Yet must I see at last whether it be in mans power to finde what he seekes for: and if this long search, wherein he hath continued so many ages, hath enriched him with any new strength or solid truth: I am perswaded, if be speake in conscience, he will confesse that all the benefit he hath gotten by so tedious a pursuit hath been that he hath learned to know his owne weaknesse. That ignorance which in us was naturall, we have with long study confirmed and averred. It hath happened unto those that are truly learned, as it hapneth unto eares of corne, which as long as they are empty, grow and raise their head aloft, upright and stout; but if they once become full and bigge with ripe corne, they begin to humble and droope downeward. So men having tried and sounded all, and in all this chaos and huge heape of learning and provision of so infinite different things, found nothing that is substantiall, firme, and steadie, but all vanitie, have renounced their presumption, and too late known their naturall condition. It is that which Velleius upbraids Cotta and Cicero withall, that they have learnt of Philo to have learned nothing. Pherecydes, one of the seven wise men, writing to Thales even as he was yeelding up the ghost, 'I have,' saith he, 'appoynted my friends, as soon as I shal be layed in my grave, to bring thee all my writings. If they please thee and the other sages, publish them; if not, conceale them. They containe no certainties nor doe they any whit satisfie mee. My profession is not to know the truth nor to attaine it. I rather open than discover things. The wisest that ever was, being demanded what he knew, answered, he knew that he knew nothing. He verified what some say, that the greatest part of what we know is the least part of what we know not: that is, that that which we thinke to know is but a parcel, yea, and a small particle, of our ignorance. 'We know things in a dreame' saith Plato, 'and we are ignorant of them in truth':
Omnes pene veteres nihil cognosci, nihil percipi, nihil sciri posse dixerunt angustos sensus, imbecilles animos, brevia curricula vitae:
Almost all the ancients affirmed nothing may be knowen, nothing perceived, nothing understood: that our senses, are narrow, our mindes are weake, and the race of our life is short.
Cicero, Academica, 1. i.
Cicero himselfe, who ought all he had unto learning, Valerius saith, that in his age he begun to disesteeme letters: and whilst he practised them, it was without bond to any speciall body, following what seemed probable unto him, now in the one and now in the other sect; ever holding himselfe under the Academies doubtfulnesse.
Dicendum est, sed ita ut nihil affirmem; quaeram omnia, dubitans plerumque, et mihi diffidens:
Speake I must, but so as I avouch nothing, question all things, for the most part in doubt and distrust of my selfe.
Cicero, De Divinatione, 1. i.
I should have too much adoe if I would consider man after his owne fashion, and in grose:' which I might doe by his owne rule, who is wont to judge of truth, not by the weight or value of voices, but by the number. But leave we the common people,
Qui vigilans stertit,
Who snoare while they are awake.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, i. iii. 1091.
Mortua cui vita est, prope jam vivo atque videnti:/3
who feeleth not himselfe, who judgeth not himselfe, who leaves the greatest part of his naturall parts idle. I will take man even in his highest estate. Let us consider him in this small number of excellent and choice men, who having naturally beene endowed with a peculiar and exquisite wit, have also fostred and sharpened the same with care, with study and with art, and have brought and strained unto the highest pitch of wisdome it may possibly reach unto. They have fitted their soule unto all senses, and squared the same to all byases; they have strengthned and under-propped it with all foraine helpes, that might any way fit or stead her, and have enriched and adorned her with whatsoever they have beene able to borrow, either within or without the world for her availe: It is in them that the extreme height of humane nature doth lodge. They have reformed the world with policies and lawes. They have instructed the same with arts and sciences, as also by example of their wonderfull manners and life. I will but make accompt of such people, of their witnesse and of their experience. Let us see how far they have gone, and what holdfast they have held by. The maladies and defects which we shall finde in that college, the world may boldly allow them to be his.
Whosoever seekes for any thing, commeth at last to this conclusion and saith, that either he hath found it, or that it cannot be found, or that he is still in pursuit after it. All philosophy is divided into these three kindes. Her puprose is to seeke out the truth, the knowledge and the certainty. The Peripatetike, the Epicureans, the Stoikes and others have thought they had found it. These have established the sciences that we have, and as of certaine knowledges have treated of them; Clitomachus, Carneades, and the Academikes have despaired the finding of it, and judged that truth could not be conceived by our meanes. The end of these is weaknesse and ignorance. The former had more followers and the worthiest sectaries. Pyrrho and other sceptikes, or epechistes, whose doctrine or manner of teaching many auncient learned men have thought to have beene drawne from Homer, from the seaven wise men, from Archilochus and Euripides, to whom they joyne Zeno, Democritus, and Xenophanes, say that they are still seeking after truth. These judge that those are infinitely deceived who imagine they have found it, and that the second degree is over boldly vaine in affirming that mans power is altogether unable to attaine unto it. For to establish the measure of our strength to know and distinguish of the difficulty of things is a great, a notable and extreme science, which they doubt whether man be capable thereof or no.
Nil sciri quisquis putat, id quoque nescit, An sciri possit, quo se nil scire fatetur.
Who thinks nothing is knowne, knowes not that Whereby hee Grauntes he knowes nothing if it knowne may bee.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iv. 471.
That ignorance which knoweth, judgeth, and condemneth it selfe, is not an absolute ignorance: for to be so, she must altogether be ignorant of her selfe. So that the profession of the Pyrrhonians is ever to waver, to doubt, and to enquire; never to be assured of any thing, nor to take any warrant of himself. Of the three actions or faculties of the soule, that is to say, the imaginative, the concupiscible, and the consenting, they allow and conceive the two former: the last they hold and defend to be ambiguous, without inclination or approbation either of one or other side, be it never so light. Zeno in jesture painted forth his imagination upon this division of the soules faculties: the open and outstretched hand was apparance; the hand halfe-shut, and fingers somewhat bending, consent; the fist closed, comprehension: if the fist of the left hand were closely clinched together, it signified Science. Now this situation of their judgement, straight and inflexible, receiving all objects with application or consent, leads them unto their Ataraxie, which is the condition of a quiet and settled life, exempted from the agitations which we receive by the impression of the opinion and knowledge we imagine to have of things; whence proceed feare, avarice, envie, immoderate desires, ambition, pride, superstition, love of novelties, rebellion, disobedience, obstinacie, and the greatest number of corporall evils: yea, by that meane they are exempted from the jealousie of their owne discipline, for they contend but faintly: they feare nor revenge nor contradiction in the disputations. When they say that heavy things descend downward, they would be loth to be beleeved, but desire to be contradicted, thereby to engender doubt and suspence of judgement, which is their end and drift. They put forth their propositions but to contend with those they imagine wee hold in our conceipt. If you take theirs, then will they undertake to maintaine the contrarie all is one to them, nor will they give a penny to chuse. If you propose that snow is blacke, they will argue on the other side that it is white. lf you say it is neither one nor other, they will maintaine it to be both. If by a certaine judgement you say that you cannot tell, they will maintaine that you can tell. Nay, if by an affirmative axiome you swear that you stand in some doubt, they will dupute that you doubt not of it, or that you cannot judge or maintaine that you are in doubt. And by this extremitie of doubt, which staggereth it selfe, they separate and divide themselves from many opinions, yea from those which divers ways have maintained both the doubt and the ignorance. Why shall it not be granted then (say they) as to Dogmatists, or Doctrine-teachers, for one to say greene and another yellow, so for them to doubt? Is there any thing can be proposed unto you, either to allow or refuse which may not lawfully be considered as ambiguous and doubtfull? And whereas others be carried either by the custome of their countries or by the institution of their parents, or by chance, as by a tempest, without choyce or judgement, yea sometimes before the age of discretion, to such and such another opinion, to the Stoike or Epicurean Sect, to which they finde themselves more engaged, subjected, or fast tyed, as to a prize they cannot let goe:
Ad quamcunque disciplinam, velut Tempestate, delati, ad eam tanquam ad saxum adhaerescunt:
Being carried as it were by a Tempest to any kinde of doctrine, they sticke close to it as it were to a rocke.
Cicero, Academica, l. x.
Why shall not these likewise be permitted to maintaine their libertie and consider of things without dutie or compulsion?
Hoc liberiores et solutiores, quod integra illis, est judicandi potestatas:
They are so much the freer and at libertie, for that their power of judgement is kept entire.
Ibid.
Is it not some advantage for one to finde himselfe disengaged from necessitie which brideleth others: Is it not better to remaine in suspence than to entangle himselfe in so many errours that humane fantasia hath brought forth? Is it not better for a man to suspend his owne perswasion than to meddle with these sedicious and quarrellous divisions? What shall I chuse? Mary, what you list, soyoun chuse very foolish answer: to which it seemeth nevertheless that all Dogmatisme arriveth; by which it is not lawfull for you to bee ignorant of that we know not.
Take the best and strongest side, it shall never be so sure but you shall have occasion to defend the same, to close and combat a hundred and a hundred sides? Is it not better to keepe out of this confusion? You are suffered to embrace as your honour and life Aristotles opinion upon the eternitie of the Soule, and to belie and contradict whatsoever Plato saith concerning that; and shall they be interdicted to doubt of it? If it be lawfull for Panaecius to maintaine his judgement about auspices, dreames, oracles, and prophecies, whereof the Stoikes make no doubt at all: wherfore shall not a wise man dare that in all things which this man dareth in such as he hath learned of his masters, confirmed and established by the general consent of the schoole whereof he is a sectary and a professor? If it be a childe that judgeth, he wots not what it is; if a learned man, he is forestalled. They have reserved a great advantage for themselves in the combat, having discharged themselves of the care how to shroud themselves. They care not to be beaten, so they may strike againe: and all is fish that comes to net with them. If they overcome, your proposition halteth; if you, theirs is lame; if they faile, they verifie ignorance; if you, she is verified by you; if they prove that nothing is knowen, it is very well; if they cannot prove it, it is good alike:
Ut quum in eadem re paria contrariis in partibus momenta inveniuntur, facilius ab utraque parte assertio sustineatur;
So as when the same matter the like weight and moment is found on divers parts, we may the more easily hold with avouching on both parts.
Cicero, Academica, 1. x
And they suppose to find out more easily why a thing is false than true, and that which is not than that which is: and what they beleeve not, than that what they beleeve. Their manner of speech is, 'I confirme nothing. It is no more so than thus, or neither: I conceive it not; apparances are every where alike. The law of speaking pro or contra is all one. 'Nothing seemeth true that may not seeme false. Their sacramental word is ἐπέχω; which is as much to say as I hold and stir not. Behold the burdens of their songs and other such like. Theyr effects is a pure, entire, and absolute surceasing and suspence of judgement. They use their reason to enquire and to debate, and not to stay and choose. Whosoever shall imagine a perpetuall confession of ignorance, and a judgement upright and without staggering, to what occasion soever may chance, that man conceives the true Pyrrhonisme. I expound this fantazy as plaine as I can, because many deeme it hard to be conceived: and the authors themselves represent it somewhat obscurely and diversly. Touching the actions of life, in that they are after the common sort, they are lent and applied to naturall inclinations, to the impulsion and constraint of passions, to the constitutiones of lawes and customes, and to the tradition of arts:
Non enim nos Deus ista scire, sed tantummodo uti voluit:
For God would not have us know these things, but only use them.
Cicero, De Divinatione, 1. i.
By such meanes they suffer their common actions to be directed without any conceit or judgement, which is the reason that I cannot well sort unto this discourse what is said of Pyrrho. They faine him to be stupide and unmovable, leading a kinde of wild and unsociable life, not shunning to be hit with carts, presenting himselfe unto downefalls, refusing to conforme himselfe to the lawes. It is an endearing of his discipline. Hee would not make himselfe a stone or a blocke, but a living, discoursing, and reasoning man, enjoying all pIeasures and naturall commodities, busying himselfe with and using all his corporall and spirituall parts in rule and right. The fantasticall and imaginary and false privileges which man hath usurped unto himselfe to sway, to appoint, and to establish, he hath absolutely renounced and quit them. Yet is there no Sect but is enforced to allow her wise Sectary, in chiefe to follow diverse things nor comprehended, nor perceived, nor allowed, if he will live. And if he take shipping, he follows his purpose, not knowing whether it shall be profitable or no: and yeeldes to this, that the ship is good, the pilote is skilfull, and that the season is fit, circumstances only probable. After which he is bound to goe and suffer himselfe to be removed by apparances, alwaies provided they have no expresse contrariety in them. Hee hath a body, he hath a soule, his senses urge him forward, his minde moveth him. Although he finde not this proper and singular marke of judging in himselfe, and that he perceive he should not engage his consent seeing some falsehood may be like unto this truth: hee ceaseth not to conduct the offices of his life fully and commodiously. How many arts are there which professe to consist more in conjecture than in the science; that distinguish not betweene truth and falsehood, but only follow seeming? There is both true and false (say they), and there are meanes in us to seeke it out, but not to stay it when we touch it. It is better for us to suffer the order of the world to manage us without further inquisition. A mind warranted from prejudice hath a marvellous preferment to tranquillity. Men that censure and controule their judges doe never duly submit unto them.
How much more docile and tractable are simple and uncurious mindes found both towards the lawes of religion and Politike decrees, than these over-vigilant and nice wits, teachers of divine and humane causes? There is nothing in mans invention wherein is so much likelybood, possibilities and profit. This representeth man bare and naked, acknowledging his naturall weaknesse, apt to receive from above some strange power, disfurnished of all humane knowledge, and so much the more fitte to harbour divine understanding, disannulling his judgement, that so he may give more place unto faith. Neither misbeleeving nor establishing any doctrine or opinion repugnant unto common lawes and observances, humble, obedient, disciplinable and studious; a sworne enemy to Heresie, and by consequence exempting himselfe from all vaine and irreligious opinions, invented and brought up by false Sects. It is a white sheet prepared to take from the finger of God what form so ever it shall please him to imprint therein. The more we addresse and commit our selves to God, and reject our selves, the better it is for us. Accept (saith Ecclesiastes) in good part things both in shew and taste, as from day to day they are presented unto thee, the rest is beyond thy knowledge.
