of the Platonists unless they should speak of that particular Order themselves were of for it is likely there may be as much difference in their ages as there is in the ages of several kinds of Birds and Beasts Thirdly That our Souls are so farre mortal as that there is nothing proper to us remaining after death Fourthly That they were nearer allied to the Gods then we by farre and that there was as much difference betwixt them and us as there is betwixt us and Beasts Which they must understand then concerning the excellency of their Vehicles and the natural activity of them not the preeminency of their Intellectual Faculties Or if they doe they must be understood of the better sort of those AErial Spirits Or if they mean it of all their Orders it may be a mistake out of pride as those that are rich and powerful as well as speculative amongst us take it for granted that they are more judicious and discerning then the poor and despicable let them be never so wise Fifthly That they know all secret things whether hidden Books or Monies which men might doe too if they could stand by concealedly from them that hide them Sixthly That the lowest sort of them were the Genii of the Noblest men as the baser sort of Men are the Keepers and Educators of the better kinde of Dogs and Horses This clause of the Vision also is inveloped with obscurity they having not defined whether this meanness of condition of the Tutelar Genii be to be understood in a Political or Physical sense whether the meanness of rank and power or of natural wit and sagacity in which many times the Groom exceeds the young Gallant who assigns him to keep his Dogs and Horses Seventhly That such is the thinness and lightness of their Bodies that they can doe neither good nor hurt thereby though they may send strange Sights and Terrors and communicate Knowledge which then must be chiefly of such things as belong to their aerial Region For concerning matters in the Sea the Fishes if they could speak might inform men better then they And for their corporeal debility it is uncertain whether they may not pretend it to animate their Confabulators to a more secure converse or whether the thing be really true in some kindes of them For that it is not in all may be evinced by that Narration that Cardan a little after recites out of Erasmus of the Devil that carried a Witch into the Aire and set her on the top of a Chimney giving her a Pot and bidding her turn the mouth downwards which done the whole Town was fired and burnt down within the space of an hour This hapned April the 10. Anno 1533. The Towns name was Schiltach eight German miles distant from Friburg The Story is so well attested and guarded with such unexceptionable circumstances that though Cardan love to shew his wit in cavilling at most he recites yet he finds nothing at all to quarrel at in his Eighthly That there are Students and Professors of Philosophy in the AErial World and are divided into Sects and Opinions there as well as we are here Which cannot possibly be true unless they set some value upon knowledge and are at an eager loss how to finde it and are fain to hew out their way by arguing and reasoning as we doe Ninthly and lastly That they are reduced under a Political Government and are afraid of the infliction of punishment 11. These are the main matters comprehended in Facius his Vision which how true they all are would be too much trouble to determine But one clause which is the third I cannot let pass it so nearly concerning the present Subject and seeming to intercept all hopes of the Souls Immortality To speak therefore to the summe of the whole business we must either conceive these aerial Philosophers to instruct Facius Cardanus as well as they could they being guilty of nothing but a forward pride to offer themselves as dictating Oracles to that doubtful Exorcist for his son Cardan acknowledges that his Father had a form of Conjuration that a Spaniard gave him at his death or else we must suppose them to take the liberty of equivocating if not of downright lying Now if they had a minde to inform Facius Cardanus of these things directly as they themselves thought of them it being altogether unlikely but that there appeared to them in their aerial Regions such sights as represented the persons of men here deceased it is impossible that they should think otherwise then as we have described their Opinion in the fore-going Chapter that hold there is but one Soul in the World by which all living Creatures are actuated Which though but a meer possibility if so much yet some or other of these aerial Speculators may as well hold to it as some doe amongst us For Pomponatius and others of the Avenroists are as ridiculously pertinacious as they And therefore these Avenroistical Daemons answered punctually according to the Conclusions of their own School Nihil proprium cuiquam superesse post mortem For the Minde or Soul being a Substance common to all and now disunited from those Terrestrial Bodies which it