De Anima.—The Lower Region, Natural Organs.] But you that are readers in the meantime, "Suppose you were now brought into some sacred temple, or majestical palace" (as [962]Melancthon saith), "to behold not the matter only, but the singular art, workmanship, and counsel of this our great Creator. And it is a pleasant and profitable speculation, if it be considered aright." The parts of this region, which present themselves to your consideration and view, are such as serve to nutrition or generation. Those of nutrition serve to the first or second concoction; as the oesophagus or gullet, which brings meat and drink into the stomach. The ventricle or stomach, which is seated in the midst of that part of the belly beneath the midriff, the kitchen, as it were, of the first concoction, and which turns our meat into chylus. It hath two mouths, one above, another beneath. The upper is sometimes taken for the stomach itself; the lower and nether door (as Wecker calls it) is named Pylorus. This stomach is sustained by a large kell or caul, called omentum; which some will have the same with peritoneum, or rim of the belly. From the stomach to the very fundament are produced the guts, or intestina, which serve a little to alter and distribute the chylus, and convey away the excrements. They are divided into small and great, by reason of their site and substance, slender or thicker: the slender is duodenum, or whole gut, which is next to the stomach, some twelve inches long, saith [963] Fuschius. Jejunum, or empty gut, continuate to the other, which hath many mesaraic veins annexed to it, which take part of the chylus to the liver from it. Ilion the third, which consists of many crinkles, which serves with the rest to receive, keep, and distribute the chylus from the stomach. The thick guts are three, the blind gut, colon, and right gut. The blind is a thick and short gut, having one mouth, in which the ilium and colon meet: it receives the excrements, and conveys them to the colon. This colon hath many windings, that the excrements pass not away too fast: the right gut is straight, and conveys the excrements to the fundament, whose lower part is bound up with certain muscles called sphincters, that the excrements may be the better contained, until such time as a man be willing to go to the stool. In the midst of these guts is situated the mesenterium or midriff, composed of many veins, arteries, and much fat, serving chiefly to sustain the guts. All these parts serve the first concoction. To the second, which is busied either in refining the good nourishment or expelling the bad, is chiefly belonging the liver, like in colour to congealed blood, the shop of blood, situate in the right hypochondry, in figure like to a half-moon, generosum membrum Melancthon styles it, a generous part; it serves to turn the chylus to blood, for the nourishment of the body. The excrements of it are either choleric or watery, which the other subordinate parts convey. The gall placed in the concave of the liver, extracts choler to it: the spleen, melancholy; which is situate on the left side, over against the liver, a spongy matter, that draws this black choler to it by a secret virtue, and feeds upon it, conveying the rest to the bottom of the stomach, to stir up appetite, or else to the guts as an excrement. That watery matter the two kidneys expurgate by those emulgent veins and ureters. The emulgent draw this superfluous moisture from the blood; the two ureters convey it to the bladder, which, by reason of his site in the lower belly, is apt to receive it, having two parts, neck and bottom: the bottom holds the water, the neck is constringed with a muscle, which, as a porter, keeps the water from running out against our will.

Members of generation are common to both sexes, or peculiar to one; which, because they are impertinent to my purpose, I do voluntarily omit.

Middle Region.] Next in order is the middle region, or chest, which comprehends the vital faculties and parts; which (as I have said) is separated from the lower belly by the diaphragma or midriff, which is a skin consisting of many nerves, membranes; and amongst other uses it hath, is the instrument of laughing. There is also a certain thin membrane, full of sinews, which covereth the whole chest within, and is called pleura, the seat of the disease called pleurisy, when it is inflamed; some add a third skin, which is termed mediastinus, which divides the chest into two parts, right and left; of this region the principal part is the heart, which is the seat and fountain of life, of heat, of spirits, of pulse and respiration—the sun of our body, the king and sole commander of it—the seat and organ of all passions and affections. Primum vivens, ultimum moriens, it lives first, dies last in all creatures. Of a pyramidical form, and not much unlike to a pineapple; a part worthy of [964] admiration, that can yield such variety of affections, by whose motion it is dilated or contracted, to stir and command the humours in the body. As in sorrow, melancholy; in anger, choler; in joy, to send the blood outwardly; in sorrow, to call it in; moving the humours, as horses do a chariot. This heart, though it be one sole member, yet it may be divided into two creeks right and left. The right is like the moon increasing, bigger than the other part, and receives blood from vena cava, distributing some of it to the lungs to nourish them; the rest to the left side, to engender spirits. The left creek hath the form of a cone, and is the seat of life, which, as a torch doth oil, draws blood unto it, begetting of it spirits and fire; and as fire in a torch, so are spirits in the blood; and by that great artery called aorta, it sends vital spirits over the body, and takes air from the lungs by that artery which is called venosa; so that both creeks have their vessels, the right two veins, the left two arteries, besides those two common anfractuous ears, which serve them both; the one to hold blood, the other air, for several uses. The lungs is a thin spongy part, like an ox hoof, (saith [965]Fernelius) the town-clerk or crier, ([966]one terms it) the instrument of voice, as an orator to a king; annexed to the heart, to express their thoughts by voice. That it is the instrument of voice, is manifest, in that no creature can speak, or utter any voice, which wanteth these lights. It is, besides, the instrument of respiration, or breathing; and its office is to cool the heart, by sending air unto it, by the venosal artery, which vein comes to the lungs by that aspera arteria which consists of many gristles, membranes, nerves, taking in air at the nose and mouth, and by it likewise exhales the fumes of the heart.

In the upper region serving the animal faculties, the chief organ is the brain, which is a soft, marrowish, and white substance, engendered of the purest part of seed and spirits, included by many skins, and seated within the skull or brain pan; and it is the most noble organ under heaven, the dwelling-house and seat of the soul, the habitation of wisdom, memory, judgment, reason, and in which man is most like unto God; and therefore nature hath covered it with a skull of hard bone, and two skins or membranes, whereof the one is called dura mater, or meninx, the other pia mater. The dura mater is next to the skull, above the other, which includes and protects the brain. When this is taken away, the pia mater is to be seen, a thin membrane, the next and immediate cover of the brain, and not covering only, but entering into it. The brain itself is divided into two parts, the fore and hinder part; the fore part is much bigger than the other, which is called the little brain in respect of it. This fore part hath many concavities distinguished by certain ventricles, which are the receptacles of the spirits, brought hither by the arteries from the heart, and are there refined to a more heavenly nature, to perform the actions of the soul. Of these ventricles there are three—right, left, and middle. The right and left answer to their site, and beget animal spirits; if they be any way hurt, sense and motion ceaseth. These ventricles, moreover, are held to be the seat of the common sense. The middle ventricle is a common concourse and cavity of them both, and hath two passages—the one to receive pituita, and the other extends itself to the fourth creek; in this they place imagination and cogitation, and so the three ventricles of the fore part of the brain are used. The fourth creek behind the head is common to the cerebel or little brain, and marrow of the backbone, the last and most solid of all the rest, which receives the animal spirits from the other ventricles, and conveys them to the marrow in the back, and is the place where they say the memory is seated.

SUBSECT. V.—Of the Soul and her Faculties.

According to [967]Aristotle, the soul is defined to be [Greek: entelecheia], perfectio et actus primus corporis organici, vitam habentis in potentia: the perfection or first act of an organical body, having power of life, which most [968]philosophers approve. But many doubts arise about the essence, subject, seat, distinction, and subordinate faculties of it. For the essence and particular knowledge, of all other things it is most hard (be it of man or beast) to discern, as [969]Aristotle himself, [970]Tully, [971]Picus Mirandula, [972]Tolet, and other neoteric philosophers confess:—[973]"We can understand all things by her, but what she is we cannot apprehend." Some therefore make one soul, divided into three principal faculties; others, three distinct souls. Which question of late hath been much controverted by Picolomineus and Zabarel. [974] Paracelsus will have four souls, adding to the three grand faculties a spiritual soul: which opinion of his, Campanella, in his book de sensu rerum [975]much labours to demonstrate and prove, because carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer; with many such arguments And [976]some again, one soul of all creatures whatsoever, differing only in organs; and that beasts have reason as well as men, though, for some defect of organs, not in such measure. Others make a doubt whether it be all in all, and all in every part; which is amply discussed in Zabarel amongst the rest. The [977]common division of the soul is into three principal faculties—vegetal, sensitive, and rational, which make three distinct kinds of living creatures—vegetal plants, sensible beasts, rational men. How these three principal faculties are distinguished and connected, Humano ingenio inaccessum videtur, is beyond human capacity, as [978] Taurellus, Philip, Flavins, and others suppose. The inferior may be alone, but the superior cannot subsist without the other; so sensible includes vegetal, rational both; which are contained in it (saith Aristotle) ut trigonus in tetragono as a triangle in a quadrangle.

Vegetal Soul.] Vegetal, the first of the three distinct faculties, is defined to be "a substantial act of an organical body, by which it is nourished, augmented, and begets another like unto itself." In which definition, three several operations are specified—altrix, auctrix, procreatrix; the first is [979]nutrition, whose object is nourishment, meat, drink, and the like; his organ the liver in sensible creatures; in plants, the root or sap. His office is to turn the nutriment into the substance of the body nourished, which he performs by natural heat. This nutritive operation hath four other subordinate functions or powers belonging to it—attraction, retention, digestion, expulsion.

Attraction.] [980]Attraction is a ministering faculty, which, as a loadstone doth iron, draws meat into the stomach, or as a lamp doth oil; and this attractive power is very necessary in plants, which suck up moisture by the root, as, another mouth, into the sap, as a like stomach.

Retention.] Retention keeps it, being attracted unto the stomach, until such time it be concocted; for if it should pass away straight, the body could not be nourished.

Digestion.] Digestion is performed by natural heat; for as the flame of a torch consumes oil, wax, tallow, so doth it alter and digest the nutritive matter. Indigestion is opposite unto it, for want of natural heat. Of this digestion there be three differences—maturation, elixation, assation.

