we do no more see their connection with their causes than of this of the spirits of the murtherer and the murthered which notwithstanding are no lesse effectuall in this occurrence than the spirits which come out of a bleare eye are able to hurt the eye that lookes on it or the eyes of a Witch to bewitch lambs and to produce all other marvellous effects whereof their histories are full The sixth said It would be hard to perswade most men that there is sense in all lifelesse bodies much more that there remaines any after death because sense is given to all bodies for no other cause but to enable them to discerne their objects to carry them toward their likes and to make them fly from subjects worthy of their eschewing Which cannot be said of dead bodies for whom nature hath no longer any care or providence So that she which doth nothing in vaine and gives not to bodies qualities of which they have no use hath not taken care to put into or preserve in carkasses a passion which might serve to uphold them in that estate For that were against the intention of Nature her selfe who strives to ruine such bodies and to resolve them into their elements to the end that thereof she may make new mixts and so augment some of her species But if we grant Campanella that dead bodies have some remainder of sense yet will it not thereupon follow that they have enough of it to cause the motions of trembling and anger to which he attributes this bleeding for anger requires too many sorts of reciprocall motions and too much mixt to be compatible with the cold which freezeth the spirits of dead bodies whatsoever the Historians say to the contrary for they write that anger might be seene in the sterne visages of divers men slaine in battaile which hath no likelihood of truth And forasmuch as plants which according to the opinion of this author have a greater measure of sense than carkasses have witnesse the attractions and expulsions which they make yet are not at all capaple of anger and having seene some men so stupid as to be displeased with nothing in their life time I cannot beleeve that they become more sensible after their death Such bodies are then past trembling either for apprehension or memory both which are fled away with their life and they are in an estate of having no further apprehension of their murderers And if they would tremble for feare it were time for them so to do at the approach of the Anatomists who without all pity pull them in as many pieces as they can imagine any way to differ from one another and besides feare would not make the blood to issue forasmuch as this passion is not caused but by the concentration of the spirits and their abandoning of the outer-parts that they may retire inward Another unlikely consequent is that these spirits separated from the soule should be more able to discern the murderer than when they were joyned to it for a living man is not able to know him that hurt him in the night or as a high-way-robber with a vizor and silence preventing all discovery of him by his face or voyce Furthermore the spirits are of the nature of the Sun-beams which give heat and light so long as they are continued from the body of the Sun to the object on which they fall but the Sun is no sooner hidden but that the beames cease to be Even so as long as the rete admirabile of the brain which is the spring and forge of the animall spirits which are only capable of knowledge does continue an influence of spirits into the nerves and through them into the other organs of the sense so long are they able to discern and no longer though they could subsist longer So that this opinion cannot stand no not with the opinion of the Pagan Philosophers who teach that the soule after death quits not the body but only the operations of the inward and outward senses the ceasing of the actions whereof the spirits are instruments being sufficient to shew that the spirits themselves are ceased The seventh said that this extraordinary motion cannot be referred but to a light supernaturally sent from God to the Judges for the discovery of the blackest crimes which otherwise would escape unpunished which is also the cause why this miracle though it sometimes happen yet is not alwayes observable as the effects of naturall causes which are necessary and thereby are distinguished from contingents it being no lesse impiety to deny that the divine justice doth sometimes send succour to the justice of men than it is ignorant rusticity in all things to content our selves with universall causes without seeking the particular ones which indeed God commonly employes for the producing of effects but yet hath not so enchained his power to the necessity of their order as that hecannot break it when he pleaseth even to the giving unto moystened clay a vertue to restore sight to the eyes of one borne blinde FINIS
teeth at first comming are new And so are all other conditions of Clarkship and Priesthood and Widowhood and almost infinite others Yea many things that seeme not at all to be new yet are so as a River seemes very ancient and yet it renewes it selfe every moment so that the water that now runs under the Bridge is not that which was there yesterday but still keeps the same name though it be altogether other indeed We our selves are renewed from time to time by our nourishments continuall restauration of our wasted triple substance Nor can any man doubt but that there are new Diseases seeing nothing is written of them in the bookes of the Ancients nor of the remedies to cure them and that the various mixtures of the qualities which produce them may be in a manner innumerable and that both sorts of Pox were unknowne to the Ancients But this novelty appeares yet better in mens actions and divers events in them which are therefore particularly called Newes Such are the relations of Battailes Sieges takings of Townes and other accidents of life so much the more considerable by how much they are ordinarily lesse regarded It were also too much injustice to goe about to deprive all Inventors of the honour due to them