actuated in Plato suppose or Socrates and these Bodies dead and dissipated and onely the common Soul of the World surviving there being nothing but this Soul and these Bodies to make up Socrates and Plato they conclude it is a plain case that nothing that is proper survives after death And therefore though they see the representation of Socrates and Plato in the other World owning also their own personalities with all the actions they did and accidents that befell them in this life yet according to the sullen subtilties and curiosities of their School they may think and profess that to speak accurately and Philosophically it is none of them there being no Substance proper to them remaining after death but onely the Soul of the World renewing the thoughts to her self of what appertained to those parties in this life 12. This is one Hypothesis consistent enough with the veracity of these Daemons but there is also another not at all impossible viz. That the Vehicles of the Souls of men departed are as invisible to this Order of the Genii that confabulated with Facius Cardanus as that Order is to us and that therefore though there be the appearances of the Ghosts of Men deceased to them as well as to us yet it being but for a time it moves them no more then our confirmed Epicureans in this world are moved thereby especially it being prone for them to think that they are nothing but some ludicrous spectacles that the universal Soule of the World represents to her self and other Spectatours when and how long a time she pleases and the vaporous reliques of the dead body administer occasion Now that the Vehicles of the Souls of men departed this life after they are come to a setled condition may be
the same words I find them in his own Writings that any man may judge if I doe him any wrong The first place I shall take notice of is in his Leviathan Chap. 34. The word Body in the most general acceptation signifies that which filleth or occupieth some certain room or imagined place and dependeth not on the Imagination but is a real part of that we call the Universe For the Universe being the Aggregate of all Bodyes there is no reall part thereof that is not also Body nor any thing properly a Body that is not also part of that Aggregate of all Bodyes the Universe The same also because Bodyes are subject to change that is to say to variety of appearance to the sense of living Creatures is called Substance that is to say subject to various Accidents as sometimes to be moved sometimes to stand still and to seem to our senses sometimes Hot sometimes Cold sometimes of one Colour Smell Tast or Sound sometimes of another And this diversity of seeming produced by the diversity of the operation of Bodyes on the Organs of our Sense we attribute to alterations of the Bodyes that operate and call them Accidents of those Bodyes And according to this acception of the word Substance and Body signifie the same thing and therefore Substance incorporeal are words which when they are joyned together destroy one another as if a man should say an Incorporeal Body 4. The second place is in his Physicks Part 4. Chap. 25. Article 9. But it is here to be observed that certain Dreames especially such as some men have when they are betwixt sleeping and waking and such as happen to those that have no knowledg of the nature of Dreames and are withall superstitious were not heretofore nor are now accounted Dreames For the Apparitions men thought they saw and the voices they thought they heard in sleep were not believed to be Phantasmes but things subsisting of themselves and Objects without those that Dreamed For to some men as well sleeping as waking but especially to guilty men and in the night and in hallowed places Fear alone helped a little with the storyes of such Apparitions hath raised in their mindes terrible Phantasmes which have been and are still deceitfully received for things really true under the names of Ghosts and Incorporeal Substances 5. We will adde a third out of the same book Part 1. Chap. 5. Art 4. For seeing Ghosts sensible species a shadow light colour sound space c. appear to us no less sleeping then waking they cannot be things without us but onely Phantasmes of the mind that imagines them 6. And a fourth out of his Humane Nature Chap. 11. Art 4. But Spirits supernaturall commonly signifie some Substance without dimension which two words doe flatly contradict one another And Article 5. Nor I think is that word Incorporeal at all in the Bible but is said of the Spirit that it abideth in men sometimes that it dwelleth in them sometimes that it cometh on them that it descendeth and goeth and cometh and that Spirits are Angels that is to say Messengers all which words doe imply locality and locality is Dimension and whatsoever hath dimension is Body be it never so subtile 7. The fifth Excerption shall be out of his Leviathan Chap. 12. And for the Matter or Substance of the Invisible agents so fancyed they could not by naturall cogitation fall upon