Maturation.] Maturation is especially observed in the fruits of trees; which are then said to be ripe, when the seeds are fit to be sown again. Crudity is opposed to it, which gluttons, epicures, and idle persons are most subject unto, that use no exercise to stir natural heat, or else choke it, as too much wood puts out a fire.

Elixation.] Elixation is the seething of meat in the stomach, by the said natural heat, as meat is boiled in a pot; to which corruption or putrefaction is opposite.

Assation.] Assation is a concoction of the inward moisture by heat; his opposite is semiustulation.

Order of Concoction fourfold.] Besides these three several operations of digestion, there is a fourfold order of concoction:—mastication, or chewing in the mouth; chilification of this so chewed meat in the stomach; the third is in the liver, to turn this chylus into blood, called sanguification; the last is assimilation, which is in every part.

Expulsion.] Expulsion is a power of nutrition, by which it expels all superfluous excrements, and relics of meat and drink, by the guts, bladder, pores; as by purging, vomiting, spitting, sweating, urine, hairs, nails, &c.

Augmentation.] As this nutritive faculty serves to nourish the body, so doth the augmenting faculty (the second operation or power of the vegetal faculty) to the increasing of it in quantity, according to all dimensions, long, broad, thick, and to make it grow till it come to his due proportion and perfect shape; which hath his period of augmentation, as of consumption; and that most certain, as the poet observes:—

"Stat sua cuique dies, breve et irreparabile tempus Omnibus est vitae."———

"A term of life is set to every man, Which is but short, and pass it no one can."

Generation.] The last of these vegetal faculties is generation, which begets another by means of seed, like unto itself, to the perpetual preservation of the species. To this faculty they ascribe three subordinate operations:—the first to turn nourishment into seed, &c.

Life and Death concomitants of the Vegetal Faculties.] Necessary concomitants or affections of this vegetal faculty are life and his privation, death. To the preservation of life the natural heat is most requisite, though siccity and humidity, and those first qualities, be not excluded. This heat is likewise in plants, as appears by their increasing, fructifying, &c., though not so easily perceived. In all bodies it must have radical [981]moisture to preserve it, that it be not consumed; to which preservation our clime, country, temperature, and the good or bad use of those six non-natural things avail much. For as this natural heat and moisture decays, so doth our life itself; and if not prevented before by some violent accident, or interrupted through our own default, is in the end dried up by old age, and extinguished by death for want of matter, as a lamp for defect of oil to maintain it.

SUBSECT. VI.—Of the sensible Soul.

Next in order is the sensible faculty, which is as far beyond the other in dignity, as a beast is preferred to a plant, having those vegetal powers included in it. 'Tis defined an "Act of an organical body by which it lives, hath sense, appetite, judgment, breath, and motion." His object in general is a sensible or passible quality, because the sense is affected with it. The general organ is the brain, from which principally the sensible operations are derived. This sensible soul is divided into two parts, apprehending or moving. By the apprehensive power we perceive the species of sensible things present, or absent, and retain them as wax doth the print of a seal. By the moving, the body is outwardly carried from one place to another; or inwardly moved by spirits and pulse. The apprehensive faculty is subdivided into two parts, inward or outward. Outward, as the five senses, of touching, hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, to which you may add Scaliger's sixth sense of titillation, if you please; or that of speech, which is the sixth external sense, according to Lullius. Inward are three—common sense, phantasy, memory. Those five outward senses have their object in outward things only, and such as are present, as the eye sees no colour except it be at hand, the ear sound. Three of these senses are of commodity, hearing, sight, and smell; two of necessity, touch, and taste, without which we cannot live. Besides, the sensitive power is active or passive. Active in sight, the eye sees the colour; passive when it is hurt by his object, as the eye by the sunbeams. According to that axiom, visibile forte destruit sensum. [982]Or if the object be not pleasing, as a bad sound to the ear, a stinking smell to the nose, &c.

Sight.] Of these five senses, sight is held to be most precious, and the best, and that by reason of his object, it sees the whole body at once. By it we learn, and discern all things, a sense most excellent for use: to the sight three things are required; the object, the organ, and the medium. The object in general is visible, or that which is to be seen, as colours, and all shining bodies. The medium is the illumination of the air, which comes from [983]light, commonly called diaphanum; for in dark we cannot see. The organ is the eye, and chiefly the apple of it, which by those optic nerves, concurring both in one, conveys the sight to the common sense. Between the organ and object a true distance is required, that it be not too near, or too far off! Many excellent questions appertain to this sense, discussed by philosophers: as whether this sight be caused intra mittendo, vel extra mittendo, &c., by receiving in the visible species, or sending of them out, which [984]Plato, [985]Plutarch, [986]Macrobius, [987]Lactantius and others dispute. And, besides, it is the subject of the perspectives, of which Alhazen the Arabian, Vitellio, Roger Bacon, Baptista Porta, Guidus Ubaldus, Aquilonius, &c., have written whole volumes.

Hearing.] Hearing, a most excellent outward sense, "by which we learn and get knowledge." His object is sound, or that which is heard; the medium, air; organ, the ear. To the sound, which is a collision of the air, three things are required; a body to strike, as the hand of a musician; the body struck, which must be solid and able to resist; as a bell, lute-string, not wool, or sponge; the medium, the air; which is inward, or outward; the outward being struck or collided by a solid body, still strikes the next air, until it come to that inward natural air, which as an exquisite organ is contained in a little skin formed like a drum-head, and struck upon by certain small instruments like drum-sticks, conveys the sound by a pair of nerves, appropriated to that use, to the common sense, as to a judge of sounds. There is great variety and much delight in them; for the knowledge of which, consult with Boethius and other musicians.

Smelling.] Smelling is an "outward sense, which apprehends by the nostrils drawing in air;" and of all the rest it is the weakest sense in men. The organ in the nose, or two small hollow pieces of flesh a little above it: the medium the air to men, as water to fish: the object, smell, arising from a mixed body resolved, which, whether it be a quality, fume, vapour, or exhalation, I will not now dispute, or of their differences, and how they are caused. This sense is an organ of health, as sight and hearing, saith [988]Agellius, are of discipline; and that by avoiding bad smells, as by choosing good, which do as much alter and affect the body many times, as diet itself.

Taste.] Taste, a necessary sense, "which perceives all savours by the tongue and palate, and that by means of a thin spittle, or watery juice." His organ is the tongue with his tasting nerves; the medium, a watery juice; the object, taste, or savour, which is a quality in the juice, arising from the mixture of things tasted. Some make eight species or kinds of savour, bitter, sweet, sharp, salt, &c., all which sick men (as in an ague) cannot discern, by reason of their organs misaffected.

Touching.] Touch, the last of the senses, and most ignoble, yet of as great necessity as the other, and of as much pleasure. This sense is exquisite in men, and by his nerves dispersed all over the body, perceives any tactile quality. His organ the nerves; his object those first qualities, hot, dry, moist, cold; and those that follow them, hard, soft, thick, thin, &c. Many delightsome questions are moved by philosophers about these five senses; their organs, objects, mediums, which for brevity I omit.

SUBSECT. VII.—Of the Inward Senses.

Common Sense.] Inner senses are three in number, so called, because they be within the brainpan, as common sense, phantasy, memory. Their objects are not only things present, but they perceive the sensible species of things to come, past, absent, such as were before in the sense. This common sense is the judge or moderator of the rest, by whom we discern all differences of objects; for by mine eye I do not know that I see, or by mine ear that I hear, but by my common sense, who judgeth of sounds and colours: they are but the organs to bring the species to be censured; so that all their objects are his, and all their offices are his. The fore part of the brain is his organ or seat.

Phantasy.] Phantasy, or imagination, which some call estimative, or cogitative, (confirmed, saith [989]Fernelius, by frequent meditation,) is an inner sense which doth more fully examine the species perceived by common sense, of things present or absent, and keeps them longer, recalling them to mind again, or making new of his own. In time of sleep this faculty is free, and many times conceive strange, stupend, absurd shapes, as in sick men we commonly observe. His organ is the middle cell of the brain; his objects all the species communicated to him by the common sense, by comparison of which he feigns infinite other unto himself. In melancholy men this faculty is most powerful and strong, and often hurts, producing many monstrous and prodigious things, especially if it be stirred up by some terrible object, presented to it from common sense or memory. In poets and painters imagination forcibly works, as appears by their several fictions, antics, images: as Ovid's house of sleep, Psyche's palace in Apuleius, &c. In men it is subject and governed by reason, or at least should be; but in brutes it hath no superior, and is ratio brutorum, all the reason they have.

Memory.] Memory lays up all the species which the senses have brought in, and records them as a good register, that they may be forthcoming when they are called for by phantasy and reason. His object is the same with phantasy, his seat and organ the back part of the brain.

Affections of the Senses, sleep and waking.] The affections of these senses are sleep and waking, common to all sensible creatures. "Sleep is a rest or binding of the outward senses, and of the common sense, for the preservation of body and soul" (as Scaliger [990]defines it); for when the common sense resteth, the outward senses rest also. The phantasy alone is free, and his commander reason: as appears by those imaginary dreams, which are of divers kinds, natural, divine, demoniacal, &c., which vary according to humours, diet, actions, objects, &c., of which Artemidorus, Cardanus, and Sambucus, with their several interpretators, have written great volumes. This litigation of senses proceeds from an inhibition of spirits, the way being stopped by which they should come; this stopping is caused of vapours arising out of the stomach, filling the nerves, by which the spirits should be conveyed. When these vapours are spent, the passage is open, and the spirits perform their accustomed duties: so that "waking is the action and motion of the senses, which the spirits dispersed over all parts cause."

SUBSECT. VIII.—Of the Moving Faculty.