Dominus novit cogitationes hominum, quoniam vanae sunt:
The Lord knowes the thoughts of men, that they are vayne.
Psalm xcii. 11.
See how of three generall Sects of Philosophie, two make expresse profession of doubt and ignorance and in the third, which is the Dogmatists, it is easie to be discerned that the greatest number have taken the face of assurance; onely because they could set a better countenance on the matter. They have not so much gone about to establish any certainty in us, as to shew how farre they had waded in seeking out the truth.
Quam docti fingunt magis quam norunt:
Which the learned doe rather conceit than know.
Timaeus, being to instruct Socrates of what he knowes of the Gods, of the world, and of men, purposeth to speake of it as one man to another; and that it sufficeth, if his reasons be as probable as another mans. For exact reasons are neither in his hands, nor in any mortall man; which one of his Sectaries hath thus imitated:
Ut potero, explicabo: nec tamen, ut Pythius Apollo, certa ut sint et fixa quae dixero; sed ut homunculus, probabilia conjectura sequens:
As I can, I will explaine them; yet not as Apollo giving oracles, that all should bee certaine and set downe, that I say but as a meane man who followes likelihood by his conjecture.
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1. i.
And that upon the discourse of the contempt of death; a naturall and popular discourse. Elsewhere he hath translated it, upon Platoes very words:
Si forte, de Deorum natura ortuque mundi disserentes, minus id quod habemus in animo consequimur, haud erit mirum. AEquum est enim meminisse, et me, qui disseram, hominem esse, et vos qui judicetis: ut, si probabilia dicentur, nihil ultra requiratis
It will be no marvell if arguing of the nature of Gods and originall of the world, we scarcely reach to that which in our minde we comprehend; for it is meet we remember that both I am a man who am to argue, and you who are to judge, so as you seeke no further, if I speake but things likely.
Cicero, Univers.
Aristotle ordinarily hoardeth us up a number of other opinions and other beleefes, that so he may compare his unto it, and make us see how farre he hath gone further, and how neere he comes unto true-likelyhood. For truth is not judged by authorities nor by others testimonie. And therefore did Epicurus religiously avoyd to aleadge any in his compositions. He is the Prince of Dogmatists, and yet we learne of him that, to know much breedes an occasion to doubt more. He is often seene seriously to shelter himselfe under so inextricable obscurities that his meaning cannot be perceived. In effect, it is a Pyrrhonisme under a resolving forme. Listen to Ciceroes protestation, who doth declare us others fantasies by his owne.
Qui requirunt, quid de quaque re ipsi sentiamus; curiosius id faciunt, quam necesse est. Haec in Philosophia ratio contra omnia disserendi, nullamque rem aperte judicandi, profecta a Socrate, repetita ab Arcesila, confirmata a Carneade, usque ad nostram viget aetatem. Hi sumus, qui omnibus veris falsa quaedam adiuncta esse dicamus, tanta similitudine, ut in iis nulla insit certe judicandi et assentiendi nota:
They that would know what we conceit of everything, use more curiosity than needs. This course in Philosophy to dispute against all things, to judge eexpressly of nothing, derived from Socrates, renewed by Arcesilas, confirmed by Carneades, is in force till our time: we are those that aver some falsehood entermixt with every truth, and that with such likenesses as there is no set note in those things for any assuredly to give judgement or assent.
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 1. i.
Why hath not Aristotle alone, but the greatest number of Philosophers, affected difficulty, unlesse it be to make the vanity of the subject to prevaile, and to ammuse the our curiosity of our minde, seeking to feed it by gnawing so raw and bare a bone? Clytomachus affirmed that he could never understand by the writings of Carneades, what opinion he was of. Why hath Epicurus interdicted facility unto his Sectaries? And wherefore hath Heraclitus beene surnamed 'a darke mysty crowded fellow'? Difficulty is a coine that wise men make use of, as juglers doe with passe and repasse, because they will not display the vanity of their art, and wherewith humane foolishnesse is easily apaid.
Clarus ob obscuram linguam, magis inter inanes, Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur amantgue. Inversis quae sub verbi; latitantia cernunt.
For his darke speech much prais'd, but of th' unwise; For fooles doe all still more admire and prize That under words turn'd topsie-turvie lies.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. i. 636.
Cicero reproveth some of his friends because they were wont to bestow more time about astrology, law, logike, and geometry, than such arts could deserve; and diverted them from the devoirs of their life, more profitable and more honest. The Cyrenaike philosophers equally contemned naturall philosophy and logicke. Zeno in the beginning of his bookes of the Commonwealth declared all the liberall sciences to be unprofitable. Chrysippus aid,.that which Plato and Aristotle had written of logike, they had written the same in jest and for exercise sake, and could not beleeve that ever they spake in good earnest of so vaine and idle a subject. Plutarke saith the same of the metaphysikes: Epicurus would have said it of rhetorike, of grammar, of poesie, of the mathematikes, and (except naturall philosophy of all other sciences: and Socrates of all, but of the art of civill manners and life. Whatsoever he was demanded of any man, he would ever first enquire of him to give an accompt of his life, both present and past, which he would seriously examine and judge of; deeming all other apprentiships as subsequents and of supererogation in regard of that
Parum mihi placeant ex literae quae ad virtutem doctoribus nihil profuerunt
That learning pleaseth me but a little, which nothing profiteth the teachers of it unto vertue.
Most of the arts have thus beene contemned by knowledge it selfe, for they thought it not amisse to exercise their mindes in matters wherein was no profitable solidity.
As for the rest, some have judged Plato a dogmatist, others a doubter; some a dogmatist in one thing, and some a doubter in another. Socrates, the fore-man of his Dialogues doth ever aske and propose his disputation; yet never concluding, nor ever satisfying, and saith he hath no other science but that of opposing. Their author, Homer, hath equally grounded the foundations of all sects of philosophy, thereby to shew how indifferent he was which way he went. Some say that of Plato arose ten diverse sects. And as I thinke, never was instruction wavering and nothing avouching if his be not.
Socrates was wont to say that when midwives begin once to put in practice the trade to make other women bring forth children, themselves become barren. That be, by the title of wise, which the gods had conferred upon him, had also in his man-like and mentall love shaken off the faculty of begetting: Being well pleased to afford all helpe and favor to such as were engenderers; to open their nature, to suple their passages, to ease the issue of their child-bearing, to judge thereof, to baptise the same, to foster it, to strengthen it, to swathe it, and to circumcise it, exercising and handling his instrument at the perill and fortune of others.
So is it with most authors of this third kinde, as the ancients have well noted by the writings of Anaxagoras, Democritus, Parmenides, Xenophanes, and others. They have a manner of writing doubtfull both in substance and intent, rather enquiring than instructing: albeit here and there they enterlace their stile with dogmaticall cadences. And is not that as well seene in Seneca and in Plutarke? How much doe they speake sometimes of one face and sometimes of another, for such as looke neere unto it? Those who reconcile lawyers, ought first to have reconciled them every one unto himselfe. Plato hath (in my seeming) loved this manner of philosophying dialogue wise in good earnest, that thereby he might more decently place in sundry mouthes the diversity and variation of his owne conceits. Diversly to treat of matters is as good and better as to treat them conformably; that is to say, more copiously and more profitably. Let us take example by our selves. Definite sentences make the last period of dogmaticall and resolving speech; yet see wee that those which our Parliaments present unto our people as the most exemplare and fittest to nourish in them the reverence they owe unto this dignitie, especially by reason of the sufficiencie of those persons which exercise the same, taking their glory, not by the conclusion, which to them is dayly, and is common to al judges as much as the debating of diverse and agitations of contrary reasonings of law causes will admit. And the largest scope for reprehensions of some Philosophers against others, draweth contradictions and diversities with it, wherein every one of them findeth himself so entangled, either by intent to show the wavering of mans minde above all matters, or ignorantly forced by the volubilitie and incomprehensiblenesse of all matters: What meaneth this burden? In a slippery and gliding place let us suspend our beliefe. For as Euripides saith,
Les oeuvres de Dieu en diverges Facons, nous donnent des traverses.
Gods workes doe travers our imaginations,
And crosse our workers in divers different fashions.
Like unto that which Empedocles was wont often to scatter amongst his bookes, as moved by a divine furie and forced by truth. No, no, we feel nothing, we see nothing; all things are hid from us; there is not one that we may establish, how and what it is. But returning to this holy word,
Cogitatione mortalium timidae, et incertae adinventiones nostrae, et providentiae.
The thoughts of mortal men are feareful, our devices and foresights are uncertaine.
Wisd. ix. 14.
It must not be thought strange if men disparing of the goale have yet taken pleasure in the chase of it; studie being in itselfe a pleasing occupation, yea so pleasing that amid sensualities the Stoikes forbid also that which comes from the exercise of the minde, and require a bridle to it, and finde intemperance in over much knowledge.
Democritus having at his table eaten some figges that tasted of hony, began presently in his minde to seeke out whence this unusuall sweetness in them might proceed; and to be resolved, rose from the board, to view the place where those figges had beene gathered. His maide servant noting this alteration in her master, smilingly said unto him, that he should no more busie himselfe about it; the reason was, she had laide them in a vessell where hony had beene; whereat he seemed to be wroth in that shee had deprived him of the occasion of his intended search, and robbed his curiositie of matter to worke upon. 'Away,' quoth he unto her, 'thou hast much offended mee; yet will I not omit to finde out the cause, as if it were naturally so. Who perhaps would not have missed to finde some likely or true reason for a false and supposed effect. This storie of a famous and great Philosopher doth evidently represent unto us this studious passion, which so doth ammuse us in pursuit of things, of whose obtaining wee despaire. Plutarke reporteth a like example of one who would not be resolved of what he doubted, because hee would not lose the pleasure hee had in seeking it: As another, that would not have his Physitian remove the thirst he felt in his ague, because he would not lose the pleasure he tooke in quenching the same with drinking.
Satius est supervacua discere, quam nihil.
It is better to learne more than wee need than nothing at all.
Seneca Epistle lxxxix.
Even as in all feeding, pleasure is alwayes alone and single and all we take that is pleasant is not ever nourishing and wholesome: So likewise, what our minde drawes from learning leaveth not to be voluptuous, although it neither nourish nor be wholesome. Note what their saying is: 'The consideration of nature is a food proper for our mindes, it raiseth and puffeth us up, it makes us by the comparison, of heavenly and high things to disdaine base and low matters. The search of hidden and great causes is very pleasant, yea unto him that attaines nought but the reverence and feare to judge of them. These are the very words of their profession. The vaine image of this crazed curiositie is more manifestly seen in this other example, which they for honour-sake have so often in their mouths. Eudoxus wished, and praid to the Gods, that he might once view the Sunne neere at hand, to comprehend his forme, his greatnesse and his beautie: on condition he might immediately be burnt and consumed by it. Thus with the price of his owne life would he attaine a Science, whereof both use and possession shall therewith bee taken from him; and for so sudden and fleeting knowledge lose and forgoe all the knowledges he either now hath, or ever hereafter may have.
I can not easily be perswaded that Epicurus, Plato, or Pythagoras have sold us their atomes, their ideas and their numbers for ready payment. They were over wise to establish their articles of faith upon things so uncertaine and disputable. But in this obscuritie and ignorance of the world, each of these notable men hath endeavoured to bring some kinde of shew or image of light; and have busied their mindes about inventions that might at least have a pleasing and wilie apparance, provided (notwithstanding it were false) it might be maintained against contrary oppositions:
Vnicuiquce ista pro ingenio finguntur, non ex Scientiae vi.
These things are conceited by every man as his wit serves, not as his knowledge stretches and reaches.
An ancient Phylosopher being blamed for professing that Philosophie, whereof in his judgement bee made no esteeme; answered, that that was true Philosophizing.
They have gone about to consider all, to ballance all, and have found that it was an occupation fitting the naturall curiositie which is in us. Some things they have written for the behoofe of common societie, as their religions: And for this consideration was it reasonable that they would not throughly unfold common opinions, that so they might not breed trouble in the obedience of lawes and customes of their countries.
Plato treateth this mysterie in a very manifest kinde of sport. For, where he writeth according to himselfe, he prescribeth nothing for certaintie: When he institutes a Law giver, he borroweth a very swaying and avouching kinde of stile: Wherein he boldly entermingleth his most fantasticall opinions; as profitable to perswade the common sort, as ridiculous to perswade himselfe: Knowing how apt wee are to receive all impressions, and chiefly the most wicked and enormous. And therefore is he very carefull in his lawes that nothing bee sung in publike but Poesies the fabulous fictions of which tend to some profitable end: being so apt to imprint all manner of illusion in man's minde, that it is injustice not to feed them rather with commodious lies, than with lies either unprofitable or damageable. He flatly saith in his Common-wealth that for the benefit of men, it is often necessarie to deceive them. It is easie to distinguish how some Sects have rather followed truth, and some profit; by which the latter have gained credit. It is the miserie of our condition that often what offers it selfe unto our imagination for the likelyst, presents not it selfe unto it for the most beneficiall unto our life. The boldest sects, both Epicurean, Pirrhonian and new Academike, when they have cast their accompt are compelled to stoope to the civill law.