maintaining that they have taught us no new thing Doe not the Sectaries and Heresiarchs make new Religions Moreover who will make any question whether we have not reason to aske what new things Affrick affords nowadayes it having beene so fertile in Monsters which are bodies entirely new as being produced against the lawes of Nature And when the King calls downe money changeth the price of it determines its weight is not this a new ordinance In short this is to goe about to pervert not onely the signification of words but also common sense in maintaining that there is nothing new and it had not beene amisse if the Regent which printed such Paradoxes in a youthfull humour had never beene served with new-laid eggs nor changed his old cloathes and if he had complained answer might have beene made That there is nothing new The fourth said that there are no new substances and by consequence no new substantiall formes but onely accidentall ones seeing Nothing is made of Nothing or returnes to Nothing and in all the other Classes of things there are no new species but onely new individuals to which Monsters are to be referred Yea the mysteries of our Salvation were alwayes in intellectu Divino Which made our Saviour say that Abraham had seene him And as for Arts and Inventions they flourished in one Estate whilst they were unknowne in another where they should appeare afterward in their time And this is the sense wherein it is true that There is nothing new FINIS VVhich is most to be esteemed an Inventive VVit Judgement or Courage THe life of man is intermingled with so many accidents that it is not easie to foresee them and though our prudence could doe that yet it belongs to the Inventive faculty to provide for them without which the Judgement remà ines idle Even as a Judge cannot give sentence till the Advocates or Proctors have let him understand the arguments and conclusions of both parties that he may know to whether side he ought to incline which in us is the office of the Wit or Invention to doe Without which also Courage is but a brutish fury which inconsiderately throwes us headlong into danger and so loses its name and is called foole-hardinesse It is the good wit that enables us to doe and say things in the instant when there is need of them without which they are unseasonable like the Trojans Embassage sent to the Roman Emperour to comfort him for the losse of his sonne who died a yeare before they came and therefore he requited their kindnesse with comforting them for the losse of Hector their fellow Citizen slaine by Achilles in the time of the war between the Trojans and the Greeks above 1200 yeares before It is the Wit that seasons all the discourses and actions of men who make no other distinctions of good and evill of wisdome and folly but by our speaking or doing things fit for every occasion which is the act of the Wit and not of the Judgement or Courage although in great and heroicall actions all the vertues are to be found inseparably chained together witnesse all those neat flashes of wit witty speeches and replies made upon the sudden which have alwayes gotten their authours more honour favour than their premeditated words and actions to which the Judgement contributes more largely than the other two It is the Wit that by its inventions drew men from their caves and the life of beasts to give them palaces food raiment conversation and in a word all the commodities of life which we enjoy at this present For the better deciding of this question suppose in one company three men differently endued the one having a good Wit the second a ripe Judgement and the third a great Courage This last man can beare with nothing the judicious man will say nothing which he hath not first well pondered he will rather hold his peace and both of them may find much diversion in the inventions of the ingenious man who also if they fall out will finde a meanes to make them friends againe whereas the judicious man would use so many circumspections that their quarrell would grow old and be past the estate of accommodation wherein it was when he began to seeke the meanes of agreement whilest the other being meerly couragious would heare nothing to that purpose But their ingenious companion will finde a remedy for all these difficulties and will shew them the way by his owne example none being harder to be reconciled than those which are not at all ingenious In warre the couragious I grant will run headlong into danger more readily The judicious will delay an enterprise oftentimes employing that time in consultation which should have beene spent in execution but the Engineir like Archimedes will defend a Towne all alone or will set upon a Fort and subdue it by the force of his inventions better than a thousand men could have done with handy strokes As we may see in stratagems which have more successe than open force so that it is become a Proverbe Cunning is better than Force Antigonus having scattered many Bils of Proscription wherein he promised a great summe to him that should kill Eumenes many of the souldiers of Eumenes began to plot his death till Eumenes as soone as he heard of it called his men together to thank them for their fidelity telling them that he having beene informed that some of his owne souldiers had a designe upon his person thought good to scatter those Bils under the name of Antigonus that so he might discover those which had the traiterous intent but he thanked them he found no such villaines amongst them This straine of Wit