Appetite] This moving faculty is the other power of the sensitive soul, which causeth all those inward and outward animal motions in the body. It is divided into two faculties, the power of appetite, and of moving from place to place. This of appetite is threefold, so some will have it; natural, as it signifies any such inclination, as of a stone to fall downward, and such actions as retention, expulsion, which depend not on sense, but are vegetal, as the appetite of meat and drink; hunger and thirst. Sensitive is common to men and brutes. Voluntary, the third, or intellective, which commands the other two in men, and is a curb unto them, or at least should be, but for the most part is captivated and overruled by them; and men are led like beasts by sense, giving reins to their concupiscence and several lusts. For by this appetite the soul is led or inclined to follow that good which the senses shall approve, or avoid that which they hold evil: his object being good or evil, the one he embraceth, the other he rejecteth; according to that aphorism, Omnia appetunt bonum, all things seek their own good, or at least seeming good. This power is inseparable from sense, for where sense is, there are likewise pleasure and pain. His organ is the same with the common sense, and is divided into two powers, or inclinations, concupiscible or irascible: or (as one [991] translates it) coveting, anger invading, or impugning. Concupiscible covets always pleasant and delightsome things, and abhors that which is distasteful, harsh, and unpleasant. Irascible, quasi [992] aversans per iram et odium, as avoiding it with anger and indignation. All affections and perturbations arise out of these two fountains, which, although the stoics make light of, we hold natural, and not to be resisted. The good affections are caused by some object of the same nature; and if present, they procure joy, which dilates the heart, and preserves the body: if absent, they cause hope, love, desire, and concupiscence. The bad are simple or mixed: simple for some bad object present, as sorrow, which contracts the heart, macerates the soul, subverts the good estate of the body, hindering all the operations of it, causing melancholy, and many times death itself; or future, as fear. Out of these two arise those mixed affections and passions of anger, which is a desire of revenge; hatred, which is inveterate anger; zeal, which is offended with him who hurts that he loves; and [Greek: epikairekakia], a compound affection of joy and hate, when we rejoice at other men's mischief, and are grieved at their prosperity; pride, self-love, emulation, envy, shame, &c., of which elsewhere.

Moving from place to place, is a faculty necessarily following the other. For in vain were it otherwise to desire and to abhor, if we had not likewise power to prosecute or eschew, by moving the body from place to place: by this faculty therefore we locally move the body, or any part of it, and go from one place to another. To the better performance of which, three things are requisite: that which moves; by what it moves; that which is moved. That which moves, is either the efficient cause, or end. The end is the object, which is desired or eschewed; as in a dog to catch a hare, &c. The efficient cause in man is reason, or his subordinate phantasy, which apprehends good or bad objects: in brutes imagination alone, which moves the appetite, the appetite this faculty, which by an admirable league of nature, and by meditation of the spirit, commands the organ by which it moves: and that consists of nerves, muscles, cords, dispersed through the whole body, contracted and relaxed as the spirits will, which move the muscles, or [993]nerves in the midst of them, and draw the cord, and so per consequens the joint, to the place intended. That which is moved, is the body or some member apt to move. The motion of the body is divers, as going, running, leaping, dancing, sitting, and such like, referred to the predicament of situs. Worms creep, birds fly, fishes swim; and so of parts, the chief of which is respiration or breathing, and is thus performed. The outward air is drawn in by the vocal artery, and sent by mediation of the midriff to the lungs, which, dilating themselves as a pair of bellows, reciprocally fetch it in, and send it out to the heart to cool it; and from thence now being hot, convey it again, still taking in fresh. Such a like motion is that of the pulse, of which, because many have written whole books, I will say nothing.

SUBSECT. IX.—Of the Rational Soul.

In the precedent subsections I have anatomised those inferior faculties of the soul; the rational remaineth, "a pleasant, but a doubtful subject" (as [994]one terms it), and with the like brevity to be discussed. Many erroneous opinions are about the essence and original of it; whether it be fire, as Zeno held; harmony, as Aristoxenus; number, as Xenocrates; whether it be organical, or inorganical; seated in the brain, heart or blood; mortal or immortal; how it comes into the body. Some hold that it is ex traduce, as Phil. 1. de Anima, Tertullian, Lactantius de opific. Dei, cap. 19. Hugo, lib. de Spiritu et Anima, Vincentius Bellavic. spec. natural. lib. 23. cap. 2. et 11. Hippocrates, Avicenna, and many [995] late writers; that one man begets another, body and soul; or as a candle from a candle, to be produced from the seed: otherwise, say they, a man begets but half a man, and is worse than a beast that begets both matter and form; and, besides, the three faculties of the soul must be together infused, which is most absurd as they hold, because in beasts they are begot, the two inferior I mean, and may not be well separated in men. [996] Galen supposeth the soul crasin esse, to be the temperature itself; Trismegistus, Musaeus, Orpheus, Homer, Pindarus, Phaerecides Syrus, Epictetus, with the Chaldees and Egyptians, affirmed the soul to be immortal, as did those British [997]Druids of old. The [998]Pythagoreans defend Metempsychosis; and Palingenesia, that souls go from one body to another, epota prius Lethes unda, as men into wolves, bears, dogs, hogs, as they were inclined in their lives, or participated in conditions:

[999] ———"inque ferinas Possumus ire domus, pecudumque in corpora condi."

[1000]Lucian's cock was first Euphorbus, a captain:

"Ille ego (nam memini) Trojani tempore belli, Panthoides Euphorbus eram,"

a horse, a man, a sponge. [1001]Julian the Apostate thought Alexander's soul was descended into his body: Plato in Timaeo, and in his Phaedon, (for aught I can perceive,) differs not much from this opinion, that it was from God at first, and knew all, but being enclosed in the body, it forgets, and learns anew, which he calls reminiscentia, or recalling, and that it was put into the body for a punishment; and thence it goes into a beast's, or man's, as appears by his pleasant fiction de sortitione animarum, lib. 10. de rep. and after [1002]ten thousand years is to return into the former body again,

[1003] ———"post varios annos, per mille figuras, Rursus ad humanae fertur primordia vitae."

Others deny the immortality of it, which Pomponatus of Padua decided out of Aristotle not long since, Plinias Avunculus, cap. 1. lib. 2, et lib. 7. cap. 55; Seneca, lib. 7. epist. ad Lucilium, epist. 55; Dicearchus in Tull. Tusc. Epicurus, Aratus, Hippocrates, Galen, Lucretius, lib. 1.

(Praeterea gigni pariter cum corpore, et una Cresere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem.)[1004]

Averroes, and I know not how many Neoterics. [1005]"This question of the immortality of the soul, is diversely and wonderfully impugned and disputed, especially among the Italians of late," saith Jab. Colerus, lib. de immort. animae, cap. 1. The popes themselves have doubted of it: Leo Decimus, that Epicurean pope, as [1006]some record of him, caused this question to be discussed pro and con before him, and concluded at last, as a profane and atheistical moderator, with that verse of Cornelius Gallus, Et redit in nihilum, quod fuit ante nihil. It began of nothing, and in nothing it ends. Zeno and his Stoics, as [1007]Austin quotes him, supposed the soul so long to continue, till the body was fully putrified, and resolved into materia prima: but after that, in fumos evanescere, to be extinguished and vanished; and in the meantime, whilst the body was consuming, it wandered all abroad, et e longinquo multa annunciare, and (as that Clazomenian Hermotimus averred) saw pretty visions, and suffered I know not what. [1008]Errant exangues sine corpore et ossibus umbrae. Others grant the immortality thereof, but they make many fabulous fictions in the meantime of it, after the departure from the body: like Plato's Elysian fields, and that Turkey paradise. The souls of good men they deified; the bad (saith [1009]Austin) became devils, as they supposed; with many such absurd tenets, which he hath confuted. Hierome, Austin, and other Fathers of the church, hold that the soul is immortal, created of nothing, and so infused into the child or embryo in his mother's womb, six months after the [1010]conception; not as those of brutes, which are ex traduce, and dying with them vanish into nothing. To whose divine treatises, and to the Scriptures themselves, I rejourn all such atheistical spirits, as Tully did Atticus, doubting of this point, to Plato's Phaedon. Or if they desire philosophical proofs and demonstrations, I refer them to Niphus, Nic. Faventinus' tracts of this subject. To Fran. and John Picus in digress: sup. 3. de Anima, Tholosanus, Eugubinus, To. Soto, Canas, Thomas, Peresius, Dandinus, Colerus, to that elaborate tract in Zanchius, to Tolet's Sixty Reasons, and Lessius' Twenty-two Arguments, to prove the immortality of the soul. Campanella, lib. de sensu rerum, is large in the same discourse, Albertinus the Schoolman, Jacob. Nactantus, tom. 2. op. handleth it in four questions, Antony Brunus, Aonius Palearius, Marinus Marcennus, with many others. This reasonable soul, which Austin calls a spiritual substance moving itself, is defined by philosophers to be "the first substantial act of a natural, humane, organical body, by which a man lives, perceives, and understands, freely doing all things, and with election." Out of which definition we may gather, that this rational soul includes the powers, and performs the duties of the two other, which are contained in it, and all three faculties make one soul, which is inorganical of itself, although it be in all parts, and incorporeal, using their organs, and working by them. It is divided into two chief parts, differing in office only, not in essence. The understanding, which is the rational power apprehending; the will, which is the rational power moving: to which two, all the other rational powers are subject and reduced.

SUBSECT. X.—Of the Understanding.