There are other subjects which they have tossed, some on the left and some on the right hand, each one labouring and striving to give it some semblance, were it right or wrong: For, having found nothing so secret, whereof they have not attempted to speak, they are many times forced to forge divers feeble and fond conjectures : Not that themselves tooke them for a ground- worke, not to establish a truth, but for an exercise of their studie.
Non tam id sensisse, quod dicerent, quam exercere ingenia materiae difficultate videntur voluisse.
They seem not so much to have thought as they said, as rather willing to exercise their wits in the difficulty of the matter.
And if it were not so taken, how should we cloke so great an inconstancie, varietie and vanity of opinions, which wee see to have beene produced by these excellent and admirable spirits? As for example, What greater vanitie can there be than to goe about by our proportions and conjectures to guess at God? And to governe both him and the world according to our capacitie and lawes? And to use this small scantlin of sufficiencie, which he hath pleased to impart unto our naturall condition, at the cost and charges or divinitie? And because we cannot extend our sight so farre as his glorious throne, to have removed him downe to our corruption and miseries?
Of all humane and ancient opinions concerning religion, I thinke that to have had more likelyhood and excuse, which knowledged and confessed God to be an incomprehensible power, chiefe beginning and preserver of all things; all goodness, all perfection; accepting in good part the honour and reverence which mortall men did yeeld him, under what usage, name and manner soever it was.
Iupiter omnipotens rerum, regumque, Deumque,
Progenitor, genitrixque.
Almightie Iove is parent said to be
Of things, of Kings, of Gods, both he and she.
Valerius Soranus, quoted from Varro by Augustin, De Civ. Dei.
This zeale hath universally beene regarded of heaven with a gentle and gracious eye. All policies have reaped some fruit by their devotion; Men and impious actions have every where had correspondent events. Heathen histories acknowledge dignitie, order, justice, prodigies, and oracles, employed for their benefit and instruction in their fabulous religion: God of hismercy daining, peradventure, to foster by his temporal blessings the budding and tender beginnings of such bruteknowledge as naturall reason gave them of him athwart the false images of their deluding dreames: Not only false but impious and injurious are those which man hath forged and devised by his owne invention. And of all religions Saint Paul found in credit at Athens, that which they had consecrated onto a ccrtaine hidden and unknowne divinitie seemed to be most excusable.
Pythagoras shadowed the truth somewhat neerer, judgeing that the knowledge of this first cause and Ensentium must be undefined, without any prescription or declaration. That it was nothing else but the extreme indevour of our imagination toward perfection, every one amplifying the idea thereof according to his capacitie. But if Numa undertooke to conforme the devotion of his people to this project, to joyne the same to a religion meerely mental without any prefixt object or materiall mixture, he undertooke a matter to no use. Mans minde could never be maintained if it were still floting up and downe in this infinite deepe of shapeles conceits. They must be framed onto her to some image according to her model. The majesty of God hath in some sort suffered itself to be circumscribed to corporall limits: His supernaturall and celestiall Sacraments beare signes of our terrestriall condition. His adoration is exprest by offices and sensible words; for it is man that beleeveth and praieth. I omit other arguments that are employed about this subject. But I could hardly be made beleeve that the sight of our Crucifixes and pictures of that pittiful torment, that the ornaments and ceremonious motions in our Churches, that the voyces accomodated and suted to our thoughts-devotions, and this stirring of our senses, doth not greatly inflame the peoples soules with a religious passion of wonderous beneficiall good.
Of those to which they have given bodies, as necessity required amid this generall blindnesse, as for me; I should rather have taken part with those who worshipped the Sunne.
-----la lumiere comnune,
L'ail du monde; et si Dieu au chef porte des yeux,
Les rayons du Soleil sont ses yeux radieux
Qui donnent vie a tous, nous maintiennent et gardent,
Et les faicts des humains en ce monde regardent:
Ce beau, ce grand Soleil, qui nous fait les saysons,
Selon qu'il entre ou sort de ses douze maysons:
Qui remplit l'univers de ses vertus cognues,
Qui d'un traict de ses yeux nous dissipe les nues:
L'espirit, l'ame du monde, ardent et flamboyant,
En la course d'un iour tout le Ciel tournoyant,
Plein d'immense grandeur, rond, vagabond et ferme:
Lequel tient dessoubs luy tout le monde pour terme,
En repos sans repos, oysif, et sans seiour,
Fils aisne de Nature, et le Pere du iour.
The common light, The worlds eye: and if God beare eyes in his cheefe head,
His most resplendent eyes the Sunne-beames may be said,
Which unto all give life, which us maintaine and guard,
And in this world of men, the workes of men regard:
This great, this beauteous Sunne, which us our seasons makes,
As in twelve houses be ingresse or egresse takes;
Who with his Vertues knowne, doth fill this universe,
With one cast of his eyes doth us all clowds disperse:
The spirit, and the soule of this world, flaming, burning,
Round about heav'n in course of one dayes journey turning.
Of endlesse greatnesse full, round, moveable and fast:
Who all the world for bounds beneath himselfe hath pla'st:
In rest, without rest, and still more staid, without stay, Of Nature th' eldest Childe, and Father of the day.
Forasmuch as besides this greatnesse and matchlesse beautie of his, it is the onely glorious piece of this vaste worlds frame, which we perceive to be furthest from us: And by that meane so little knowne as they are pardonable, they entered into admiration and reverence of it.
Thales, who was the first to enquire and find out this matter, esteemed God to be a spirit who made all things of water. Anaximander thought the Gods did dy, and were new borne at divers seasons, and that the worlds were infinite in number. Anaximenes deemed the ayre to be a God, which was created immense and always moving. Anaxagoras was the first that held the description and manner of all things to be directed by the power and reason of a spirit infinite Alcmaeon hath ascribed divinity unto the Sunne, unto the Moone, unto Stars, and unto the Soule. Pythagoras hath made God a spirit dispersed through the Nature of all things, whence our soules are derived. Parmenides, a circle circumpassing the heavens, and by the heat of light maintaining the world. Empedocles said the four Natures, whereof all things are made, to be Gods. Protagoras, that he had nothing to say whether they were or were not, or what they were. Democritus would sometimes say that the images and their circuitions were Gods, and othertimes this Nature, which disperseth these images, and then our knowledge and intelligence. Plato scattereth his beliefe after diverse semblances. In his Timaeus he saith that the worlds father could not be named. In his Lawes that his being must not be enquired after. And elsewhere in the said bookes he maketh the world, the heaven, the starres, the earth, and our soules, to be Gods; and besides, admitteth those that by ancient institutions have beene received in every commonwealth.
Xenophon reporteth a like difference of Socrates his discipline. Sometimes that Gods forme ought not to be inquired after; then he makes him infer that the Sunne is a God, and the Soule a God; othertimes that there is but one, and then more. Speusippus, Nephew unto Plato, makes God to be a certaine power, governing all things, and having a soule. Aristotle saith sometimes that it is the spirit, and sometimes the world; othertimes he appoynteth another ruler over this world, and sometimes he makes God to be the heat of heaven. Xenocrates makes eight; five named amongst the planets, the sixth composed of all the fixed starres, as of his owne members; the seaventh and eighth the Sunne and the Moone. Heraclides Ponticus doth but roame among his opinions, and in fine depriveth God of sense, and maks him remove and transchange himselfe from one forme to another; and then saith that is both heaven and earth. Theophrastus in all his fantasies wandereth still in like irresolutions, attributing the worlds superintendency now to the intelligence, now to the heaven, and now to the starres. Strabo, that it is Nature having power to engender, to augment and to diminish, without forme or sense. Zeno, the naturall Law, commanding the good and prohibiting the evill; which Lawe is a breathing creature, and removeth the accustomed Gods, Iupiter, Iuno, and Vesta. Diogenes Apolloniates, that it is Age. Xenophanes makes God round, seeing, hearing not breathing, and having nothing common with humane Nature. Aristo deemeth the forme of God to bee incomprehensible, and depriveth him of senses, and wotteth not certainely whether he bee a breathing soule or something else. Cleanthes, sometimes reason, othertimes the World; now the soule of Nature, and other-while the supreme heat, enfoulding and containing all. Perseus, Zenoes disciple, hath beene of opinion that they were surnamed Gods who had brought some notable good or benefit unto humane life, or had invented profitable things. Chrysippus made a confused huddle of all the foresaid sentences, and amongst a thousand formes of the Gods which he faineth, hee also accompteth those men that are immortalized. Diagoras and Theodorus flatly denied that there were anie Gods: Epicurus makes the Gods bright-shining, transparent, and perflable, placed as it were betweene two Forts, betweene two Worlds, safely sheltered from all blowes, invested with a humane shape, and with our members, which unto them are of no use.
Deum genus esse semper duxi, et dicam caelitum, Sed eos non curare opinor, quid agat humanum genus.
I still thought and wil say, of Gods there is a kinde; But what Our mankinde doth, I thinke they nothing minde.
Ennius in Cicero, De Divinatione, 1. ii.
Trust to your Philosophie, boast to have hit the naile on the head; or to have found out the beane of this cake, to see this coile and hurly-burly of so many Philosophical wits. The trouble or confusion of worldly shapes and formes hath gotten this of mee, that customes and conceipts differing from mine doe not so much dislike me as instruct me; and at what time I conferre or compare them together, they doe not so much puffe me up with pride as humble me with lowlinesse. And each other choyce, except that which commeth from the expresse hand of God, seemeth to me a choyce of small prerogative or consequence The worlds policies are no less contrarie one to another in this subject than the schooles whereby we may learne that Fortune herself is no more divers, changing, and variable, than our reason, nor more blinde and inconsiderat. Things most unknowne are fittest to be deified. Wherefore to make Gods of our selves (as antiquitie hath done), it exceeds the extreme weaknesse of discourse. I would rather have followed those that worshipped the Serpent, the Dogge, and the Ox, forsomuch as their Nature and being is least knowne to us, and we may more lawfully imagine what we list of those beasts, and ascribe extraordinarie faculties unto them. But to have made Gods of our conditions, whose imperfections we should know, and to have attributed desire, choler, revenge, marriages, generation, alliances, love, and jealousie, our limbs and our bones, our infirmities, our pleasures, our deaths, and our sepulchres unto them hath of necessity proceeded from a meere and egregious sottishness or drunkennesse of mans wit.
Quae procul usque adeo divino ab numine distant.
Ingue Deum numero quae sint indigna videri.
Which from Divinity so distant are,
To stand in ranks of Gods unworthy farre.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. v. 123.
Formae, aetates, vestitus ornatus noti sunt: genera, conjugia, cognationes, omniaque traducta ad similitudinem imbecillitatis humanae: nam et perturbatis animis inducuntur; accipimus enim Deorum cupiditates aegritudines, iracundias.
Their shapes, their ages, their aparrell, their furnitures are knowen; their kindes, their marriages, their kindred, and all translated to the likenesse of man's weaknesse: For they are also brought in with mindes much troubled; for we read of the lustfulnesse, the grievings, the angrinesse of the Gods.
As to have ascribed Divinity, not only unto faith, vertue, honour, concord, liberty, victory and piety; but also unto voluptuousnesse, fraud, death, envy, age and misery; yea unto feare, unto ague, and unto evill fortune, and such other industries and wrongs to our fraile and transitory life:
Quid juvat hoc, templis nostros inducere mores?
O curvae in terris animae et caelestium inanes!
What boots it, into Temples to bring manners of our kindes?
O crooked soules on earth, and void of heavenly mindes.
Pers. Sat. ii. 62, 61.
The Aegyptians, with an impudent wisdome forbad, upon a of hanging, that no man should dare to say that Serapis and Isis, their Gods, had whilome beene but men, when all knew they had been so. And their images or pictures drawne with a finger acrosse their mouth imported (as Varro saith) this misterious rule unto their priests, to conceal their mortall off-spring, which by necessary reason disannuled all their veneration. Since man desired so much to equall himselfe to God, it had beene better for him (saith Cicero) to draw those divine conditions unto himselfe, and bring them downe to earth, than to send his corruption and place his misery above in heaven; but to take him aright, he hath divers wayes, and with like vanitie of opinion, doth both the one and other.
When Philosophers blazon and display the Hierarchy of their gods, and to the utmost of their skill endevour to distinguish their aliances, their charges, and their powers; I cannot beleeve they speake in good earnest. When Plato decyphreth unto us the orchard of Pluto, and the commodities or corporall paines which even after the ruine and consumption of our body waite for us, and applyeth them to the apprehension or feeling we have in this life;
Secreti celant colles, et myrtea circum
Sylva tegit, curae non ipsa in morte relinquunt;
Them paths aside conceale, a mirtle grove
Shades them round; cares in death doe not remove;
Virgil, Aeneid, 1. vi. 443.