any other conceit but that it was the same with that of the Soule of Man and that the Soule of Man was of the same Substance with that which appeareth in a Dream to one that sleepeth or in a Looking-glass to one that is awake Which men not knowing that such Apparitions are nothing else but creatures of the Fancy think to be reall and external Substances and therefore call them Ghosts as the Latines called them Imagines and Umbrae and thought them Spirits that is thin aereal bodies and those invisible Agents which they feared to be like them save that they appeare and vanish when they please But the opinion that such Spirits were Incorporeal or Immateriall could never enter into the minde of any man by nature because though men may put together words of contradictory signification as Spirit and Incorporeal yet they can never have the imagination of any thing answering to them We will help out this further from what he writes in his Humane Nature Cap. 11. Art 5. To know that a Spirit is that is to say to have natural evidence of the same it is impossible For all evidence is conception and all conception is imagination and proceedeth from Sense and Spirits we suppose to be those Substances which work not upon the Sense and therefore are not conceptible 8. The sixth out of Chap. 45. where he writes thus This nature of Sight having never been discovered by the ancient pretenders to naturall knowledg much less by those that consider not things so remote as that knowledg is from their present use it was hard for men to conceive of those Images in the Fancy and in the Sense otherwise then of things really without us Which some because they vanish away they know not whether nor how will have to be absolutely incorporeal that is to say Immaterial or Forms without Matter Colour and Figure without any coloured or figured body and that they can put on aiery bodyes as a garment to make them visible when they will to our bodily eyes and others say are Bodyes and living Creatures but made of Aire or other more subtile and aethereal matter which is then when they will be seen condensed But both of them agree on one general appellation of them Daemons As if the dead of whom they dreamed were not the Inhabitants of their own Brain but of the Aire or of Heaven or Hell not Phantasmes but Ghosts with just as much reason as if one should say he saw his own Ghost in a Looking-glass or the Ghosts of the stars in a River or call the ordinary Apparition of the Sun of the quantity of about a foot the Daemon or Ghost of that great Sun that enlightneth the whole visible world 9. The seventh is out of the next Chapter of the same book Where he again taking to task that Jargon as he calls it of Abstract Essences and Substantial Formes he writes thus The world I mean not the Earth onely but the Universe that is the whole mass of all things that are is corporeal that is to say Body and hath the Dimensions of Magnitude namely Length Breadth and Depth also every part of Body is likewise Body and hath the like dimensions and consequently every part of the Universe is Body and that which is not Body is no part of the Universe And because the Universe is all that which is no part of it is nothing and consequently no where 10. The eighth and last we have a little after in the same Chapter which runs thus Being once fallen into this
propension may be also recreated For these three dispositions are the flowr of all the rest as Plotinus has somewhere noted And his reception into the other World is set out by Apollo's Oracle from some such like circumstances as these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Of the meaning of which Verses that the Reader may not quite be deprived I shall render their sense in this careless paraphrase Now the blest meetings thou arriv'st unto Of th' airy Genii where soft winds do blow Where Friendship Love gentle sweet Desire Fill their thrice-welcom guests with joys entire Ever supply'd from that immortal spring Whose streams pure Nectar from great Jove doe bring Whence kind converse and amorous eloquence Warm their chast minds into the highest sense Of Heav'nly Love whose myst'ries they declare Midst the fresh breathings of the peaceful Aire And he holds on naming the happy company the Soul of Plotinus was to associate with viz. Pythagoras Plato and the purer Spirits of the Golden Age and all such as made up the Chorus of immortal Love and Friendship These sing and play and dance together reaping the lawful pleasures of the very Animal life in a far higher degree then we are capable of in this World For every thing here does as it were tast of the cask and has some coursness and foulness with it The sweet motions of the Spirits in the passion of Love can very hardly be commanded off from too near bordering upon the shameful sense of Lust the Fabrick of the terrestrial Body almost necessitating them to that deviation The tenderer Ear cannot but feel the rude thumpings of the wood and gratings of the rosin the hoarsness or some