"Understanding is a power of the soul, [1011]by which we perceive, know, remember, and judge as well singulars, as universals, having certain innate notices or beginnings of arts, a reflecting action, by which it judgeth of his own doings, and examines them." Out of this definition (besides his chief office, which is to apprehend, judge all that he performs, without the help of any instruments or organs) three differences appear betwixt a man and a beast. As first, the sense only comprehends singularities, the understanding universalities. Secondly, the sense hath no innate notions. Thirdly, brutes cannot reflect upon themselves. Bees indeed make neat and curious works, and many other creatures besides; but when they have done, they cannot judge of them. His object is God, ens, all nature, and whatsoever is to be understood: which successively it apprehends. The object first moving the understanding, is some sensible thing; after by discoursing, the mind finds out the corporeal substance, and from thence the spiritual. His actions (some say) are apprehension, composition, division, discoursing, reasoning, memory, which some include in invention, and judgment. The common divisions are of the understanding, agent, and patient; speculative, and practical; in habit, or in act; simple, or compound. The agent is that which is called the wit of man, acumen or subtlety, sharpness of invention, when he doth invent of himself without a teacher, or learns anew, which abstracts those intelligible species from the phantasy, and transfers them to the passive understanding, [1012] "because there is nothing in the understanding, which was not first in the sense." That which the imagination hath taken from the sense, this agent judgeth of, whether it be true or false; and being so judged he commits it to the passible to be kept. The agent is a doctor or teacher, the passive a scholar; and his office is to keep and further judge of such things as are committed to his charge; as a bare and rased table at first, capable of all forms and notions. Now these notions are twofold, actions or habits: actions, by which we take notions of, and perceive things; habits, which are durable lights and notions, which we may use when we will. Some reckon up eight kinds of them, sense, experience, intelligence, faith, suspicion, error, opinion, science; to which are added art, prudency, wisdom: as also [1013]synteresis, dictamen rationis, conscience; so that in all there be fourteen species of the understanding, of which some are innate, as the three last mentioned; the other are gotten by doctrine, learning, and use. Plato will have all to be innate: Aristotle reckons up but five intellectual habits; two practical, as prudency, whose end is to practise; to fabricate; wisdom to comprehend the use and experiments of all notions and habits whatsoever. Which division of Aristotle (if it be considered aright) is all one with the precedent; for three being innate, and five acquisite, the rest are improper, imperfect, and in a more strict examination excluded. Of all these I should more amply dilate, but my subject will not permit. Three of them I will only point at, as more necessary to my following discourse.

Synteresis, or the purer part of the conscience, is an innate habit, and doth signify "a conversation of the knowledge of the law of God and Nature, to know good or evil." And (as our divines hold) it is rather in the understanding than in the will. This makes the major proposition in a practical syllogism. The dictamen rationis is that which doth admonish us to do good or evil, and is the minor in the syllogism. The conscience is that which approves good or evil, justifying or condemning our actions, and is the conclusion of the syllogism: as in that familiar example of Regulus the Roman, taken prisoner by the Carthaginians, and suffered to go to Rome, on that condition he should return again, or pay so much for his ransom. The synteresis proposeth the question; his word, oath, promise, is to be religiously kept, although to his enemy, and that by the law of nature. [1014]"Do not that to another which thou wouldst not have done to thyself." Dictamen applies it to him, and dictates this or the like: Regulus, thou wouldst not another man should falsify his oath, or break promise with thee: conscience concludes, therefore, Regulus, thou dost well to perform thy promise, and oughtest to keep thine oath. More of this in Religious Melancholy.

SUBSECT. XI.—Of the Will.

Will is the other power of the rational soul, [1015]"which covets or avoids such things as have been before judged and apprehended by the understanding." If good, it approves; if evil, it abhors it: so that his object is either good or evil. Aristotle calls this our rational appetite; for as, in the sensitive, we are moved to good or bad by our appetite, ruled and directed by sense; so in this we are carried by reason. Besides, the sensitive appetite hath a particular object, good or bad; this an universal, immaterial: that respects only things delectable and pleasant; this honest. Again, they differ in liberty. The sensual appetite seeing an object, if it be a convenient good, cannot but desire it; if evil, avoid it: but this is free in his essence, [1016]"much now depraved, obscured, and fallen from his first perfection; yet in some of his operations still free," as to go, walk, move at his pleasure, and to choose whether it will do or not do, steal or not steal. Otherwise, in vain were laws, deliberations, exhortations, counsels, precepts, rewards, promises, threats and punishments: and God should be the author of sin. But in [1017] spiritual things we will no good, prone to evil (except we be regenerate, and led by the Spirit), we are egged on by our natural concupiscence, and there is [Greek: ataxia], a confusion in our powers, [1018]"our whole will is averse from God and his law," not in natural things only, as to eat and drink, lust, to which we are led headlong by our temperature and inordinate appetite,

[1019] "Nec nos obniti contra, nec tendere tantum Sufficimus,"———

we cannot resist, our concupiscence is originally bad, our heart evil, the seat of our affections captivates and enforceth our will. So that in voluntary things we are averse from God and goodness, bad by nature, by [1020]ignorance worse, by art, discipline, custom, we get many bad habits: suffering them to domineer and tyrannise over us; and the devil is still ready at hand with his evil suggestions, to tempt our depraved will to some ill-disposed action, to precipitate us to destruction, except our will be swayed and counterpoised again with some divine precepts, and good motions of the spirit, which many times restrain, hinder and check us, when we are in the full career of our dissolute courses. So David corrected himself, when he had Saul at a vantage. Revenge and malice were as two violent oppugners on the one side; but honesty, religion, fear of God, withheld him on the other.

The actions of the will are velle and nolle, to will and nill: which two words comprehend all, and they are good or bad, accordingly as they are directed, and some of them freely performed by himself; although the stoics absolutely deny it, and will have all things inevitably done by destiny, imposing a fatal necessity upon us, which we may not resist; yet we say that our will is free in respect of us, and things contingent, howsoever in respect of God's determinate counsel, they are inevitable and necessary. Some other actions of the will are performed by the inferior powers, which obey him, as the sensitive and moving appetite; as to open our eyes, to go hither and thither, not to touch a book, to speak fair or foul: but this appetite is many times rebellious in us, and will not be contained within the lists of sobriety and temperance. It was (as I said) once well agreeing with reason, and there was an excellent consent and harmony between them, but that is now dissolved, they often jar, reason is overborne by passion: Fertur equis auriga, nec audit currus habenas, as so many wild horses run away with a chariot, and will not be curbed. We know many times what is good, but will not do it, as she said,

[1021] "Trahit invitum nova vis, aliudque cupido, Mens aliud suadet,"———

Lust counsels one thing, reason another, there is a new reluctancy in men. [1022]Odi, nec possum, cupiens non esse, quod odi. We cannot resist, but as Phaedra confessed to her nurse, [1023]quae loqueris, vera sunt, sed furor suggerit sequi pejora: she said well and true, she did acknowledge it, but headstrong passion and fury made her to do that which was opposite. So David knew the filthiness of his fact, what a loathsome, foul, crying sin adultery was, yet notwithstanding he would commit murder, and take away another man's wife, enforced against reason, religion, to follow his appetite.

Those natural and vegetal powers are not commanded by will at all; for "who can add one cubit to his stature?" These other may, but are not: and thence come all those headstrong passions, violent perturbations of the mind; and many times vicious habits, customs, feral diseases; because we give so much way to our appetite, and follow our inclination, like so many beasts. The principal habits are two in number, virtue and vice, whose peculiar definitions, descriptions, differences, and kinds, are handled at large in the ethics, and are, indeed, the subject of moral philosophy.

MEMB. III.

SUBSECT. I.—Definition of Melancholy, Name, Difference.

Having thus briefly anatomised the body and soul of man, as a preparative to the rest; I may now freely proceed to treat of my intended object, to most men's capacity; and after many ambages, perspicuously define what this melancholy is, show his name and differences. The name is imposed from the matter, and disease denominated from the material cause: as Bruel observes, [Greek: Melancholia] quasi [Greek: Melainacholae], from black choler. And whether it be a cause or an effect, a disease or symptom, let Donatus Altomarus and Salvianus decide; I will not contend about it. It hath several descriptions, notations, and definitions. [1024]Fracastorius, in his second book of intellect, calls those melancholy, "whom abundance of that same depraved humour of black choler hath so misaffected, that they become mad thence, and dote in most things, or in all, belonging to election, will, or other manifest operations of the understanding." [1025] Melanelius out of Galen, Ruffus, Aetius, describe it to be "a bad and peevish disease, which makes men degenerate into beasts:" Galen, "a privation or infection of the middle cell of the head," &c. defining it from the part affected, which [1026]Hercules de Saxonia approves, lib. 1. cap. 16. calling it "a depravation of the principal function:" Fuschius, lib. 1. cap. 23. Arnoldus Breviar. lib. 1. cap. 18. Guianerius, and others: "By reason of black choler," Paulus adds. Halyabbas simply calls it a "commotion of the mind." Aretaeus, [1027]"a perpetual anguish of the soul, fastened on one thing, without an ague;" which definition of his, Mercurialis de affect. cap. lib. 1. cap. 10. taxeth: but Aelianus Montaltus defends, lib. de morb. cap. 1. de Melan. for sufficient and good. The common sort define it to be "a kind of dotage without a fever, having for his ordinary companions, fear and sadness, without any apparent occasion." So doth Laurentius, cap. 4. Piso. lib. 1. cap. 43. Donatus Altomarus, cap. 7. art. medic. Jacchinus, in com. in lib. 9. Rhasis ad Almansor, cap. 15. Valesius, exerc. 17. Fuschius, institut. 3. sec. 1. c. 11. &c. which common definition, howsoever approved by most, [1028]Hercules de Saxonia will not allow of, nor David Crucius, Theat. morb. Herm. lib. 2. cap. 6. he holds it insufficient: as [1029]rather showing what it is not, than what it is: as omitting the specific difference, the phantasy and brain: but I descend to particulars. The summum genus is "dotage, or anguish of the mind," saith Aretaeus; "of the principal parts," Hercules de Saxonia adds, to distinguish it from cramp and palsy, and such diseases as belong to the outward sense and motions [depraved] [1030]to distinguish it from folly and madness (which Montaltus makes angor animi, to separate) in which those functions are not depraved, but rather abolished; [without an ague] is added by all, to sever it from frenzy, and that melancholy which is in a pestilent fever. (Fear and sorrow) make it differ from madness: [without a cause] is lastly inserted, to specify it from all other ordinary passions of [fear and sorrow.] We properly call that dotage, as [1031]Laurentius interprets it, "when some one principal faculty of the mind, as imagination, or reason, is corrupted, as all melancholy persons have." It is without a fever, because the humour is most part cold and dry, contrary to putrefaction. Fear and sorrow are the true characters and inseparable companions of most melancholy, not all, as Her. de Saxonia, Tract. de posthumo de Melancholia, cap. 2. well excepts; for to some it is most pleasant, as to such as laugh most part; some are bold again, and free from all manner of fear and grief, as hereafter shall be declared.

SUBSECT. II.—Of the part affected. Affection. Parties affected.