When Mahomet promiseth unto his followers a paradise all tapestried, adorned with gold and precious stones, peopled with exceeding beauteous damsels, stored with wines and singular cates: I well perceive they are but scoffers which sute and apply themselves unto our foolishness, thereby to enhonny and allure us to these opinions and hopes fitting our mortall appetite. Even so are some of our men falne into like errours by promising unto themselves after their resurrection a terrestriall and temporal life accompanied with all sorts of pleasures and worldly commodities. Shall we thinke that Plato, who had so heavenly conceptions and was so well acquainted with Divinity as of most he purchased the surname of Divine, was ever of opinion that man (this seely and wretched creature man) had any one thing in him which might in any sort he applied and suted to this incomprehensible and unspeakable power? or ever imagined that our languishing hold-fasts were capable, or the vertue of our understanding of force, to participate or be partakers either of the blessednesse or eternal punishment? He ought in the behalfe of humane reasoned he answered: If the pleasures thou promisest us in the other life are such as I have felt here below, they have nothing in them common with infinity. if all my five naturall senses were even surcharged with joy and gladnesse, and my soule possessed with all the contents and delights it could possibly desire or hope for (and we know what it either can wish or hope for) yet were it nothing. If there bee any thing that is mine, then is there nothing that is Divine; if it be nothing else but what may appertaine unto this our present condition, it may not be accounted of. All mortall mens contentment is mortall. The acknowledging of our parents, of our children and of our friends, if it cannot touch, move or tickle us in the other world, if we still take hold of such a pleasure, we continue in terrestrial and transitorie commodities. We can not worthily conceive of these high, mysterious, and divine promises, if wee can but in any sort conceive them, and so imagine them aright; they must be thought to be immaginable, unspeakeable and incomprehensible, and absolutely and perfectly other than those of our miserable experience. 'No eye can behold (saith Saint Paul) the hap that God prepareth for his elect, nor can it possibly enter the heart of man.' And if to make us capable of it (as thou saist, Plato, by thy purifications), our being is reformed and essence changed, it must be by so extreme and universall a change that, according to philosophicall doctrine, wee shall be no more ourselves:
Hector erat tunc cum belle certabat, at ille
Tractus ab AEmonio non erat Hector equo.
Hector he was, when he in fight us'd force;
Hector he was not, drawne by th'enemies horse.
Ovid, Trist. 1. iii.; El. xi. 27.
it shall be some other thing that shall receive these recompences.
------quod mutatur, dissolvitur; interit ergo:
Trajiciuntur enim partes atgue ordine migrant.
What is chang'd is dissolved, therefore dies:
Translated parts in order fall and rise.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 781.
For in the Metempsychosis or transmigration of soules of Pythagoras, and the change of habitation which he imagined the soules to make, shall we thinke that the lion in whom abideth the soule of Caesar, doth wed the passions which concerned Caesar, or that it is bee? And if it were hee, those had some reason who, debating this opinion against Plato, object that the sonne might one day bee found committing with his mother under the shape of a Mules body, and such like absurdities. And shall wee imagine that in the transmigrations which are made from the bodies of some creatures into others of the same kind, the new succeeding ones are not other than their predecessors were? Of a Phenixes cinders, first (as they say) is engendred a worme and then another Phenix: who can imagine that this second Phenix be no other and different from the first? Our Silk-wormes are seene to dye and then to wither drie, and of that body breedeth a Butter-flie, and of that a worme, were it not ridiculous to thinke the same to be the first Silkeworm? what hath once lost its being is no more.
Nec si materiam nostram collegerit aetas
Post obitum, rursumque redegerit, ut sita nunc est,
Atque iterum nobis fuerint data lumina vitae,
Pertineat quidquam tamen ad nos id quoque factum,
Interrupta semel cum sit repetentia nostra.
If time should recollect, when life is past,
Our stuffe, and it replace, as now 'tis plac't,
And light of life were granted us againe,
Yet nothing would that deed to us pertaine,
When interrupted were our turne againe.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 890.
And Plato, when in another place thou saist that it shall be the spirituall part of man that shall enjoy the recompences of the other life, thou tellest of things of as small likely-hood.
Scilicet avulsus radicibus ut nequit ullam
Dispicere ipse oculus rem, seorsum corpore toto.
Ev'n as no eye, by th' root's pull'd out, can see
Ought in whole body severall to bee.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 580.
For by this reckoning it shall no longer be man, nor consequently us, to whom this enjoyment shall appertaine; for we are built of two principall essential parts, the separation of which is the death and consummation of our being.
Inter enim jecta est vitai pausa vageque
Deerrarunt passim motus ab sensibus omnes.
A pause of life is interpos'd; from sense
All motions straied are, far wandring thence.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 903.
We doe not say that man suffereth when the wormes gnaw his body and limbs whereby he lived, and that the earth consumeth them:
Et nihil hoc ad nos, qui coitu conjugioque
Corporis atque animae consistimus uniter apti.
This nought concerns us, who consist of union
Of minde and body joyn'd in meet communion.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 888.
Moreover, upon what ground of their justice can the Gods reward man and be thankfull unto him after his death, for his good and vertuous actions, since themselves addressed and bred them in him? And wherefore are they offended and revenge his vicious deeds, when themselves have created him with so defective a condition, and that but with one twinkling of their will they may hinder him from sinning? Might not Epicurus with some shew of humane reason object that unto Plato, if he did not often shrowd himselfe under this sentence, that it is impossible by mortall nature to establish any certainty of the immortall? Shee is ever straying but especially when she medleth with divine matters. Who feeles it more evidently than we? For, although we have ascribed unto her assured and infallible Principles, albeit wee enlighten her steps with the holy lampe of that truth which God hath been pleased to impart unto us, we notwithstanding see daily, how little soever she stray from the ordinary path that she start or stragle out of the way traced and measured out by the Church, how soone she loseth, entangleth and confoundeth her selfe; turning, tossing and floating up and downe in this vast, troublesome and tempestuous sea of mans opinions without restraint or scope. So soone as she loseth this high and common way, shee divideth and scattereth herselfe a thousand diverse ways.
Man can be no other than he is, nor imagine but according to his capacity. It is greater presumption (saith Plutarch in them that are but men, to attempt to reason and discourse of Gods and of demi-Gods, than in a man meerly ignorant of musicke to judge of those that sing; or for a man that was never in warres to dispute of, Armes and warre, presuming by some light conjecture to comprehend the effects of an art altogether beyond his skill. As I thinke, Antiquity imagined it did something for divine Majesty when shee compared the same unto man, attiring her with his faculties, and enriching her with his strange humours and most shamefull necessities: offering her some of our cates to feed upon, and some of our dances, mummeries, and enterludes to make her merry, with our clothes to apparrell her, and our houses to lodge her, cherishing her with the sweet odors of incense, and sounds of musicke, adorning her with garlands and flowers, and to draw her to our vicious passion, to flatter her justice with an inhuman revenge, gladding her with the ruine and dissipation of things created and preserved by her. As Tiberius Sempronius, who for a sacrifice to Vulcan caused the rich spoiles and armes which he had gotten of his enemies in Sardinia to be burned: And Paulus Emilius, those he had obtained in Macedonia, to Mars and Minerva. And Alexander, comming to the Ocean of India, cast in favour of Thetis many great rich vessels of gold into the Sea, replenishing, moreover, her Altars with a butcherly slaughter, not onely of innocent beasts, but of men, as diverse Nations, and amongst the rest, ours were wont to doe. And I thinke none hath beene exempted from shewing the like Essayes.
-----Sulmone creatos
Quatuor hic juvenes, totidem, quos educat Usens,
Viventes rapit, inferias quos immolet umbris.
Foure young-men borne of Sulmo, and foure more
Whom Usens bred, he living over-bore,
Whom he to his dead friend
A sacrifice might send.
Virgil, AEneid, 1. x.517.
The Getes deeme themselves immortall, and their death but the beginning of a journey to their God Zamolxis. From five to five yeares they dispatch some one among themselves toward him, to require of him necessarie things. This deputy of theirs is chosen by lots; and the manner to dispatch him, after they have by word of mouth instructed him of his charge, is that amongst those which assist his election, three hold so many javelins upright, upon which the others, by meere strength of armes, throw him; if he chance to sticke upon them in any mortall place, and that he dye suddenly, it is to them an assured argument of divine favour; but if he escape, they deeme him a wicked and execrable man, and then chuse another. Amestris, mother unto Xerxes, being become aged, caused at one time fourteen young striplings of the noblest houses of Persia (following the religion of her countrie) to be buried all alive, thereby to gratifie some God of under earth. Even at this day the Idols of Temixitan are cemented with the bloud of young children, and love no sacrifice but of such infant and pure soules: Oh justice, greedy of the blood of innocencie.
Tantum religio portuit suadere malorum.
Religion so much mischeefe could
Perswade, where it much better should.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. i. 102.
The Carthaginians were went to sacrifice their owne children unto Saturne, and who had none was faine to buy some: and their fathers and mothers were enforced in their proper persons, with cheerefull and pleasant countenance to assist that office. It was a strange conceit, with our owne affliction to goe about to please and appay divine goodnesse: As the Lacedemonians, who flattered and wantonized their Diana by torturing of young boys, whom often in favour of her they caused to be whipped to death. It was a savage kinde of humour to thinke to gratifie the Architect with the subversion of his Architecture, and to cancel the punishment due unto the guiltie by punishing the guiltles, and to imagine that poore Iphigenia, in the port of Aulis, should by her death and sacrifice discharge and expiate towards God, the Grecians armie of the offences which they had committed.
Et casta inceste nubendi tempore in ipso
Hostia concideret mactatu maesta parentis.
She, a chaste offring, griev'd incestuously
By fathers stroke, when she should wed,to dye.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. i. 99.
And those two noble and generous soules of the Decii, father and sonne, to reconcile and appease the favour of the Gods towards the Romanes affaires, should headlong cast their bodies athwart the thickest throng of their enemies.
Quae fuit tanta Deorum iniquitas, ut placari populo Romano non possint, nisi tales viri occidissent?
What injustice of the Gods was so great as they could not be appeased unlesse such men perished?
Cicero, De Nat. Deor., 1. iii. 6.
Considering that it lies not in the offender to cause himselfe to be whipped, how and when he list, but in the judge, who accompteth nothing a right punishment except the torture he appointeth and cannot impute that unto punishment which is in the free choice of him that suffereth. The divine vengeance presupposeth our full dissent, for his justice and our paine. And ridiculous was that humor of Polycrates, the Tyrant of Samos, who, to interrupt the course of his continuall happinesse, and to recompence it, cast the richest and most precious jewell he had into the Sea, deeming that by this purposed mishap he should satisfie the revolution and vicissitude of fortune; which, to deride his folly, caused, the very same jewel, being found in a fishes belly, to returne to his hands againe. And to what purpose are the manglings and dismembrings of the Corybantes, of the Maenades, and now a dayes of the Mahumetans, who skar and gash their faces, their stomacke and their limbes, to gratifie their prophet: seeing the offence consisteth in the will not in the breast, nor eyes, nor in the genitories, health, shoulders, or throat?
Tantus est perturbatae mentis et sedibus suis pulsae furor, ut sic Dii placentur, quemadmodum ne homines quidem saeviunt.
So great is the fury of a troubled minde put from the state it should be in, as the Gods must be so pacified, as even men would not be so outrageous.
Augustine, The City of God, 1. vi. c. 10.
This naturall contexture doth by her use not only respect us, but also the service of God and other mens: it is injustice to make it miscarie at our pleasure, as under what pretence soever it be to kill our selves. It seemeth to be a great cowardise and manifest treason to abuse the stupide and corrupt the servile functions of the body, to spare the diligence unto the soule how to direct them according unto reason.
Vbi iratos Deos timent, qui sic propitios habere merentur. In regiae libidinis voluptatem castrate sunt quidam; sed nemo sibi, ne vir esset, jubente Domino manus intulit.
Where are they afeard of Gods anger, who in such sort deserve to have his favour; some have beene guelded for Princes lustfull pleasure; but no man at the Lords command hath laid hands on himselfe to be lesse than a man.
Ibid. ex SEN.
Thus did they replenish their religion and stuffe it with divers bad effects.
-----saepius olim Religio peperit scelerosa atque impia facta.
Religion hath oft times in former times
Bred execrable facts, ungodly crimes,
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. i. 82.
Now can nothing of ours, in what manner soever, be either compared or referred unto divine nature, that doth not blemish and defile the same with as much imperfection. How can this infinite beauty, power, and goodnes admit any correspondencie or similitude with a thing so base and abject as we are, without extreme interest, and manifest derogation from his divine greatnesse?
Infirmum Dei fortius est hominibus; et stultum Dei sapientius est hominibus.
The weaknesse of God is stronger than man; and the foolishnesse of God is wiser than men.
Corinthians i. 25.
Stilpo the Philosopher being demanded whether the Gods rejoyce at our honours and sacrifices; you are indiscreet (said he), let us withdraw our selves apart if you, speake of such matters. Notwithstanding we prescribe him limits, we lay continuall siege unto his power by our reasons. (I call our dreames and our vanities reason, with the dispensation of Philosophy, which saith that both the foole and the wicked doe rave and dote by reason, but that it is a reason of severall and particular forme.) We will subject him to the vaine and weake apparances of our understanding: him who hath made both us and our knowledge. Because nothing is made of nothing: God was not able to frame the world without matter. What? hath God delivered into our hands the keyes, and the strongest wards of his infinit puissance? Hath he obliged himselfe not to exceed the bounds of our knowledge? Suppose, oh man, that herein thou hast beene able to marke some signes of his effects. Thinkest thou he hath therein employed all he was able to doe, and that he hath placed all his formes and ideas in this peece of worke? Thou seest but the order and policie of this little cell wherein thou art placed. The question is, whether thou seest it. His divinitie hath an infinit jurisdiction far beyond that. This peece is nothing in respect of the whole.
-----omnia cum caelo terraque marique,
Nil sunt ad summam summai totius omnem.
All things that are, with heav'n, with sea, and land,
To th' whole summe of th' whole summe as nothing stand.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. vi. 675.
