongs to Prudence to determine when how where and why ways of gentleness or severity are to be us'd some minds being exasperated by severity like those tempers on which violent medicines work least and others turning sweetness into bitterness whilst they think it to proceed from timerousness or impotence and so take license to do any thing whom benigne medicines act not But to speak absolutely the way of gentleness must always precede and be found unprofitable before coming to rigour according to the precept of the Physitians who use fire and cauteries only when the malignity of the malady will not yield to ordinary remedies which the ancient Arabians never us'd till having first try'd a diet and regiment of living Nor do's wise Nature ever use violence till she is forc'd to it by some potent cause as the fear of Vacuity or the penetration of Dimensions In all the rest of her actions she proceeds with sweetness wherewith she hath so endow'd man that the same humour which gives and preserves his being namely Blood is the cause of Clemency and Gentleness call'd for this reason Humanity Wherefore 't is more sutable to our nature then to lean towards its contrary and the way from gentleness to rigour is more rational and natural then from rigour to gentleness For when a rough master speaks flatteringly to his servants they are no more mov'd therewith then a Horse accustom'd to the spur is with the voice alone Yea a Horse that will not stir for words will go for the spur and Masters who incessantly rate and beat their servants are like those ill Horse-men who have alwayes their spurs in the Horses sides where they make by this means a callous scar insensible to the most quick stimulations CONFERENCE XCIV I. Of the Eclipses of the Sun and Moon II. Whether all Sciences may be profitably reduc'd to one I. Of the Eclipses of the Sun and Moon T Is an ancient saying that the Luminaries have never more spectators then when some Languishment befalls them because ordinary effects how excellent soever affect us less then such as are not common whose novelty raises admiration in our minds otherwise much delighted in considering others defects and imperfections Those of the Celestial Bodies are deficiencies of light call'd Eclipses which happen by the diametrical interposition of some opake body To speak onely of those