Some difference I find amongst writers, about the principal part affected in this disease, whether it be the brain, or heart, or some other member. Most are of opinion that it is the brain: for being a kind of dotage, it cannot otherwise be but that the brain must be affected, as a similar part, be it by [1032]consent or essence, not in his ventricles, or any obstructions in them, for then it would be an apoplexy, or epilepsy, as [1033]Laurentius well observes, but in a cold, dry distemperature of it in his substance, which is corrupt and become too cold, or too dry, or else too hot, as in madmen, and such as are inclined to it: and this [1034] Hippocrates confirms, Galen, the Arabians, and most of our new writers. Marcus de Oddis (in a consultation of his, quoted by [1035]Hildesheim) and five others there cited are of the contrary part; because fear and sorrow, which are passions, be seated in the heart. But this objection is sufficiently answered by [1036]Montaltus, who doth not deny that the heart is affected (as [1037]Melanelius proves out of Galen) by reason of his vicinity, and so is the midriff and many other parts. They do compati, and have a fellow feeling by the law of nature: but forasmuch as this malady is caused by precedent imagination, with the appetite, to whom spirits obey, and are subject to those principal parts, the brain must needs primarily be misaffected, as the seat of reason; and then the heart, as the seat of affection. [1038]Capivaccius and Mercurialis have copiously discussed this question, and both conclude the subject is the inner brain, and from thence it is communicated to the heart and other inferior parts, which sympathise and are much troubled, especially when it comes by consent, and is caused by reason of the stomach, or mirach, as the Arabians term it, whole body, liver, or [1039]spleen, which are seldom free, pylorus, mesaraic veins, &c. For our body is like a clock, if one wheel be amiss, all the rest are disordered; the whole fabric suffers: with such admirable art and harmony is a man composed, such excellent proportion, as Ludovicus Vives in his Fable of Man hath elegantly declared.

As many doubts almost arise about the [1040]affection, whether it be imagination or reason alone, or both, Hercules de Saxonia proves it out of Galen, Aetius, and Altomarus, that the sole fault is in [1041]imagination. Bruel is of the same mind: Montaltus in his 2 cap. of Melancholy confutes this tenet of theirs, and illustrates the contrary by many examples: as of him that thought himself a shellfish, of a nun, and of a desperate monk that would not be persuaded but that he was damned; reason was in fault as well as imagination, which did not correct this error: they make away themselves oftentimes, and suppose many absurd and ridiculous things. Why doth not reason detect the fallacy, settle and persuade, if she be free? [1042]Avicenna therefore holds both corrupt, to whom most Arabians subscribe. The same is maintained by [1043]Areteus, [1044]Gorgonius, Guianerius, &c. To end the controversy, no man doubts of imagination, but that it is hurt and misaffected here; for the other I determine with [1045] Albertinus Bottonus, a doctor of Padua, that it is first in "imagination, and afterwards in reason; if the disease be inveterate, or as it is more or less of continuance;" but by accident, as [1046]Herc. de Saxonia adds; "faith, opinion, discourse, ratiocination, are all accidentally depraved by the default of imagination."

Parties affected.] To the part affected, I may here add the parties, which shall be more opportunely spoken of elsewhere, now only signified. Such as have the moon, Saturn, Mercury misaffected in their genitures, such as live in over cold or over hot climes: such as are born of melancholy parents; as offend in those six non-natural things, are black, or of a high sanguine complexion, [1047]that have little heads, that have a hot heart, moist brain, hot liver and cold stomach, have been long sick: such as are solitary by nature, great students, given to much contemplation, lead a life out of action, are most subject to melancholy. Of sexes both, but men more often; yet [1048]women misaffected are far more violent, and grievously troubled. Of seasons of the year, the autumn is most melancholy. Of peculiar times: old age, from which natural melancholy is almost an inseparable accident; but this artificial malady is more frequent in such as are of a [1049]middle age. Some assign 40 years, Gariopontus 30. Jubertus excepts neither young nor old from this adventitious. Daniel Sennertus involves all of all sorts, out of common experience, [1050]in omnibus omnino corporibus cujuscunque constitutionis dominatar. Aetius and Aretius [1051]ascribe into the number "not only [1052]discontented, passionate, and miserable persons, swarthy, black; but such as are most merry and pleasant, scoffers, and high coloured." "Generally," saith Rhasis, [1053]"the finest wits and most generous spirits, are before other obnoxious to it;" I cannot except any complexion, any condition, sex, or age, but [1054]fools and stoics, which, according to [1055]Synesius, are never troubled with any manner of passion, but as Anacreon's cicada, sine sanguine et dolore; similes fere diis sunt. Erasmus vindicates fools from this melancholy catalogue, because they have most part moist brains and light hearts; [1056]they are free from ambition, envy, shame and fear; they are neither troubled in conscience, nor macerated with cares, to which our whole life is most subject.

SUBSECT. III.—Of the Matter of Melancholy.

Of the matter of melancholy, there is much question betwixt Avicen and Galen, as you may read in [1057]Cardan's Contradictions, [1058]Valesius' Controversies, Montanus, Prosper Calenus, Capivaccius, [1059]Bright, [1060]Ficinus, that have written either whole tracts, or copiously of it, in their several treatises of this subject. [1061]"What this humour is, or whence it proceeds, how it is engendered in the body, neither Galen, nor any old writer hath sufficiently discussed," as Jacchinus thinks: the Neoterics cannot agree. Montanus, in his Consultations, holds melancholy to be material or immaterial: and so doth Arculanus: the material is one of the four humours before mentioned, and natural. The immaterial or adventitious, acquisite, redundant, unnatural, artificial; which [1062] Hercules de Saxonia will have reside in the spirits alone, and to proceed from a "hot, cold, dry, moist distemperature, which, without matter, alter the brain and functions of it." Paracelsus wholly rejects and derides this division of four humours and complexions, but our Galenists generally approve of it, subscribing to this opinion of Montanus.

This material melancholy is either simple or mixed; offending in quantity or quality, varying according to his place, where it settleth, as brain, spleen, mesaraic veins, heart, womb, and stomach; or differing according to the mixture of those natural humours amongst themselves, or four unnatural adust humours, as they are diversely tempered and mingled. If natural melancholy abound in the body, which is cold and dry, "so that it be more [1063]than the body is well able to bear, it must needs be distempered," saith Faventius, "and diseased;" and so the other, if it be depraved, whether it arise from that other melancholy of choler adust, or from blood, produceth the like effects, and is, as Montaltus contends, if it come by adustion of humours, most part hot and dry. Some difference I find, whether this melancholy matter may be engendered of all four humours, about the colour and temper of it. Galen holds it may be engendered of three alone, excluding phlegm, or pituita, whose true assertion [1064]Valesius and Menardus stiffly maintain, and so doth [1065]Fuschius, Montaltus, [1066] Montanus. How (say they) can white become black? But Hercules de Saxonia, lib. post. de mela. c. 8, and [1067]Cardan are of the opposite part (it may be engendered of phlegm, etsi raro contingat, though it seldom come to pass), so is [1068]Guianerius and Laurentius, c. 1. with Melanct. in his book de Anima, and Chap. of Humours; he calls it asininam, dull, swinish melancholy, and saith that he was an eyewitness of it: so is [1069]Wecker. From melancholy adust ariseth one kind; from choler another, which is most brutish; another from phlegm, which is dull; and the last from blood, which is best. Of these some are cold and dry, others hot and dry, [1070]varying according to their mixtures, as they are intended, and remitted. And indeed as Rodericus a Fons. cons. 12. l. 1. determines, ichors, and those serous matters being thickened become phlegm, and phlegm degenerates into choler, choler adust becomes aeruginosa melancholia, as vinegar out of purest wine putrified or by exhalation of purer spirits is so made, and becomes sour and sharp; and from the sharpness of this humour proceeds much waking, troublesome thoughts and dreams, &c. so that I conclude as before. If the humour be cold, it is, saith [1071]Faventinus, "a cause of dotage, and produceth milder symptoms: if hot, they are rash, raving mad, or inclining to it." If the brain be hot, the animal spirits are hot; much madness follows, with violent actions: if cold, fatuity and sottishness, [1072]Capivaccius. [1073]"The colour of this mixture varies likewise according to the mixture, be it hot or cold; 'tis sometimes black, sometimes not," Altomarus. The same [1074]Melanelius proves out of Galen; and Hippocrates in his Book of Melancholy (if at least it be his), giving instance in a burning coal, "which when it is hot, shines; when it is cold, looks black; and so doth the humour." This diversity of melancholy matter produceth diversity of effects. If it be within the [1075]body, and not putrified, it causeth black jaundice; if putrified, a quartan ague; if it break out to the skin, leprosy; if to parts, several maladies, as scurvy, &c. If it trouble the mind; as it is diversely mixed, it produceth several kinds of madness and dotage: of which in their place.

SUBSECT. IV.—Of the species or kinds of Melancholy.