This law thou aleagest is but a municipall law, and thou knowest not what the universall is: tie thy selfe unto that whereto thou art subject, but tie not him: he is neither thy companion, nor thy brother, nor thy fellow citizen, nor thy copesmate. If lie in any sort have communicated himselfe unto thee, it is not to debase himselfe, or stoope to thy smalnesse, nor to give thee the controulment of his power. Mans body cannot soare up into the clouds, this is for thee. The sunne uncessantly goeth his ordinary course the bounds of the seas and of the earth cannot be confounded: the water is ever fleeting, wavering, and without firmnesse: a wall without breach or flaw, impenetrable unto a solid body: man cannot preserve his life amidst the flames, he cannot corporally be both in heaven and on earth, and in a thousand places together and at once. It is for thee that be hath made these rules: it is thou they take hold of. He hath testified unto Christians that when ever it hath pleased him he hath out gone them all. And in truth, omnipotent as he is, wherefore should he have restrained his forces unto a limited measure? In favour of whom should be have renounced his privilege? Thy reason hath in no one other thing more likely-hood and foundation, than in that which perswadeth thee a plurality of words.
Terramque et solem, lunam, mare, caetera quae sunt,
Non esse unica, sed numero magis innumerali.
The earth, the sunne, the moone, the sea and all
In number numberlesse, not one they call.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. ii. 1094.
The famousest wits of former ages have beleeved it, yea and some of our moderne, as forced thereunto by the apparance of humane reason. For as much as whatsoever eye see in this vast worlds frame, there is no one thing alone, single and one.
---- cum in summa res nulla sit una,
Unica quae gignatur, et unica solaque crescat:
Whereas in generall summe, nothing is one,
To be bred only one, grow only one.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. ii. 1086.
And that all severall kindes are multiplied in some number: whereby it seemeth unlikely that God hath framed this peece of work alone without a fellow: and that the matter of this forme hath wholy beene spent in this only Individuum.
Quare etiam atqae etiam tales fateare necesse est,
Esse alios alibi congressus matiriae,
Qualis hic est avidi complexu quem tenet AEther.
Wherefore you must confesse, againe againe,
Of matters such like meetings elsewhere raigne
As this, these skies in greedy gripe containe.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. ii. 1073.
Namely, if it be a breathing creature, as its motions make it so likely, that Plato assureth it, and divers of ours either affirme it, or dare not impugne it; no more than this old opinion, that the heaven, the starres, and other members of the world, are creatures composed both of body and soule; mortall in respect of their composition, but immortall by the Creators decree. Now if there be divers worlds, as Democritus, Epicurus, and well neere all Philosophy hath thought; what know wee whether the principles and the rules of this one concerns or touch likewise the others? Haply they have another semblance and another policie. Epicurus imagineth them either like or unlike. We see an infinite difference and varietie in this world only by the distance of places. There is neither corne nor wine, no nor any of our beasts seene in that new corner of the world which our fathers have lately discovered: all things differ from ours. And in the old time, marke but in how many parts of the world they had never knowledge nor et Bacchus nor of Ceres. If any credit may be given unto Plinie or to Herodotus, there is in some places a kinde of men that have very little or no resemblance at all with ours. And there be mungrell and ambiguous shapes betweene a humane and brutish nature. Some countries there are where men are borne headlesse, with eyes and mouths in their breasts; where all are Hermaphrodites; where they creepe on all foure; where they have but one eye in their forehead, and heads more like unto a dog than ours; where from the navill downewards they are half fish and live in the water; where women are brought a bed at five years of age, and live but eight; where their heads and the skin of their browes are so hard that no yron can pierce them, but will rather turne edge; where men never have beards. Other nations there are that never have use of fire; others whose sperme is of a blacke colour. What shall we speake of them who natarally change themselves into woolves, into coults, and then into men againe? And if it bee (as Plutark saith) that in some part of the Indiaes there are men without mouthes, and who live only by the smell of certaine sweet odours; how many of our descriptions be then false? Hee is no more risible, nor perhaps capable of reason and societie. The direction and cause of our inward frame should for the most part be to no purpose.
Moreover, how many things are there in our knowledge that oppugne these goodly rules which we have allotted and prescribed unto Nature? And we undertake to joyne God himselfe unto her. How many things doe we name miraculous and against Nature? Each man and every nation doth it according to the measure of his ignorance. How many hidden proprieties and quintessences doe we daily discover? For us to go according to Nature, is but to follow according to our understanding, as far as it can follow, and as much as we can perceive in it. Whatsoever is beyond it, is monstrous and disordered. By this accompt all shall then be monstrous, to the wisest and most sufficient; for even to such humane reason hath perswaded that she had neither ground nor footing, no not so much as to warrant snow to be white: and Anaxagoras said it was blacke. Whether there be anything or nothing; whether there be knowledge or ignorance, which Metrodorus Chius denied that any man might say; or whether we live, as Euripides seemeth to doubt and call in question; whether the life we live be a life or no, or whether that which we call death be a life:
τίς δ᾽ οἶδεν, εἰ τὸ ζῆν μέν ἐστι κατθανεῖν,
τὸ κατθανεῖν δὲ ζῆν;
Who knowes if thus to live, be called death,
And if it be to dye, thus to draw breath;
Plato, Gorgias, ex Euripides (fr. 638)
And not without apparance. For wherefore doe we from that instant take a title of being, which is but a twinkling in the infinit course of an eternall night, and so short an interruption of our perpetuall and naturall condition? Death possessing what ever is before and behind this moment, and also a good part of this moment. Some others affirme there is no motion, and that nothing stirreth; namely, those which follow Melissus. For if there be but one, neither can this sphericall motion serve him, nor the moving from one place to another, as Plato proveth, that there is neither generation nor corruption in nature. Protagoras saith there is nothing in nature but doubt: that a man may equally dispute of all things: and of that also, whether aall things may equally be disputed of: Nausiphanes said, that of things which seeme to be, no one thing is nno more than it is not. That nothing is certaine but uncertainty. Parmenides, that of that which seemeth there is no one thing in generall. That there is but one Zeno, that one selfe same is not: and that there is nothing. If one were, he should either be in another, or in himselfe: if he be in another, then are they two: if he be in himselfe, they are also two, the comprising and the comprised. According to these rules or doctrines, the Nature of things is but a false or vaine shadow.
I have ever thought this manner of speech in a Christian is full of indiscretion and irreverence; God cannot dye, God cannot gaine-say himselfe, God cannot doe this or that. I cannot allow a man should so bound Gods heavenly power under the Lawes of our word. And that apparence, which in these propositions offers it selfe unto us, ought to be represented more reverently and more religiously.
Our speech hath his infirmities and defects, as all things else have. Most of the occasions of this worlds troubles are Grammaticall. Our suits and processes proceed but from the canvasing and debating the interpretation of the Lawes, and most of our warres from the want of knowledge in State-counsellors, that could not cleerely distinguish and fully expresse the Covenants and Conditions of accords betweene Prince and Prince. How many weighty strifes and important quarels hath the doubt of this one sillable, hoc, brought forth in the world? Examine the plainest sentence that Logike it selfe can present unto us. If you say, it is faire weather, and in so saying, say true, it is faire weather then. Is not this a certaine forme of speech? Yet will it deceive us: That it is so, let us follow the example: If you say, I lye, and in that you should say true, you lie then. The Art, the reason, the force of the conclusion of this last, are like unto the other; notwithstanding we are entangled. I see the Pyrrhonian philosophers, who can by no manner of speech expresse their generall conceit: for they had need of a new language. Ours is altogether composed of affirmative propositions, which are directly against them. So that when they say I doubt, you have them fast by the throat to make them avow that at least you are assured and know that they doubt. So have they beene compelled to save themselves by this comparison of Physicke, without which their conceit would be inexplicable and intricate. When they pronounce, I know not, or I doubt, they say that this proposition transportes it selfe together with the rest, even as the Rewbarbe doeth, which scowred ill humours away, and therewith is carried away himselfe. This conceipt is more certainly conceived by an interrogation: What can I tell? As I beare it in an Imprese of a paire of ballances.
Note how some prevaile with this kinde of unreverent and unhallowed speech. In the disputations that are nowadayes in our religion, if you overmuch urge the adversaries, they will roundly tell you that it lieth not in the power of God to make his body at once to be in Paradise and on earth, and in many other places together. And how that ancient skoffer made profitable use of it. At least (saith he) it is no small comfort unto man to see that God cannot doe all things; for he cannot kill himselfe if he would, which is the greatest benefit we have in our condition; he cannot make mortall men immortall nor raise the dead to life againe, nor make him that hath lived never to have lives, and him who hath had honours not to have had them, having no other right over what is past, but of forgetfulnesse. And that this society betweene God and Man may also be combined with some pleasant examples, he cannot make twice ten not to be twenty. See what, he saith, and which a Christian ought to abhor, that ever such and so profane words should passe his mouth: Whereas, on the contrary part, it seemeth that fond men endevour to finde out this foolish-boldnesse of speech, that so they may turne and winde God almighty according to their measure.
-----cras vel atra Nube polum pater occupato, Vel sole puro, non tamen irritum Quodcumque retro est efficiet, neque Diffinget effectumque reddet Quod fugiens semel hora vexit.
Tommorrow let our father fill the skie, With darke cloud, or with cleare Sunne, he thereby Shall not make voyd what once is overpast: Nor shall he undoe, or in new mold cast, What time hath once caught, that flyeth hence so fast.
Horace, Car. 1. iii. Od. xxix. 43.
When we say that the infinite of ages, as well past as to come, is but one instant with God; that his wisdome, goodnesse and power, are one selfe-same thing with his essence; our tongue speaks it, but our understanding can no whit apprehend it. Yet will our selfe overweening sift his divinitie through our sieve: whence are engendered all the vanities and errours wherewith this world is so full-fraught, reducing and weighing with his uncertaine balance a thing so farre from his reach, and so distant from his weight.
Mirum quo procedat improbitas cordis humani, parvulo aliquo invitata successu.
It is a wonder whither the perverse wickednesse of mans heart will proceed, if it be but called-on with any little successes.
Pliny, Nat. Hist. 1. ii, c. 23.
How insolently doe the Stoikes charge Epicurus, because he holds that to be perfectly good and absolutely happy belongs but only unto God; and that the wise man hath but a shadow and similitude thereof? How rashly have they joyned God unto destiny? (Which at my request, let none that beareth the surname of a Christian doe at this day.) And Thales, Plato, and Pythagoras have subjected him unto necessities. This over-boldnesse, or rather bold-fiercenesse, to seeke to discover God by and with our eyes, hath beene the cause that a notable man of our times hath attributed a corporall forme unto divinitie, and is the cause of that which daily hapneth unto us, which is by a particular assignation to impute all important events to God: which because they touch us, it seemeth they also touch him, and that he regardeth them with more care and attention than those that are but slight and ordinary unto us.
Magna dii curant, parva negligunt.
The Gods take some care for great things, but none for little.
Cicero, De Nat. Deor. 1. ii.
Note his example; he will enlighten you with his reason.
Nec in regnis quidem reges omnia minima curant.
Nor doe Kings in their Kingdomes much care for the least matters.
Cicero, De Nat. Deor. 1. iii.
As if it were all one to that King, either to remove an Empire or a leafe of a tree: and if his providence were otherwise exercised, inclining or regarding no more the successe of a battell than the skip of a flea. The hand of his government affords itselfe to all things after a like tenure, fashion and order; our interest addeth nothing unto it: our motions and our measures concerne him nothing and move him no whit.
Deus ita artifex magnus in magnis, ut minor non sit in parvis.
God is so great a workman in great things, as he is no lesse in small things.
Our arrogancie setteth ever before us this blasphemous equality, because our occupations charge us. Strato hath presented the Gods with all immunitie of offices, as are their Priests. He maketh nature to produce and preserve all things, and by her weights and motions to compact all parts of the world, discharging humane nature from the feare of divine judgments.
Quod beatum aeternumque sit, id nec habere, negotii quicquam, nec exhibere alteri.
That which is blessed and eternall, nor is troubled it selfe, nor troubleth others.
Cicero, De Nat. Deor. 1. i.
Nature willeth that in all things alike there be also like relation. Then the infinite number of mortall men concludeth a like number of immortall: The infinite things that kill and destroy presuppose as many that preserve and profit. As the soules of the Gods, sanse tougues, sanse eyes, and sanse eares, have each one, in themselves a feeling of that which the other feel, and judge of our thoughts; so mens soules, when they are free and severed from the body, either by sleepe or any distraction, divine, prognosticate and see things, which being conjoyned to their bodies, they could not see. Men, saith Saint Paul, when they professed themselves to be wise, they became fooles, for they turned the glory of the incorruptible God to the similitude of the image of a corruptible man. Marke, I pray you, a little the iugling of ancient Deifications. After the great, solemne and prowd pompe of funerals, when the fire began to burne the top of the Pyramis, and to take hold of the bed or hearce wherein the dead corps lay, even at that instant they let fly an Eagle, which taking her flight aloft upward, signified that the soule went directly to Paradise. We have yet a thousand medailes and monuments, namely, of that honest woman Faustina, wherein that Eagle is represented carrying a cocke-horse up towards heaven those deified soules. It is pity we should so deceive our selves with our owne foolish devises and apish inventions,
Quod finxere timent,
Of that they stand in feare,
Which they in fancie beare,
as children will be afeard of their fellowes visage, which themselves have besmeared and blackt.
Quasi quicquam infaelicius sit homine, cui sua figmenta dominantur.
As though any thing were more wretched than man over whom his owne imaginations beare sway and domineere.
Lucan, 1. i. 462.