the cause of this flowing of the blood in the presence of the guilty is this After death the blood growes cold and thick but after a few dayes it becomes thin again as when we open a veine and receive our blood into Porrangers if we let it stand in them we may there see the like the heat of the corruption supplying the roome of the naturall heat which kept the blood liquid in the living body So that if the carkasse be removed by the murderer it is no wonder if it bleed And because the murther is hardly discovered by suspitions till after some dayes about which time also this liquefaction of the blood happens so that this accident is often found in the presence of the murtherer hence it comes to passe that the one is counted the cause of the other Although this cause and this effect be of the nature of those things which with small reason are thought to depend one on the other meerely because they fall out at the same time and because this perswasion though it be false hath a reall effect in discovery of truth therefore the Law-givers have authorized it using the same care for the discovery of truth that the guilty do to cover and hide it by their denials and divers sleights But we must take heed that we render no such cause of this issuing of the blood as may make it depend on the presence of the murderer as if it would not have happened without it The second said that it is not credible that the Soveraign Courts which have practised this triall and made good use of it were so defective in the knowledge of naturall causes as not to be able to discern the effusion of blood which comes by the putrefaction of it in the veines for they have a property to keep it from congelation from the gushing out of the same blood observed at the first approach of the guilty and when he is brought to look on the body It is therefore much better to seek the cause than to call in question the effect unlesse we had better reason so to doe than because it seems too marvellous Some have referred it to a magnetick or electricall vertue of the blood saying that quarrels seldome happen between persons unknowne but that the murtherer and the slaine having had acquaintance together their bloods have gotten such society as to draw one another and so the living mans blood being the more active draws the blood out of the other But as this attraction hath an imperceptible subtilty so it is not easie to conceive it possible if it be not helped by some meanes that may connect this effect to its cause I like better the opinion of Levinus Lemnius who presupposeth that two enemies intending one anothers death do dart their spirits one at another for they are the messengers of the soule by which she exerciseth the sight and all her other outward senses Now these spirits seeking the destruction of one another and being made active by the sting of choler doe insinuate and work themselves into the opposite bodies and finding an open entrance through some wound they tend thither more notably than to any other passage and there they mingle with the blood of the wounded and hee shortly after dying they there settle themselves and abide with his spirits till the murderer afterwards again approaching to the dead body the spirits which were all this while separated from their totall do take this occasion to rerurn and rejoyne themselves as all things are desirous to returne to their own beginnings But this they cannot do without clearing and separating themselves from that masse of blood wherein they lay confused and therefore they trouble this masse and so cause an effusion of that blood which till then was retained in the veines Which is helped not a little by that confusion whereinto we bring the murderer by laying before him the body by him murthered for hereupon his spirits forsaking their Center and wandring do meet with their fellowes as the Lode-stone and Iron meeting one another halfe way The third man was of the opinion of Campanella who attributes the cause of this bleeding to the sense which is in all things and which continues in dead bodies so that having a perception of their murderers and perceiving them neere them they suffer two very different motions of trembling and anger which shake the body and remove the blood in the veines violently enough to make it issue at the gaps of their wounds For the spirits which during life had knowledge enough to make them perceive and obey the commands of the soule retaine it even after death so farre as to be able to discerne their friends and their enemies And as at the time of our birth all the objects which are present do imprint in us their qualities in that universall change which is made at that moment as Astrologers speak whence comes that important choyce which they prescribe us to make of mid-wives and gossips that is if we consider the matter more neerly of the persons which are to be about the child-wife so when we die and quit our naturall qualities to borrow new ones from the bodies about us we get a conformity with all those which are neere us and with the murtherer more than with any other The fourth said this opinion could not be true for then it would follow that hee which had killed some man by the shot of an Arquebuz could not be knowne by the signe and that if a man were killed in the armes of his wife and amidst his friends which had defended him such a one would rather bleed in the presence of his friends than of the murtherer whose spirits are ordinarily kept in by the guilt of his conscience and the apprehension of punishment whereas his friends being animated with anger do call forth all their spirits to a necessary defence Besides if the murtherer now brought neere the carkasse have also beene wounded in this encounter he should rather bleed than the dead man because his blood is more boyling and must have received many of the spirits which did all leave the slaine man at his death being evaporated thence upon the bodies which were round about him For they issue out of the wounds of a dying man together with his blood and that so violently that they will not permit at the same time a motion contrary to theirs and so cannot admit any entrance for the spirits of the murtherer which if they should enter would there acquire a Sympathy with the dead body in whose blood they would tongeale and lose the Sympathy that they had with the body out of which they came Even as no man retaines the spirits of that creature whose blood or heart he eates but he thereof formes his owne spirits Nay if they did retaine this Sympathy yet could they not know the murderer for want of senses which they never had because the spirits