When the matter is divers and confused, how should it otherwise be, but that the species should be divers and confused? Many new and old writers have spoken confusedly of it, confounding melancholy and madness, as [1076] Heurnius, Guianerius, Gordonius, Salustius Salvianus, Jason Pratensis, Savanarola, that will have madness no other than melancholy in extent, differing (as I have said) in degrees. Some make two distinct species, as Ruffus Ephesius, an old writer, Constantinus Africanus, Aretaeus, [1077] Aurelianus, [1078]Paulus Aegineta: others acknowledge a multitude of kinds, and leave them indefinite, as Aetius in his Tetrabiblos, [1079]Avicenna, lib. 3. Fen. 1. Tract. 4. cap. 18. Arculanus, cap. 16. in 9. Rasis. Montanus, med. part. 1. [1080]"If natural melancholy be adust, it maketh one kind; if blood, another; if choler, a third, differing from the first; and so many several opinions there are about the kinds, as there be men themselves." [1081]Hercules de Saxonia sets down two kinds, "material and immaterial; one from spirits alone, the other from humours and spirits." Savanarola, Rub. 11. Tract. 6. cap. 1. de aegritud. capitis, will have the kinds to be infinite; one from the mirach, called myrachialis of the Arabians; another stomachalis, from the stomach; another from the liver, heart, womb, haemorrhoids, [1082]"one beginning, another consummate." Melancthon seconds him, [1083]"as the humour is diversely adust and mixed, so are the species divers;" but what these men speak of species I think ought to be understood of symptoms; and so doth [1084] Arculanus interpret himself: infinite species, id est, symptoms; and in that sense, as Jo. Gorrheus acknowledgeth in his medicinal definitions, the species are infinite, but they may be reduced to three kinds by reason of their seat; head, body, and hypochrondries. This threefold division is approved by Hippocrates in his Book of Melancholy, (if it be his, which some suspect) by Galen, lib. 3. de loc. affectis, cap. 6. by Alexander, lib. 1. cap. 16. Rasis, lib. 1. Continent. Tract. 9. lib. 1. cap. 16. Avicenna and most of our new writers. Th. Erastus makes two kinds; one perpetual, which is head melancholy; the other interrupt, which comes and goes by fits, which he subdivides into the other two kinds, so that all comes to the same pass. Some again make four or five kinds, with Rodericus a Castro, de morbis mulier. lib. 2. cap. 3. and Lod. Mercatus, who in his second book de mulier. affect. cap. 4. will have that melancholy of nuns, widows, and more ancient maids, to be a peculiar species of melancholy differing from the rest: some will reduce enthusiasts, ecstatical and demoniacal persons to this rank, adding [1085] love melancholy to the first, and lycanthropia. The most received division is into three kinds. The first proceeds from the sole fault of the brain, and is called head melancholy; the second sympathetically proceeds from the whole body, when the whole temperature is melancholy: the third ariseth from the bowels, liver, spleen, or membrane, called mesenterium, named hypochondriacal or windy melancholy, which [1086]Laurentius subdivides into three parts, from those three members, hepatic, splenetic, mesaraic. Love melancholy, which Avicenna calls ilishi: and Lycanthropia, which he calls cucubuthe, are commonly included in head melancholy; but of this last, which Gerardus de Solo calls amoreus, and most knight melancholy, with that of religious melancholy, virginum et viduarum, maintained by Rod. a Castro and Mercatus, and the other kinds of love melancholy, I will speak of apart by themselves in my third partition. The three precedent species are the subject of my present discourse, which I will anatomise and treat of through all their causes, symptoms, cures, together and apart; that every man that is in any measure affected with this malady, may know how to examine it in himself, and apply remedies unto it.

It is a hard matter, I confess, to distinguish these three species one from the other, to express their several causes, symptoms, cures, being that they are so often confounded amongst themselves, having such affinity, that they can scarce be discerned by the most accurate physicians; and so often intermixed with other diseases, that the best experienced have been plunged. Montanus consil. 26, names a patient that had this disease of melancholy and caninus appetitus both together; and consil. 23, with vertigo, [1087]Julius Caesar Claudinus with stone, gout, jaundice. Trincavellius with an ague, jaundice, caninus appetitus, &c. [1088]Paulus Regoline, a great doctor in his time, consulted in this case, was so confounded with a confusion of symptoms, that he knew not to what kind of melancholy to refer it. [1089]Trincavellius, Fallopius, and Francanzanus, famous doctors in Italy, all three conferred with about one party, at the same time, gave three different opinions. And in another place, Trincavellius being demanded what he thought of a melancholy young man to whom he was sent for, ingenuously confessed that he was indeed melancholy, but he knew not to what kind to reduce it. In his seventeenth consultation there is the like disagreement about a melancholy monk. Those symptoms, which others ascribe to misaffected parts and humours, [1090]Herc. de Saxonia attributes wholly to distempered spirits, and those immaterial, as I have said. Sometimes they cannot well discern this disease from others. In Reinerus Solenander's counsels, (Sect, consil. 5,) he and Dr. Brande both agreed, that the patient's disease was hypochondriacal melancholy. Dr. Matholdus said it was asthma, and nothing else. [1091]Solenander and Guarionius, lately sent for to the melancholy Duke of Cleve, with others, could not define what species it was, or agree amongst themselves. The species are so confounded, as in Caesar Claudinus his forty-fourth consultation for a Polonian Count, in his judgment [1092]"he laboured of head melancholy, and that which proceeds from the whole temperature both at once." I could give instance of some that have had all three kinds semel et simul, and some successively. So that I conclude of our melancholy species, as [1093]many politicians do of their pure forms of commonwealths, monarchies, aristocracies, democracies, are most famous in contemplation, but in practice they are temperate and usually mixed, (so [1094]Polybius informeth us) as the Lacedaemonian, the Roman of old, German now, and many others. What physicians say of distinct species in their books it much matters not, since that in their patients' bodies they are commonly mixed. In such obscurity, therefore, variety and confused mixture of symptoms, causes, how difficult a thing is it to treat of several kinds apart; to make any certainty or distinction among so many casualties, distractions, when seldom two men shall be like effected per omnia? 'Tis hard, I confess, yet nevertheless I will adventure through the midst of these perplexities, and, led by the clue or thread of the best writers, extricate myself out of a labyrinth of doubts and errors, and so proceed to the causes.

SECT. II. MEMB. I.

SUBSECT. I.—Causes of Melancholy. God a cause.

"It is in vain to speak of cures, or think of remedies, until such time as we have considered of the causes," so [1095]Galen prescribes Glauco: and the common experience of others confirms that those cures must be imperfect, lame, and to no purpose, wherein the causes have not first been searched, as [1096]Prosper Calenius well observes in his tract de atra bile to Cardinal Caesius. Insomuch that [1097]"Fernelius puts a kind of necessity in the knowledge of the causes, and without which it is impossible to cure or prevent any manner of disease." Empirics may ease, and sometimes help, but not thoroughly root out; sublata causa tollitur effectus as the saying is, if the cause be removed, the effect is likewise vanquished. It is a most difficult thing (I confess) to be able to discern these causes whence they are, and in such [1098]variety to say what the beginning was. [1099]He is happy that can perform it aright. I will adventure to guess as near as I can, and rip them all up, from the first to the last, general and particular, to every species, that so they may the better be described.

General causes, are either supernatural, or natural. "Supernatural are from God and his angels, or by God's permission from the devil" and his ministers. That God himself is a cause for the punishment of sin, and satisfaction of his justice, many examples and testimonies of holy Scriptures make evident unto us, Ps. cvii, 17. "Foolish men are plagued for their offence, and by reason of their wickedness." Gehazi was stricken with leprosy, 2 Reg. v. 27. Jehoram with dysentery and flux, and great diseases of the bowels, 2 Chron. xxi. 15. David plagued for numbering his people, 1 Par. 21. Sodom and Gomorrah swallowed up. And this disease is peculiarly specified, Psalm cxxvii. 12. "He brought down their heart through heaviness." Deut. xxviii. 28. "He struck them with madness, blindness, and astonishment of heart." [1100]"An evil spirit was sent by the Lord upon Saul, to vex him." [1101]Nebuchadnezzar did eat grass like an ox, and his "heart was made like the beasts of the field." Heathen stories are full of such punishments. Lycurgus, because he cut down the vines in the country, was by Bacchus driven into madness: so was Pentheus and his mother Agave for neglecting their sacrifice. [1102]Censor Fulvius ran mad for untiling Juno's temple, to cover a new one of his own, which he had dedicated to Fortune, [1103]"and was confounded to death with grief and sorrow of heart." When Xerxes would have spoiled [1104]Apollo's temple at Delphos of those infinite riches it possessed, a terrible thunder came from heaven and struck four thousand men dead, the rest ran mad. [1105]A little after, the like happened to Brennus, lightning, thunder, earthquakes, upon such a sacrilegious occasion. If we may believe our pontifical writers, they will relate unto us many strange and prodigious punishments in this kind, inflicted by their saints. How [1106]Clodoveus, sometime king of France, the son of Dagobert, lost his wits for uncovering the body of St. Denis: and how a [1107]sacrilegious Frenchman, that would have stolen a silver image of St. John, at Birgburge, became frantic on a sudden, raging, and tyrannising over his own flesh: of a [1108]Lord of Rhadnor, that coming from hunting late at night, put his dogs into St. Avan's church, (Llan Avan they called it) and rising betimes next morning, as hunters use to do, found all his dogs mad, himself being suddenly strucken blind. Of Tyridates an [1109]Armenian king, for violating some holy nuns, that was punished in like sort, with loss of his wits. But poets and papists may go together for fabulous tales; let them free their own credits: howsoever they feign of their Nemesis, and of their saints, or by the devil's means may be deluded; we find it true, that ultor a tergo Deus, [1110]"He is God the avenger," as David styles him; and that it is our crying sins that pull this and many other maladies on our own heads. That he can by his angels, which are his ministers, strike and heal (saith [1111]Dionysius) whom he will; that he can plague us by his creatures, sun, moon, and stars, which he useth as his instruments, as a husbandman (saith Zanchius) doth a hatchet: hail, snow, winds, &c. [1112]Et conjurati veniunt in classica venti: as in Joshua's time, as in Pharaoh's reign in Egypt; they are but as so many executioners of his justice. He can make the proudest spirits stoop, and cry out with Julian the Apostate, Vicisti Galilaee: or with Apollo's priest in [1113]Chrysostom, O coelum! o terra! unde hostis hic? What an enemy is this? And pray with David, acknowledging his power, "I am weakened and sore broken, I roar for the grief of mine heart, mine heart panteth," &c. Psalm xxxviii. 8. "O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chastise me in thy wrath," Psalm xxxviii. 1. "Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken, may rejoice," Psalm li. 8. and verse 12. "Restore to me the joy of thy salvation, and stablish me with thy free spirit." For these causes belike [1114]Hippocrates would have a physician take special notice whether the disease come not from a divine supernatural cause, or whether it follow the course of nature. But this is farther discussed by Fran. Valesius, de sacr. philos. cap. 8. [1115] Fernelius, and [1116]J. Caesar Claudinus, to whom I refer you, how this place of Hippocrates is to be understood. Paracelsus is of opinion, that such spiritual diseases (for so he calls them) are spiritually to be cured, and not otherwise. Ordinary means in such cases will not avail: Non est reluctandum cum Deo (we must not struggle with God.) When that monster-taming Hercules overcame all in the Olympics, Jupiter at last in an unknown shape wrestled with him; the victory was uncertain, till at length Jupiter descried himself, and Hercules yielded. No striving with supreme powers. Nil juvat immensos Cratero promittere montes, physicians and physic can do no good, [1117]"we must submit ourselves unto the mighty hand of God," acknowledge our offences, call to him for mercy. If he strike us una eademque manus vulnus opemque feret, as it is with them that are wounded with the spear of Achilles, he alone must help; otherwise our diseases are incurable, and we not to be relieved.