To honour him whom we have made is farre from honouring him that hath made us. Augustus had as many Temples as Iupiter and served with as much religion and opinion of miracles. The Thracians, in requitall of the benefits they had received of Agesilaus, came to tell him how they had canonized him. 'Hath your Nation,' said he, 'the power to make those whom it pleaseth Gods? Then first (for example sake) make one of your selves, and when I shall have seene what good he shall have thereby, I will then thanke you for your offer. Oh sencelesse man, who cannot possibly make a worme, and yet will make Gods by dozens. Listen to Trismegistus when he praiseth our sufficiencie: For man to finde out divine nature, and to make it, hath surmounted the admiration of all admirable things. Loe here arguments out of Philosophies schooles itselfe.
Noscere cui Divos et coeli numina soli,
Aut soli nescire datum.
Only to whom heav'ns Deities to know,
Only to whom is giv'n, them not to know.
Lucan, 1. i. 484.
If God be, he is a living creature; if he be a living creature, he hath sense; and if he have sense, he is subject to corruption. If he be without a body, he is without a soule, and consequently without action: and if he have a body, he is corruptible. Is not this brave? We are incapable to have made the world, then is there some more excellent nature that hath set her helping hand unto it. Were it not a sottish arrogancie that wee should thinke ourselves to be the perfectest thing of this universe? Then sure there is some better thing. And that is God. When you see a rich and stately mansion house, although you know not who is owner of it, yet will you not say that it was built for rats. And this more than humane frame and divine composition, which we see, of heavens pallace, must we not deeme it to be the mansion of some Lord greater than our selves? Is not the highest ever the most worthy? And we are seated in the lowest place. Nothing that is without a soule and void of reason is able to bring forth a living soule capable of reason. The world doth bring us forth, then the world hath both soule and reason. Each part of us is lesse than our selves, we are part of the world, then the world is stored with wisdome and with reason, and that more plenteously than we are. It is a goodly thing to have a great government. Then the worlds government belongeth to some blessed and happy nature. The Starres annoy us not, then the Starres are full of goodnesse. We have need of nourishment, then so have the Gods, and feed themselves with the vapours arising here below. Worldly goods are not goods unto God. Then are not they goods unto us. To offend and to be offended are equall witnesses of imbecilitie: Then it is folly to, feare God. God is good by his owne nature, man by his industry: which is more? Divine wisdome and mans wisdome have no other distinction but that the first is eternall. Now lastingnesse is an accession unto wisdome. Therefore are we fellowes. We have life reason, and libertie, we esteeme goodnesse, charitie and justice; these qualities are then in him. In conclusion, the building and destroying the conditions of divinity are forged by man according to the relation to himselfe. Oh what a patterne, and what a model! Let us raise and let us amplifie humane qualities as much as we please. Puffe-up thy selfe poore man, yea swell and swell againe.
----- non si te ruperis, inquit.
Swell till you breake, you shall not be,
Equall to that great one, quoth he.
Horace, Serm. 1. ii. Sat. iii. 324.
Profecto non teum, quem cogitare non possunt, sed semetipsos pro illo cogitantes, non illum, sed seipsos, non illi, sed sibi comparant.
Of a truth, they conceiting not God, whom they cannot conceive, but themselves instead of God, doe not compare him, but themselves, not to him but themselves.
In naturall things the effects doe but balfe referre their causes. What this? It is above natures order, its condition is too high, too far out of reach, and overswaying to endure, that our conclusions should seize upon or fetter the same. It is not by our meanes we reach unto it, this traine is too low. We are no nerer heaven on the top of Sina mount than in the bottome of the deepest sea: Consider of it that you may see with your Astrolabe. They bring God even to the carnall acquaintance of women, to a prefixed number of times, and to how many generations. Paulina, wife unto Saturnius, a matron of great reputation in Rome, supposing to lye with the God Serapis, by the maquerelage of the priests of that Temple, found herself in the armes of a wanton lover of hers. Varro, the most subtill and wisest Latine Author, in his bookes of divinitie writeth that Hercules his Sextaine, with one hand casting lots for himselfe, and with the other for Hercules, gaged a supper and a wench against him: if he won, at the charge of his offerings, but if he lost, at his owne cost. He lost, and paid for a supper and a wench: her name was Laurentina: who by the night saw that God in her armes, saying moreover unto her that the next day the first man she met withall should heavenly pay her her wages. It was fortuned to be one Taruncius, a very rich young man, who tooke her home with him, and in time left her absolute heire of all he had. And she, when it came to her turne, hoping to doe that God some acceptable service, left the Romane people heire generall or all her wealth. And therefore she had divine honours attributed unto her. As if it were not sufficient for Plato to descend originally from the Gods by a twofold line, and to have Neptune for the common author of his race. It was certainly beleeved at Athens that Ariston, desiring to enjoy faire Perictyone, he could not, and that in his dreame he was warned by God Apollo to leave her untoucht and unpolluted untill such time as she were brought a bed. And these were the father and mother of Plato. How many such-like cuckoldries are there in histories, procured by the Gods against seely mortall men? And husbands most injuriously blazoned in favor of their children? In Mahomets religion, by the easie beleefe of that people are many Merlins found, that is to say, fatherless children: spirituall children, conceived and borne divinely in the wombs of virgins, and that in their language beare names importing as much.
We must note that nothing is more deare and precious to any thing than its owne being (the Lyon, the Eagle and the Dolphin esteeme nothing above their kind), each thing referreth the qualities of all other things unto her owne conditions, which we may either amplifie or shorten; but that is all: for besides this principle, and out of this reference, our imagination cannot go, and guesse further: and it is unpossible it should exceed that, or goe beyond it. Whence arise these ancient conclusions. Of all formes, that of man is the fairest: then God is of this forme. No man can he happy without vertue, nor can vertue be without reason; and no reason can lodge but in a humane shape: God is then invested with a humane figure.
Ita est informatum anticipatum mentibus nostris, ut homini, quum de Deo cogitet, forma occurrat humana.
The prejudice forestaled in our mindes is so framed as the forme of man comes to mans minde when he is thinking of God.
Cicero, De Nat. Deor. 1. i.
Therefore Xenophanes said presently, that if beasts frame any Gods unto themselves, as likely it is they do, they surely frame them like unto themselves, and glorifle themselves as we do. For why may not a goose say thus? All parts of the world behold me, the earth serveth me to tread upon, the Sunne to give me light, the Starres to inspire me with influence; this commoditie I have of the wind, and this benefit of the waters: there is nothing that this worlds-vault doth so favourably look upon as me selfe; I am the favorite of nature; is it not man that careth for me, that keepeth me, lodgeth me, and serveth me? For me it is he soweth, reapeth, and grindeth: if he eat me, so doth man feed on his fellow and so doe I on the wormes that consume and eat him. As much might a Crane say, yea and more boldly, by reason of her flights libertie, and the possession of this goodly and high-bownding region.
Tam blanda conciliatrix, et tam sui est lena ipsa natura
So flattring a broker and bawd (as it were) is nature to it selfe.
Cicero, De Nat. Deor. 1. i.
Now by the same consequence the destinies are for us, the world is for us; it shineth, and thundreth for us: both the creator and the creatures are for us: it is the marke and point whereat the universitie of things aymeth. Survay but the register which Philosophy hath kept these two thousand years and more, of heavenly affaires. The Gods never acted, and never spake, but for man: She ascribeth no other consultation, nor imputeth other vacation unto them. Loe how they are up in armes against us.
-----domitosque Herculea manu
Telluris iuvenes, unde periculum
Fulgens contremuit domus
Saturni veteris.
And young earth-gallants tamed by the hand
Of Hercules, whereby the habitation
Of old Saturnus did in perill stand,
And, shyn'd it ne'er so bright, yet fear'd invasion,
Horace, Car. 1. ii. Od. xii. 6.
See how they are partakers of our troubles, that so they may be even with us, forsomuch as so many times we tire partakers of theirs.
Neptunus muros magnogue emota tridenti
Fundamenta quatit, totamque a sedibus urbem
Eruit: hic Iuno Scaeas saavissima portas Prima tenet.
Neptunas with his great three-forked mace
Shaks the weake wall, and tottering foundation,
And from the site the Cittie doth displace,
Fierce Juno first holds ope the gates t'invasion.
Virgil, AEneid, 1. ii. 610.
The Caunians, for the jelousie of their owne Gods dominations upon their devotion day arme themselves, and running up and downe, brandishing and striking the ayre with their glaives, and in this earnest manner they expell all foraine and banish all strange Gods from out their territories. Their powers are limited according to our necessitie. Some heale horses, some cure men, some the plague, some the scald, some the cough, some one kind of scab, and some another: Adeo minimis etiam rebus prava religio inserit Deos: 'This corrupt religion engageth and inserteth Gods even in the least matters:' some make grapes to growe, and some garlike; some have the charge of bawdrie and uncleanesse, and some of merchandise: to every kinde of trades-man a God. Some one hath his province and credit in the East, and some in the West:
------hic illius arma
Hic currus fuit.
His armor here
His chariots there appeare.
Virgil, AEneid, 1. i. 20.
O sancte Apollo, qui umbilicum certum terrarum obtines./3
Sacred Apollo, who enfoldest
The earths set navell, and it holdest.
Cicero, De Div. 1. ii.
Pallada Cecropiae, Minoia Creta Dianam,
Vulcanum tellus Hipsi illa colit.
Iunonem Sparte, Pelopeiadesque Mycena,
Pinigerum Fauni Maenalis ora caput:
Mars Latio venerandus.
Besmeared with bloud and goare.
Th'Athenians Pallas; Minos-Candy coast
Diana, Lemnos Vulcan honors most;
Mycene and Sparta, Juno thinke divine;
The coast of Maenalus Fauns crown'd with pine;
Latium doth Mars adore.
Ovid, Fast. 1. iii. 81.
Some hath but one borough or family in his possession: some lodgeth alone, and some in company, either voluntarily or necessarily.
Iunctaque sunt magno templa nepotis avo.
To the great grand-sires shrine,
The nephews temples doe combine. Ovid, Fast. 1. i. 294.
Some there are so seely and popular (for their number amounteth to six and thirty thousand) that five or six of them must be shufled up together to produce an eare of corne, and thereof they take their severall names. Three to a doore, one to be the boards, one to be the hinges, and the third to be the threshold. Foure to a childe, as protectors of his bandels, of his drinke, of his meat, and of his sucking. Some are certaine, others uncertaine, some doubtfull, and some that come not yet into paradise.
Quos, quoniam coeli nondum dignamur honore,
Quas dedimus certe terras habitare sinamus.
Whom for as yet with heav'n we have not graced,
Let them on earth by our good grant be placed.
Ovid, Metam. 1. i. 194.
There are some Philosophicall, some poeticall, and some civill, some of a meane condition, betweene divine and humane nature, mediators and spokes-men betweene us and God: worshipped in a kinde of second or diminutive order of adoration: infinite in titles and offices: some good, some bad, some old and crazed, and some mortall. For Chrysippus thought that in the last conflagration or burning of the world, all the Gods should have an end, except Jupiter. Man faineth a thousand pleasant societies betweene God and him. Nay, is he not his countrieman?
-----Iovis incunabula Creten.
The Ile of famous Creet,
For Jove a cradle meet.
Ovid, Metam. 1. viii. 99.
Behold the excuse that Scaevola, chiefe Bishop, and Varro, a great Divine, in their dayes, give us upon the consideration of this subject. It is necessary (say they) that man be altogether ignorant of true things, and beleeve many false.
Quum veritatem qua liberetur, inquirat; credatur ei expedite, quod fallitur.
Since they seeke the truth, whereby they may be free, let us beleeve it is expedient for them to be received.
Mans eye cannot perceive things but by the formes of his knowledge. And we remember not the downfall of miserable Phaeton, forsomuch as he undertooke to guide the reins of his fathers steeds with a mortall hand. Our minde doth still relapse into the same depth, and by her owne temeritie doth dissipate and bruise it selfe. If you enquire of Philosophy what matter the Sun is composed of, what will it answer? but of yron and stone, or other stuffe for his use. Demand of Zeno what Nature is? A fire (saith he), an Artist fit to engender and proceeding orderly. Archimedes, master of this Science, and who in truth and certaintie assumeth unto himselfe a precedencie above all others, saith the Sunne is a God of enflamed yron. Is not this a quaint imagination, produced by the inevitable necessitie of Geometricall demonstrations? Yet not so unavoidable and beneficiall, but Socrates hath beene of opinion that it sufficed to know so much of it as that a man might measure out the land he either demized or tooke to rent: and that Polyaenus, who therein had beene a famous and principall Doctor after he had tasted the sweet fruits of the lazie, idle and delicious gardens of Epicurus, did not contemne them as full of falsehood and apparent vanity. Socrates, in Xenophon, upon this point of Anaxagoras, allowed and esteemed of antiquitie, well seene and expert above all others in heavenly and divine matters, saith, that he weakened his braines much, as all men doe, who over nicely and greedily will search out those knowledges which hang not for their mowing nor pertaine unto them. When he would needs have the sunn to be a burning stone, he remembered not that stone doth not shine in the fire; and which is more, that it consumes therein. And when he made the Sunne and fire to be all one, he forgot that fire doth not tan and black those he looketh upon; that wee fixly looke upon the fire, and that fire consumeth and killeth all plants and herbs. According to the advice of Socrates and mine, 'The wisest judging of heaven is not to judge of it at all. Plato in his Timeus, being to speake of Daemons and spirits, saith it is an enterprise far exceeding my skill and ability: we must beleeve what those ancient forefathers hath said of them, who have said to have beene engendred by them. It is against reason not to give credit unto the children of the Gods, although their sayings be neither grounded upon necessary nor likely reasons, since they tell us that they speake of familiar and household matters.