harshness and untunableness or other in the best consorts of Musical Instruments and Voices The judicious Eye cannot but espy some considerable defect in either the proportion colour or the aire of the face in the most fam'd and most admired beauties of either Sex to say nothing of the inconcinnity of their deportment and habits But in that other state where the Fancy consults with that first Exemplar of Beauty Intellectual Love and Vertue and the Body is wholly obedient to the imagination of the Minde and will to every Punctilio yield to the impresses of that inward pattern nothing there can be found amiss every touch and stroak of motion and Beauty being conveyed from so judicious a power through so delicate and depurate a Medium Wherefore they cannot but enravish one anothers Souls while they are mutual Spectators of the perfect pulcritude of one anothers persons and comely carriage of their graceful dancing their melodious singing and playing with accents so sweet and soft as if we should imagine the Aire here of it self to compose Lessons and send forth Musical sounds without the help of any terrestrial Instrument These and such like Pastimes as these are part of the happiness of the best sort of the aerial Genii 5. Which the more certain knowledge of what is done amongst the inferiour Daemons will further assure us of For it is very probable that their Conventicles into which Witches and Wizzards are admitted are but a depraved adumbration of the friendly meetings of the superiour Genii And what Musick Dancing and Feasting there is in these the free confession of those Wretches or fortuitous detection of others has made manifest to the World viz. How Humane and Angelical Beauty is transformed there into Bestial Deformity the chief in the company ordinarily appearing in the Figures of Satyres Apes Goats or such like ugly Animals how the comely deportments of Body into ridiculous gesticulations perverse postures and antick dances and how innocuous love and pure friendship degenerates into the most brutish lust and abominable obscenity that can be imagined of which I will adde nothing more having spoke enough of this matter in the Appendix to my Antidote Chap. 12. 6. What is most material for the present is to consider whether as the Musick and Dancing of these lower and more deeply-lapsed Daemons are a distorted imitation of what the higher and more pure Daemons doe in their Regions so their Feasting may not be a perverted resemblance of the others Banquetings also that is to say it is worth our enquiring into whether they doe not eat and drink as well as these For the rich amongst us must have their repast as well as the poor and Princes feed as well as Prisoners though there be a great difference in their diet And I must confess there is no small difficulty in both whence the good or bad Genii may have their food though it be easy enough to conceive that they may feed and refresh their Vehicles For supposing they doe vitally actuate some particular portion of the Aire that they drive along with them which is of a certain extent it is most natural to conceive that partly by local motion and partly by the activity of their thoughts they set some particles of their Vehicles into a more then usual agitation which being thus moved scatter and perspire and that so the Vehicle lessens in some measure and therefore admits of a recruite which must be either by formal repast or by drawing in the crude Aire onely which haply may be enough but it being so like it self alwaies the pleasure will be more flat Wherefore it is not improbable but that both may have their times of Refection for pleasure at least if not necessity which will be the greater advantage for the Good and the more exquisite misery for the Bad they being punishable in this regard also 7. But as I said the greatest difficulty is to give a rationall account whence the bad Genii have their food in their execrable feasts so formally made up into dishes That the materials of it is a vaporous aire appears as well from the faintness and emptiness of them that have been entertained at those feasts as from their forbidding the use of Salt at them it having a virtue of dissolving of all aqueous substances as well as hindering their congelation But how the Aire is moulded up into that form and consistency it is very hard to conceive whether it be done by the meer power of Imagination upon their own Vehicles first dabled in some humidities that are the fittest for their design which they change into these forms of Viands and then withdraw when they have given them such a figure colour and consistency with some small touch of such a sapour or tincture or whether it be the priviledge of these AErial Creatures by a sharp Desire and keen Imagination to pierce the Spirit of Nature so as to awaken her activity and engage her to the compleating in a moment as it were the full design of their own wishes but in such matter as the Element they are in is capable of which is this crude and