SUBSECT. II.—A Digression of the nature of Spirits, bad Angels, or Devils, and how they cause Melancholy.

How far the power of spirits and devils doth extend, and whether they can cause this, or any other disease, is a serious question, and worthy to be considered: for the better understanding of which, I will make a brief digression of the nature of spirits. And although the question be very obscure, according to [1118]Postellus, "full of controversy and ambiguity," beyond the reach of human capacity, fateor excedere vires intentionis meae, saith [1119]Austin, I confess I am not able to understand it, finitum de infinito non potest statuere, we can sooner determine with Tully, de nat. deorum, quid non sint, quam quid sint, our subtle schoolmen, Cardans, Scaligers, profound Thomists, Fracastoriana and Ferneliana acies, are weak, dry, obscure, defective in these mysteries, and all our quickest wits, as an owl's eyes at the sun's light, wax dull, and are not sufficient to apprehend them; yet, as in the rest, I will adventure to say something to this point. In former times, as we read, Acts xxiii., the Sadducees denied that there were any such spirits, devils, or angels. So did Galen the physician, the Peripatetics, even Aristotle himself, as Pomponatius stoutly maintains, and Scaliger in some sort grants. Though Dandinus the Jesuit, com. in lib. 2. de anima, stiffly denies it; substantiae separatae and intelligences, are the same which Christians call angels, and Platonists devils, for they name all the spirits, daemones, be they good or bad angels, as Julius Pollux Onomasticon, lib. 1. cap. 1. observes. Epicures and atheists are of the same mind in general, because they never saw them. Plato, Plotinus, Porphyrius, Jamblichus, Proclus, insisting in the steps of Trismegistus, Pythagoras and Socrates, make no doubt of it: nor Stoics, but that there are such spirits, though much erring from the truth. Concerning the first beginning of them, the [1120]Talmudists say that Adam had a wife called Lilis, before he married Eve, and of her he begat nothing but devils. The Turks' [1121]Alcoran is altogether as absurd and ridiculous in this point: but the Scripture informs us Christians, how Lucifer, the chief of them, with his associates, [1122]fell from heaven for his pride and ambition; created of God, placed in heaven, and sometimes an angel of light, now cast down into the lower aerial sublunary parts, or into hell, "and delivered into chains of darkness (2 Pet. ii. 4.) to be kept unto damnation."

Nature of Devils.] There is a foolish opinion which some hold, that they are the souls of men departed, good and more noble were deified, the baser grovelled on the ground, or in the lower parts, and were devils, the which with Tertullian, Porphyrius the philosopher, M. Tyrius, ser. 27 maintains. "These spirits," he [1123]saith, "which we call angels and devils, are nought but souls of men departed, which either through love and pity of their friends yet living, help and assist them, or else persecute their enemies, whom they hated," as Dido threatened to persecute Aeneas:

"Omnibus umbra locis adero: dabis improbe poenas."

"My angry ghost arising from the deep, Shall haunt thee waking, and disturb thy sleep; At least my shade thy punishment shall know, And Fame shall spread the pleasing news below."

They are (as others suppose) appointed by those higher powers to keep men from their nativity, and to protect or punish them as they see cause: and are called boni et mali Genii by the Romans. Heroes, lares, if good, lemures or larvae if bad, by the stoics, governors of countries, men, cities, saith [1124]Apuleius, Deos appellant qui ex hominum numero juste ac prudenter vitae curriculo gubernato, pro numine, postea ab hominibus praediti fanis et ceremoniis vulgo admittuntur, ut in Aegypto Osyris, &c. Praestites, Capella calls them, "which protected particular men as well as princes," Socrates had his Daemonium Saturninum et ignium, which of all spirits is best, ad sublimes cogitationes animum erigentem, as the Platonists supposed; Plotinus his, and we Christians our assisting angel, as Andreas Victorellus, a copious writer of this subject, Lodovicus de La-Cerda, the Jesuit, in his voluminous tract de Angelo Custode, Zanchius, and some divines think. But this absurd tenet of Tyreus, Proclus confutes at large in his book de Anima et daemone.

Psellus [1125], a Christian, and sometimes tutor (saith Cuspinian) to Michael Parapinatius, Emperor of Greece, a great observer of the nature of devils, holds they are corporeal [1126], and have "aerial bodies, that they are mortal, live and die," (which Martianus Capella likewise maintains, but our Christian philosophers explode) "that they [1127]are nourished and have excrements, they feel pain if they be hurt" (which Cardan confirms, and Scaliger justly laughs him to scorn for; Si pascantur aere, cur non pugnant ob puriorem aera? &c.) "or stroken:" and if their bodies be cut, with admirable celerity they come together again. Austin, in Gen. lib. iii. lib. arbit., approves as much, mutata casu corpora in deteriorem qualitatem aeris spissioris, so doth Hierome. Comment. in epist. ad Ephes. cap. 3, Origen, Tertullian, Lactantius, and many ancient Fathers of the Church: that in their fall their bodies were changed into a more aerial and gross substance. Bodine, lib. 4, Theatri Naturae and David Crusius, Hermeticae Philosophiae, lib. 1. cap. 4, by several arguments proves angels and spirits to be corporeal: quicquid continetur in loco corporeum est; At spiritus continetur in loco, ergo. [1128]Si spiritus sunt quanti, erunt corporei: At sunt quanti, ergo. sunt finiti, ergo. quanti, &c. Bodine [1129]goes farther yet, and will have these, Animae separatae genii, spirits, angels, devils, and so likewise souls of men departed, if corporeal (which he most eagerly contends) to be of some shape, and that absolutely round, like Sun and Moon, because that is the most perfect form, quae nihil habet asperitatis, nihil angulis incisum, nihil anfractibus involutem, nihil eminens, sed inter corpora perfecta est perfectissimum; [1130]therefore all spirits are corporeal he concludes, and in their proper shapes round. That they can assume other aerial bodies, all manner of shapes at their pleasures, appear in what likeness they will themselves, that they are most swift in motion, can pass many miles in an instant, and so likewise [1131]transform bodies of others into what shape they please, and with admirable celerity remove them from place to place; (as the Angel did Habakkuk to Daniel, and as Philip the deacon was carried away by the Spirit, when he had baptised the eunuch; so did Pythagoras and Apollonius remove themselves and others, with many such feats) that they can represent castles in the air, palaces, armies, spectrums, prodigies, and such strange objects to mortal men's eyes, [1132]cause smells, savours, &c., deceive all the senses; most writers of this subject credibly believe; and that they can foretell future events, and do many strange miracles. Juno's image spake to Camillus, and Fortune's statue to the Roman matrons, with many such. Zanchius, Bodine, Spondanus, and others, are of opinion that they cause a true metamorphosis, as Nebuchadnezzar was really translated into a beast, Lot's wife into a pillar of salt; Ulysses' companions into hogs and dogs, by Circe's charms; turn themselves and others, as they do witches into cats, dogs, hares, crows, &c. Strozzius Cicogna hath many examples, lib. iii. omnif. mag. cap. 4 and 5, which he there confutes, as Austin likewise doth, de civ. Dei lib. xviii. That they can be seen when and in what shape, and to whom they will, saith Psellus, Tametsi nil tale viderim, nec optem videre, though he himself never saw them nor desired it; and use sometimes carnal copulation (as elsewhere I shall [1133]prove more at large) with women and men. Many will not believe they can be seen, and if any man shall say, swear, and stiffly maintain, though he be discreet and wise, judicious and learned, that he hath seen them, they account him a timorous fool, a melancholy dizzard, a weak fellow, a dreamer, a sick or a mad man, they contemn him, laugh him to scorn, and yet Marcus of his credit told Psellus that he had often seen them. And Leo Suavius, a Frenchman, c. 8, in Commentar. l. 1. Paracelsi de vita longa, out of some Platonists, will have the air to be as full of them as snow falling in the skies, and that they may be seen, and withal sets down the means how men may see them; Si irreverberatus oculis sole splendente versus caelum continuaverint obtutus, &c., [1134]and saith moreover he tried it, praemissorum feci experimentum, and it was true, that the Platonists said. Paracelsus confesseth that he saw them divers times, and conferred with them, and so doth Alexander ab [1135]Alexandro, "that he so found it by experience, when as before he doubted of it." Many deny it, saith Lavater, de spectris, part 1. c. 2, and part 2. c. 11, "because they never saw them themselves;" but as he reports at large all over his book, especially c. 19. part 1, they are often seen and heard, and familiarly converse with men, as Lod. Vives assureth us, innumerable records, histories, and testimonies evince in all ages, times, places, and [1136]all travellers besides; in the West Indies and our northern climes, Nihil familiarius quam in agris et urbibus spiritus videre, audire qui vetent, jubeant, &c. Hieronymus vita Pauli, Basil ser. 40, Nicephorus, Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomenus, [1137]Jacobus Boissardus in his tract de spirituum apparitionibus, Petrus Loyerus l. de spectris, Wierus l. 1. have infinite variety of such examples of apparitions of spirits, for him to read that farther doubts, to his ample satisfaction. One alone I will briefly insert. A nobleman in Germany was sent ambassador to the King of Sweden (for his name, the time, and such circumstances, I refer you to Boissardus, mine [1138]Author). After he had done his business, he sailed to Livonia, on set purpose to see those familiar spirits, which are there said to be conversant with men, and do their drudgery works. Amongst other matters, one of them told him where his wife was, in what room, in what clothes, what doing, and brought him a ring from her, which at his return, non sine omnium admiratione, he found to be true; and so believed that ever after, which before he doubted of. Cardan, l. 19. de subtil, relates of his father, Facius Cardan, that after the accustomed solemnities, An. 1491, 13 August, he conjured up seven devils, in Greek apparel, about forty years of age, some ruddy of complexion, and some pale, as he thought; he asked them many questions, and they made ready answer, that they were aerial devils, that they lived and died as men did, save that they were far longer lived (700 or 800 [1139]years); they did as much excel men in dignity as we do juments, and were as far excelled again of those that were above them; our [1140]governors and keepers they are moreover, which [1141]Plato in Critias delivered of old, and subordinate to one another, Ut enim homo homini sic daemon daemoni dominatur, they rule themselves as well as us, and the spirits of the meaner sort had commonly such offices, as we make horse-keepers, neat-herds, and the basest of us, overseers of our cattle; and that we can no more apprehend their natures and functions, than a horse a man's. They knew all things, but might not reveal them to men; and ruled and domineered over us, as we do over our horses; the best kings amongst us, and the most generous spirits, were not comparable to the basest of them. Sometimes they did instruct men, and communicate their skill, reward and cherish, and sometimes, again, terrify and punish, to keep them in awe, as they thought fit, Nihil magis cupientes (saith Lysius, Phis. Stoicorum) quam adorationem hominum. [1142]The same Author, Cardan, in his Hyperchen, out of the doctrine of Stoics, will have some of these genii (for so he calls them) to be [1143]desirous of men's company, very affable and familiar with them, as dogs are; others, again, to abhor as serpents, and care not for them. The same belike Tritemius calls Ignios et sublunares, qui nunquam demergunt ad inferiora, aut vix ullum habent in terris commercium: [1144]"Generally they far excel men in worth, as a man the meanest worm; though some of them are inferior to those of their own rank in worth, as the blackguard in a prince's court, and to men again, as some degenerate, base, rational creatures, are excelled of brute beasts."