Let us see whether we have a little more insight in the knowledge of humane and naturall things. Is it not a fond enterprise to those unto which, by our owne confession, our learning cannot possibly attaine, to devise and forge them another body, and of our owne invention to give them a false forme? as is seene in the planetary motions, unto which because our minde cannot reach, nor imagine their naturall conduct, we lend them something of ours, that is to say, materiall, grose, and corporall springs and wards:
----- temo aureus, aurea summae
Curvatura rota, radiorum argenteus ordo.
The Axe-tree gold, the wheeles whole circle gold,
The ranke of raies did all of silver hold.
Ovid, Metam. 1. ii. 107.
You would say, we have the Coach-makers, Carpenters, and Painters, who have gone up thither, and there have placed engines with diverse motions, and ranged the wheelings, the windings and enterlacements of the celestial bodies diapred in colours, according to Plato, about the spindle of necessity.
Mundus domus est maximna rerum,
Quam quinque altitonae fragmine zonae
Cingunt, per quam limbus pictus bis sex signis,
Stellimicantibus, altus, in obliquo aethere, Lunae Bigas acceptat.
The world, of things the greatest habitation,
Which five high-thundring Zones by separation
Engird, through which a scarfe depainted faire
With twice six signes star-shining in the aire.
Obliquely raisde, the waine
O' th' Moone doth entertaine.
They are all dreames, and mad follies. Why will not nature one day be pleased to open her bosome to us, and make us perfectly see the meanes and conduct of her motions, and enable our eyes to judge of them? Oh, good God, what abuses, and what distractions should we find in our poor understanding and weake knowledge! I am deceived if she hold one thing directly in its point, and I shall part hence more ignorant of all other things than mine ignorance. Have I not seene this divine saying in Plato, that Nature is nothing but an aenigmaticall poesie? As a man might say, an overshadowed and darke picture, enter-shining with an infinite varietie of false lights, to exercise our conjectures:
Latent ista omnia crassis occultata et circumfusa tenebris: ut nulla acies humani ingenii tanta sit, quae penetrare incaelum, terram intrare possit.
All these things lye hid so veiled and environed with misty darknesse, as no edge of man is so piersant as it can passe into heaven or dive into the earth.
Cicero, Acad. Qu. 1. iv.
And truly Philosophy is nothing else but a sophisticated poesie: whence have these ancient authors all their authorities but from poets? And the first were poets themselves, and in their art treated the same. Plato is but a loose poet. All high and more than humane sciences are decked and enrobed with a poeticall style. Even as women, when their naturall teeth faile them, use some of yuorie and in stead of a true beauties or lively colour, lay on some artificiall hew; and as they make trunk sleeves of wire, and whale-bone bodies, backes of lathes, and stiffe bombasted verdugals, and to the open-view 'of all men paint and embellish themselves with counterfeit and borrowed beauties; so doth learning (and our law hath, as some say, certaine lawfull fictions, on which it groundeth the truth of justice) which in liew of currant payment and presupposition, delivereth us those things, which she her selfe teacheth us to be meere inventions: for these Epicycles Excentriques, and Concentriques, which Astrology useth to direct the state and motions of her starres, she giveth them unto us, as the best she could ever invent, to fit and sute unto this subject: as in all things else, Philosophy presenteth unto us, not that which is or she beleeveth, but what she inventeth as having most apparence, likelihood, or comelinesse. Plato upon the discourse of our bodies estate and of that of beasts: that what we have said is true we would be assured of it had we but the confirmation of some oracle to confirme it. This only we warrant, that it is the likeliest we could say.
It is not to heaven alone that she sendeth her cordages, her engines, and her wheeles. Let us but somewhat consider what she saith of our selves and of our contexture.
There is no more retrogradation, trepidation, augmentation, recoyling, and violence in the starres and celestiall bodies than they have fained and devised in this, poor seeley little body of man. Verily they have thence had reason to name it Microcosmos, or little world, so many severall parts and visages have they imploied to fashion and frame the same. To accommodate the motions which they see in man, the divers functions and faculties that We feel in our selves. Into how many severall parts have they divided our soule? Into how many seats have they placed her? Into how many orders, stages, and stations have they divided this wretched man, beside the naturall and perceptible? and to how many distinct offices and vocations? They make a publike imaginarie thing of it. It is a subject which they hold and handle: they have all power granted them to rip him, to sever him, to range him, to join and reunite him together againe, and to stuffe him every one according to his fantasia; and yet they neither have nor possess him. They cannot so order or rule him, not in truth onely, but in imagination, but still some cadence or sound is discovered which escapeth their architecture, bad as it is, and botched together with a thousand false patches and fantasticall peeces. And they have no reason to be excused: for to painters when they pourtray the heaven, the earth, the seas, the hills, the scattered Ilands, we pardon them if they but represent us with some slight apparence of them; and as of things unknowne we are contented with such fained shadows. But when they draw us, or any other subject that is familiarly knowne unto us, to the life, then seeke we to draw from them a perfect and exact representation of their or our true lineaments or colours, and scorne if they misse never so little.
I commend the Milesian wench, who seeing Thales the Philosopher continually amusing himself in the contemplation of heavens wide-bounding vault, and ever holding his eyes aloft, laid something in his way to make him stumble, thereby to warne and put him in minde that he should not amuse his thoughts about matters above the clouds before he had provided for and well considered those at his feet. Verily she advised him well, and it better became him rather to looke to himselfe than to gaze on heaven; for, as Democritus by the mouth of Cicero saith,
Quod este ante pedes, nemo spectat; coli scrutantur plagas.
No man lookes what before his feet doth lie,
They seeke and search the climates of the skie.
Cicero, De Div. 1. ii.
But our condition beareth that the knowledge of what we touch with our hands and have amongst us, is as far from us and above the clouds as that of the stars. As saith Socrates in Plato, that one may justly say to him who medleth with Philosophy, as the woman said to Thales, which is, he seeth nothing of that which is before him. For every Philosopher is ignorant of what his neighbour doth; yea, he knowes not what himselfe doth, and wots not what both are, whether beasts or men. These people who thinke Sebondes reasons to be weake and lame, who know nothing themselves, and yet will take upon them to governe the world and know all:
Quae mare compescant causae, quid temperet annum,
Stellae sponte sua, jussaeve vagentur et errent:
Quid premat obscurae Lunae, quid proferat orbem,
Quid velit et possit rerum concordia discors.
What cause doth calm the Sea, what cleares the yeare,
Whether Stars force't, or of selfe-will appeares;
What makes the Moones darke Orbe to wax or wane,
What friendly fewd of things both will and can.
Horace, 1. i. Epist. xii. 16.
Did they never sound amid their books the difficulties that present themselves to them to know their owne being? We see very well that our finger stirreth and our foot moveth, that some parts of our body move of themselves without our leave, and other some that stirr but at our pleasure: and we see that certaine apprehensions engender a blushing-red colour, others a palenesse; that some imagination doth only worke in the milt, another in the braine; some one enduceth us to laugh, another causeth us to weep; some astonisheth and stupifieth all our senses, and staieth the motion of all our limbs; at some object the stomake riseth, and at some other the lower parts. But how a spirituall impression causeth or worketh such a dent or flaw in a massie and solid body or subject, and the nature of the conjoyning and compacting of these admirable springs and wards, man yet never knew:
Omnia incerta ratione, et in naturae majestate abdita.
All uncertaine in reason, and hid in the majesty of nature.
Saith Plinie and Saint Augustine:
Modus, quo corporibus adhaerent spiritus, omnino mirus est nec comprehendi ab homine potent, et hoc ipso homo est.
The meane is clearely wonderfull whereby spirits cleave to our bodies, nor can it be comprehended by man, and that is very man.
Augustine, De Spir. et Anim. De Civ. Dei, xxi. 10.
Yet is there no doubt made of him: for mens opinions are received after ancient beliefs by authority and upon credit; as if it were a religion and a law. What is commonly held of it, is received as a gibrish or fustian tongue. This trueth, with all her framing of arguments and proporcioning of proofes, is received as a firme and solid body which is no more shaken, which is no more judged. On the other side, every one the best he can patcheth up and comforteth this received beliefe with all the meanes his reason can afford him, which is an instrument very supple, pliable, and yeelding to all shapes. 'Thus is the world filled with toyes, and overwhelmed in lies and leasings. The reason that men doubt not much of things is that common impressions are never throughly tride and sifted, their ground is not sounded, nor where the fault and weaknes lieth. Men only debate and question of the branch, not of the tree: they aske not whether a thing be true, but whether it was understood or meant thus and thus. They enquire not whether Galen hath spoken any thing of worth, but whether thus, or so, or otherwise. Truly there was some reason this bridle or restraint of our judgements liberty, and this tyranny over our beliefs should extend it selfe even to schooles and arts. The God of scholasticall learning is Aristotle: It is religion to debate of his ordinances, as those of Lycurgus in Sparta. His doctrine is to us as a canon law, which peradventure is as false as another. I know not why I should or might not, as soone and as easie accept either Platoes Ideas, or Epicurus his atomes and indivisible things, or the fulnesse and emptines of Leucippus and Democritus, or the water of Thales, or Anaximanders infinite of nature, or the aire of Diogenes, or the numbers or proportion of Pythagoras, or the infinite of Parmenides, or the single-one of Musaeus, or the water and fire of Apollodorus, or the similarie and resembling parts of Anaxagoras, or the discord and concord of Empedocles, or the fire of Heraclitus, or an other opinion (of this infinit confusion of opinions an sentences which this goodly humane reason, by her certainty and clear-sighted vigilancie brings forth in whatsoever it medleth withal) as I should of Aristotle's conceit, touching this subject of the principles of naturall things, which he frameth of three parts; that is to say, matter, forme, and privation. And what greater vanitie can there be than to make inanitie it selfe the cause of the production of thingS? Privation is a negative: with what humour could he make it the cause and beginning of things that are? Yet durst no man move that but for an exercise of logike: wherein nothing is disputed to put it in doubt, but to defend the author of fhe schoole from strange objections. His authoritie is the marke beyond which it is not lawfull to enquire.
It is easie to frame what one list upon allowed foundations: for, according to the law and ordinance of this positive beginning, the other parts of the frame are easily directed without crack or danger. By which way we finde our reason well grounded, and we discourse without rub or let in the way: For our masters preoccupate and gains afore-hand as much place in our beleefe as they need to conclude afterward what they please, as geometricians doe by their graunted questions: the consent and approbation which we lend them, giving them wherewith to draw us, either on the right or left hand, and at their pleasure to winde and turne us. Whosoever is beleeved in his presuppositions, he is our master, and our God. He will lay the plot of his foundations so ample and easie, that, if he list, he will carrie us up, even unto the clouds. In this practice or negotiation of learning, we have taken the saying of Pythagoras for currant payment; which is, that every expert man ought to be bielieved in his owne trade. The logitian referreth himselfe to the grammarian for the Signification of words.. The rhetoritian borroweth the places of arguments from the logitian; the poet his measures from the musician; the geometrician his proportions from the arithmetician; the metaphisikes take the conjectures of the physikes for a ground, for every art hath her presupposed principles by which mans judgment is bridled on all parts. If you come to the shocke or front of this barre, in which consists the principall error, they immediately pronounce this sentence: that there is no disputing against such as deny principles. There can be no principles in men, except divinitie hath revealed them unto them: all the rest, both beginning, middle, and end, is but a dreame and a vapor. Those that argue by presupposition, we must presuppose against them the very same axiome which is disputed of. For, each humane presupposition, and every invention, unlesse reason make a difference of it, hath as much authoritie as another. So must they all be equally balanced, and first the generall and those that tyrannize us. A perswasion of certaintie is a manifest testimonie of foolishnesse, and of extreme uncertaintie. And no people are lesse philosophers and more foolish than Platoe's Philodoxes, or lovers of their owne opinions. We must know whether fire be hot, whether snow be white, whether, in our knowledge, there be anything hard or soft.
And touching the answers, whereof they tell old tales, as to him who made a doubt of heat, to whom one replied, that to trie he should caste himselfe into the fire; to him that denied the yce to be cold, that he should put some in his bosome; they are most unworthy the profession of a philosophers. If they had left us in our owne naturall estate, admitting of strange apparences as they present themselves unto us by our senses, and had suffered us to follow our naturall appetites, directed by the condition of our birth, they should then have reason to speak so. But from them it is that we have learnt to become judges of the world; it is from them we hold this conceit, that mans reason is the generall controuler of all that is, both without and within heavens-vault, which imbraceth all and can doe all, by meanes whereof all things are knowne and discerned. This answer were good among the canibals, who without any of Aristotles precepts, or so much as knowing the name of naturall philosophy, enjoy most happily a long, a quiet, and a peaceable life. This answer might haply availe more, and be of more force, than all those they can borrow from their reason and invention. All living creatures, yea, beasts and all, where the commandment of the naturall law is yet pure and simple, might with us be capable of this answer, but they have renounced it. They shall not need to tell me it is true, for you both heare and see it is so. They must tell me if what I thinke I feel, I feel the same in effect; and if I feel it, then let them tell me wherefore I feel it, and how and what. Let them tell me the name, the beginninly, the tennons, and the abuttings of heat and of cold, with the qualities of him that is agent, or of the patient: or let them quit me their profession, which is neither to admit nor approve anything by way of reason. It is their touchstone to try all kinds of essayes.
But surely it is a touchstone full of falsehood, errors, imperefection and weakenesse: which way can we better make triall of it than by it selfe? If she may not be credited speaking of her selfe, I hardly can she be fit to judge of strange matters. If she know anything, it can be but her being and domicile. She is in the soule, and either a part or effect of the same. For the true and essential reason (whose name we steal by false signes) lodgeth in Gods bosome. There is her home, and there is her retreat, thence she takes her flight when Gods pleasure is that we shall see some glimps of it: even as Pallas issued out of her fathers bead, to communicate and empart her selfe unto the world.