That they are mortal, besides these testimonies of Cardan, Martianus, &c., many other divines and philosophers hold, post prolixum tempus moriuntur omnes; The [1145]Platonists, and some Rabbins, Porphyrius and Plutarch, as appears by that relation of Thamus: [1146]"The great God Pan is dead; Apollo Pythius ceased; and so the rest." St. Hierome, in the life of Paul the Hermit, tells a story how one of them appeared to St. Anthony in the wilderness, and told him as much. [1147]Paracelsus of our late writers stiffly maintains that they are mortal, live and die as other creatures do. Zozimus, l. 2, farther adds, that religion and policy dies and alters with them. The [1148]Gentiles' gods, he saith, were expelled by Constantine, and together with them. Imperii Romani majestas, et fortuna interiit, et profligata est; The fortune and majesty of the Roman Empire decayed and vanished, as that heathen in [1149]Minutius formerly bragged, when the Jews were overcome by the Romans, the Jew's God was likewise captivated by that of Rome; and Rabsakeh to the Israelites, no God should deliver them out of the hands of the Assyrians. But these paradoxes of their power, corporeity, mortality, taking of shapes, transposing bodies, and carnal copulations, are sufficiently confuted by Zanch. c. 10, l. 4. Pererius in his comment, and Tostatus questions on the 6th of Gen. Th. Aquin., St. Austin, Wierus, Th. Erastus, Delrio, tom. 2, l. 2, quaest. 29; Sebastian Michaelis, c. 2, de spiritibus, D. Reinolds Lect. 47. They may deceive the eyes of men, yet not take true bodies, or make a real metamorphosis; but as Cicogna proves at large, they are [1150]Illusoriae, et praestigiatrices transformationes, omnif. mag. lib. 4. cap. 4, mere illusions and cozenings, like that tale of Pasetis obulus in Suidas, or that of Autolicus, Mercury's son, that dwelt in Parnassus, who got so much treasure by cozenage and stealth. His father Mercury, because he could leave him no wealth, taught him many fine tricks to get means, [1151]for he could drive away men's cattle, and if any pursued him, turn them into what shapes he would, and so did mightily enrich himself, hoc astu maximam praedam est adsecutus. This, no doubt, is as true as the rest; yet thus much in general. Thomas, Durand, and others, grant that they have understanding far beyond men, can probably conjecture and [1152]foretell many things; they can cause and cure most diseases, deceive our senses; they have excellent skill in all Arts and Sciences; and that the most illiterate devil is Quovis homine scientior (more knowing than any man), as [1153]Cicogna maintains out of others. They know the virtues of herbs, plants, stones, minerals, &c.; of all creatures, birds, beasts, the four elements, stars, planets, can aptly apply and make use of them as they see good; perceiving the causes of all meteors, and the like: Dant se coloribus (as [1154] Austin hath it) accommodant se figuris, adhaerent sonis, subjiciunt se odoribus, infundunt se saporibus, omnes sensus etiam ipsam intelligentiam daemones fallunt, they deceive all our senses, even our understanding itself at once. [1155]They can produce miraculous alterations in the air, and most wonderful effects, conquer armies, give victories, help, further, hurt, cross and alter human attempts and projects (Dei permissu) as they see good themselves. [1156]When Charles the Great intended to make a channel betwixt the Rhine and the Danube, look what his workmen did in the day, these spirits flung down in the night, Ut conatu Rex desisteret, pervicere. Such feats can they do. But that which Bodine, l. 4, Theat. nat. thinks (following Tyrius belike, and the Platonists,) they can tell the secrets of a man's heart, aut cogitationes hominum, is most false; his reasons are weak, and sufficiently confuted by Zanch. lib. 4, cap. 9. Hierom. lib. 2, com. in Mat. ad cap. 15, Athanasius quaest. 27, ad Antiochum Principem, and others.

Orders.] As for those orders of good and bad devils, which the Platonists hold, is altogether erroneous, and those Ethnics boni et mali Genii, are to be exploded: these heathen writers agree not in this point among themselves, as Dandinus notes, An sint [1157]mali non conveniunt, some will have all spirits good or bad to us by a mistake, as if an Ox or Horse could discourse, he would say the Butcher was his enemy because he killed him, the grazier his friend because he fed him; a hunter preserves and yet kills his game, and is hated nevertheless of his game; nec piscatorem piscis amare potest, &c. But Jamblichus, Psellus, Plutarch, and most Platonists acknowledge bad, et ab eorum maleficiis cavendum, and we should beware of their wickedness, for they are enemies of mankind, and this Plato learned in Egypt, that they quarrelled with Jupiter, and were driven by him down to hell. [1158]That which [1159]Apuleius, Xenophon, and Plato contend of Socrates Daemonium, is most absurd: That which Plotinus of his, that he had likewise Deum pro Daemonio; and that which Porphyry concludes of them all in general, if they be neglected in their sacrifice they are angry; nay more, as Cardan in his Hipperchen will, they feed on men's souls, Elementa sunt plantis elementum, animalibus plantae, hominibus animalia, erunt et homines aliis, non autem diis, nimis enim remota est eorum natura a nostra, quapropter daemonibus: and so belike that we have so many battles fought in all ages, countries, is to make them a feast, and their sole delight: but to return to that I said before, if displeased they fret and chafe, (for they feed belike on the souls of beasts, as we do on their bodies) and send many plagues amongst us; but if pleased, then they do much good; is as vain as the rest and confuted by Austin, l. 9. c. 8. de Civ. Dei. Euseb. l. 4. praepar. Evang. c. 6. and others. Yet thus much I find, that our schoolmen and other [1160]divines make nine kinds of bad spirits, as Dionysius hath done of angels. In the first rank are those false gods of the gentiles, which were adored heretofore in several idols, and gave oracles at Delphos, and elsewhere; whose prince is Beelzebub. The second rank is of liars and equivocators, as Apollo, Pythius, and the like. The third are those vessels of anger, inventors of all mischief; as that Theutus in Plato; Esay calls them [1161]vessels of fury; their prince is Belial. The fourth are malicious revenging devils; and their prince is Asmodaeus. The fifth kind are cozeners, such as belong to magicians and witches; their prince is Satan. The sixth are those aerial devils that [1162]corrupt the air and cause plagues, thunders, fires, &c.; spoken of in the Apocalypse, and Paul to the Ephesians names them the princes of the air; Meresin is their prince. The seventh is a destroyer, captain of the furies, causing wars, tumults, combustions, uproars, mentioned in the Apocalypse; and called Abaddon. The eighth is that accusing or calumniating devil, whom the Greeks call [Greek: Diabolos], that drives men to despair. The ninth are those tempters in several kinds, and their prince is Mammon. Psellus makes six kinds, yet none above the Moon: Wierus in his Pseudo-monarchia Daemonis, out of an old book, makes many more divisions and subordinations, with their several names, numbers, offices, &c., but Gazaeus cited by [1163]Lipsius will have all places full of angels, spirits, and devils, above and beneath the Moon, [1164]ethereal and aerial, which Austin cites out of Varro l. 7. de Civ. Dei, c. 6. "The celestial devils above, and aerial beneath," or, as some will, gods above, Semi-dei or half gods beneath, Lares, Heroes, Genii, which climb higher, if they lived well, as the Stoics held; but grovel on the ground as they were baser in their lives, nearer to the earth: and are Manes, Lemures, Lamiae, &c. [1165]They will have no place but all full of spirits, devils, or some other inhabitants; Plenum Caelum, aer, aqua terra, et omnia sub terra, saith [1166]Gazaeus; though Anthony Rusca in his book de Inferno, lib. v. cap. 7. would confine them to the middle region, yet they will have them everywhere. "Not so much as a hair-breadth empty in heaven, earth, or waters, above or under the earth." The air is not so full of flies in summer, as it is at all times of invisible devils: this [1167]Paracelsus stiffly maintains, and that they have every one their several chaos, others will have infinite worlds, and each world his peculiar spirits, gods, angels, and devils to govern and punish it.