Now let us see what mans reason hath taught us of her selfe and of the soule: not of the soule in generall, whereof well nigh all philosophy maketh both the celestiall and first bodies partakers; not of that which Thales attributed even unto things that are reputed without soule or life, drawne thereunto by the consideration of the Adamant stone: but of that which appertaineth to us, and which we should know best.
Ignoratur enim qu&, sit natura animai,
Nata sit, an contra nascentibus insinuetur,
Et simul intereat nobiscum morte dirempta,
An tenebras orci visat, vastasque lacunas,
An pecudes alias divinitus insinuet se.
What the soules nature is, we doe not know:
If it be bred, or put in those are bred,
Whether by death divorst with us it goe,
Or see the darke vast lakes of hell below,
Or into other creatures turne the head.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. i. 113.
To Crates and Dicaearchus it seemed that there was none at all; but that the body stirred thus with and by a naturall motion: to Plato, that it was a substance moving of it selfe; to Thales, a Nature without rest; to Asclepiades, an exercitation of the senses; to Hesiodus and Anaximander, a thing composed of earth and water; to Parmenides; of earth and fire; to Empedocles, of blood:
Sanguineam vomit ille animant.
His soule of purple-bloud he vomits out.
Virgil, AEneid, 1. ix. 849.
To Possidoinus, Cleanthes, and Galen, a heat, or hot complexion:
Igneus est ollis vigor, et coelestis origo.
To Hyppocrates, a spirit dispersed thorow the body; to Varro, an air received in at the mouth, heated in the lungs, tempered in the heart, and dispersed thorow all parts of the body; to Zeno, the quintessence of the foure elements; to Heraclides Ponticus, the light; to Xenocrates and to the Egyptians, a moving number; to the Chaldeans, a vertue without any determinate forme.
------Habitum quemdam vitalem corporis esse, Harmoniam Gaeci quam dicunt.
There of the body is a vitall frame, The which the Greeks a harmony doe name.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 100.
And not forgetting Aristotle, that which naturally causeth the body to move, who calleth it Entelechy, or perfection moving of itselfe (as cold an invention as any other), for he neither speaketh of the essence, nor of the beginning nor of the soules nature, but onely noteth the effects of it: Lactantius, Seneca, and the better part amongst the Dogmatists, have confessed they never understood what it was: and after all this rable of opinions.
Harum sententiarum quae vera sit, Deus aliquis viderit.
Which of these opinions is true, let some God looke unto it.
Cicero, Tusc. Qu. 1. i. 2
Saith Cicero. I know by myselfe, quoth Saint Bernard, how God is incomprehensible, since I am not able to comprehend the parts of mine owne being: Heraclitus, who held that every place was full of Soules and Demons, maintained neverthelesse that a man could never goe so far towards the knowledge of the soule as that he could come unto it; so deep and mysterious was her essence. There is no lesse dissention nor disputing about the place where she should be seated. Hypocrates and Herophilus place it in the ventricle of the brain: Democritus and Aristotle, through all the body:
Ut bona scope valetudo cum dicitur esse
Corporis, et non est tanten haec pars ulla valentis.
As health is of the body said to be,
Yet is no part of him in health we see.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 103.
Epicurus in the stomacke.
Hic exultat enim pavor ac metus, haec loca circum
Laetitiae mulcent.
For in these places feare doth domineere,
And neere these places joy keepes merry cheere.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 142.
The Stoickes, within and about the heart; Erasistratus, joyning the membrane of the epicranium: Empedocles, in the bloud: as also Moses, which was the cause he forbade the eating of beasts bloud, unto which their soule is commixed: Galen thought that every part of the body had his soule: Strato hath placed it betweene the two upper eyelids:
Qua facie quidem sit animus aut ubi habitet, nec quaerendum quidem est.
We must not so much as enquire what face the minde beares, or where it dwells.
Cicero, Tusc. Qu. 1. i.
Saith Cicero. I am well pleased to let this man use his owne words: for why should I alter the speech of eloquence it selfe? since there is small gaine in stealing matter from his inventions: They are both little used, not very forcible, and little unknowne. But the reason why Chrysippus and those of his sect will prove the soule to be about the heart, is not to be forgotten. It is (saith he) because when we will affirme or swear anything, we lay our hand upon the stomacke; and when we will pronounce %@&, which signifieth my selfe, we put downe our chin towards the stomacke. This passage ought not to be past-over without noting the vanity of so great a personage: for, besides that his considerations are of themselves very slight, the latter proveth but to the Graecians that they have their soule in that place. No humane judgement is so vigilant or Argoesied, but sometimes shall fall asleep or slumber. What shall we feare to say? Bebold the, fathers of humane wisdome, who devise that the soule of man, overwhelmed with any ruine, laboureth and panteth a long time to get out, unable to free herselfe from that charge, even as a mouse taken in a trap. Some are of opinion that the world was made to give a body, in lieu of punishment, unto the spirits, which through their fault were fallen from the puritie wherein they were created: the first creation having been incorporeall. And that according as they have more or lesse removed themselves their spirituality, so are they more or lesse merily and giovally. or rudely and saturnally incorporated: whence proceedeth the infinite variety of so much matter created. But the spirit, who for his chastizement was invested wite bodie of the Sunne, must of necessitie have a very rare and particular measure of alteration.
The extremities of our curious search turne to a glimmering and all to a dazeling. As Plutarke saith of the off-spring of histories, that after the manner of cards or maps, the utmost limits of known countries are set downe to be full of thicke marrish grounds, shady forrests, desart and uncouth places. See here wherefore the grosest and most childish dotings are more commonly found in these which treat of highest and fnrthest matters; even confounding and overwhelming themselves in their own curiositie and presumption. The end and beginning of learning are equally accompted foolish. Marke but how Plato talketh and raiseth his flight aloft in his Poeticall clouds, or cloudy Poesies. Behold and read in him the gibbrish of the Gods. nbsp; But what dreamed or doted he on when he defined man to be a creature with two feet, and without feathers; giving them that were disposed to mocke at him a pleasant and scopefull occasion to doe it? For, having plucked-off the feathers of a live capon, they named him the man of Plato.
And by what simplicitie did the Epicureans first imagine that the Atomes or Motes, which they termed to be bodies, having some weight and a naturall moving downeward, had framed the world; untill such time as they were advised by their adversaries that by this description it was not possible they should joyne and take hold one of another; their fall being so downe-right and perpendicular, and every way engendring parallel lines? And therefore was it necessarie they should afterward adde a causall moving sideling unto them: And moreover to give their Atomes crooked and forked tailes, that so they might take hold of any thing and claspe themselves. And even then those that pursue them with this other consideration, doe they not much trouble them? If Atomes have by chance formed so many sorts of figures, why did they never meet together to frame a house or make a shooe? Why should we not likewise beleeve that an infinit number of Greek letters, confusedly scattered in some open place, might one day meet and joyne together to the contexture of the Iliads? That which is capable of reason (saith Zeno) is better than that which is not. There is nothing better than the world: then the world is capable of reason. By the same arguing Cotta maketh the world a Mathematician, and by this other arguing of Zeno, he makes him a Musitian and an Organist. The whole is more than the part: we are capable of wisdom, and we are part of the world: then the world is wise. There are infinit like examples seene, not only of false, but foolish arguments, which cannot hold, and which accuse their authors not so much of ignorance as of folly, in the reproaches that Philosophers charge one another with, about the disagreeings in their opinions and sects.
He that should fardle-up a bundle or huddle of the fooleries of mans wisdome, might recount wonders. I willingly assemble some (as a shew or patterns) by some means or byase, no lesse profitable than the most moderate instructions. Let us by that judge what we are to esteeme of man, of his sense, and of his reason; since in these great men, and who have raised mans sufficiencie so high, there are found so grose errors and so apparant defects.
As for me, I would rather beleeve that they have thus casually treated learning even as a sporting childs baby, and have sported themselves with reason, as of a vaine and frivolous instrument, setting forth all sorts of inventions, devices, and fantasies, sometimes more outstretched, and sometimes more loose. The same Plato, who defineth man like unto a Capon, saith elsewhere, after Socrates, that in good sooth he knoweth not what man is; and that of all parts of the world there is none so hard to be knowne. By this varietie of conceits and instabilitie of opinions, they, as it were, leade us closely by the hand to this resolution of their irresolution. They make a profession not alwayes to present their advice manifest and unmasked: they have oft concealed the same under the fabulous shadows of Poesie, and sometimes under other vizards. For our imperfection admitteth this also, that raw meats are not alwayes good for our stomacks: but they must be dried, altred, and corrupted, and so doe they who sometimes shadow their simple opinions and judgements; and that they may the better sute themselves unto common use, they many times falsifie them. They will not make open profession of ignorance, and of the imbecilitie of mans reason, because they will not make children afraid, but they manifestly declare the same unto us under the shew of a troubled Science and unconstant learning.
I perswaded somebody in Italy, who laboured very much to speak Italian, that always provided he desired but to be understood, and not to seek to excell others therein, he should onely imploy and use such words as came first to his month, whether they were Latine, French, Spanish, or Gascoine, and that adding the Italian terminations unto them, he should never misse to fall upon some idiome of the countrie, either Tuscan, Roman, Venetian, Piemontoise, or Neapolitan; and amongst so many severall formes of speech to take hold of one. The very same I say of Philosophy. She hath so many faces and so much varietie, and hath said so much, that all our dreames and devices are found in her. The fantasie of man can conceive or imagine nothing, be it good or evill, that is not to be found in her:
Nihil tam absurde dici potest, quod non dicatur ab aliquo Philosophorum.
Nothing may be spoken so absurdly, but that it is spoken by some of the Philosophers.
Cicero, Div. 1. ii.
And therefore doe I suffer my humours or caprices more freely to passe in publike; forasmuch as though they are borne with, and of me, and without any patterne, well I wot they will be found to have relation to some ancient humour, and some shall be found that will both know and tell whence and of whom I have borrowed them. My customes are naturall; when I contrived them, I called not for the helpe of any discipline: and weake and faint as they were, when I have had a desire to expresse them, and to make them appear to the world a little more comely and decent, I have somewhat endevoured to aid them with discourse, and assist them with examples, I have wondred at my selfe that by meere chance I have met with them, agreeing and sutable to so many ancient examples and Philosophicall discourses. What regiment my life was of, I never knew nor learned but after it was much worne, and spent. A new figure: an unpremeditated philosopher and a casuall.
But to returne unto our soule, where Plato hath seated reason in the braine; anger in the heart; lust in the liver; it is very likely that it was rather an interpretation of the soules motions than any division or separation he meant to make of it, as of a body into many members. And the likeliest of their opinion is that it is alwayes a soule, which by her rationall faculty remembreth her selfe, comprehendeth, judgeth, desireth, and exerciseth all her other functions by divers instruments of the body, as the pilote ruleth and directeth his ship according to the experience he hath of it; now stretching, haling, or loosing a cable, sometimes hoysing the mainyard, removing an oare, or stirring the rudder, causing severall effects with one only power; and that she abideth in the braine, appeareth by this, that the hurts and accidents which touch that part doe presently offend the faculties of the soule, whence she may without inconvenience descend and glide through other parts of the body:
----- medium non deserit unquam
Coeli Phoebus iter: radus tamen omnia lustrat.
Never the Sunne forsakes heav'ns middle wayes,
Yet with his rayesa he lights all, all survayes.
Claud. vi. Hons. Cons. Pan. 411,
As the sunne spreadeth his light, and infuseth his power from heaven, and therewith filleth the whole world.
Caetera pars animae per totum dissita corpus
Paret, et ad numen mentis nomenque movetur.
Th' other part of the soule through all the body sent
Obeyes, and moved is, by the mindes government.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 144.
Some have said that there was a generall soule, like unto a great body, from which all particular, soules were extracted, and returned thither; alwayes reconjoyning and entermingling themselves unto that universall matter:
-----Deum namque ire per omnes
Terrasque tractusque maris coelumque profundum:
Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum,
Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas,
Scilicet huc reddi deinde, ac resoluta referri
Omnia: nec morti esse locum.
For God through all the earth to passe is found,
Through all Sea currents, through the heav'n profound.
Here hence men, heards, and all wilde beasts that are,
Short life in birth each to themselves doe share.
All things resolved to this point restor'd
Returne, nor any place to death affoord.
Virgil, Georgics, 1. iv. 222.
Others, that they did but reconjoyne and fasten themselves to it againe: others, that they were produced by the divine substance: others, by the angels, of fire and aire: some from the beginning of the world, and some even at the time of need: others make them to descend from the round of the moone, and that they returne to it againe. The common sort of antiquities that they are begotten from father to sonne, after the same manner and production that all other naturall things are; arguing so by the resemblances which are betweene fathers and children.
Insullata patris virtus tibi,/2
Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis.
Of valiant Sires and good, There comes a valiant brood.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 766.
And that from fathers we see descend unto children, not only the marks of their bodies, but also a resemblance of humours, of complexions, and inclinations of the soule.
Denique cur acrum violentia triste Leonum
Seminum sequitur, dolus Vulpibus, et fuga Cervis
A patribus datur, et patrius pavor incitat Artus,
Si non certa suo quia semine seminioque
Vis animi pariter crescit cum corpore toto?
Why followes violence the savage Lyons race?
Why craft the Foxes? Why, to Deere to flye apace?
By parents is it given, when parents feare incites,
Unlesse because a certaine force of inward spirits
With all the body growes, As seed and seed-spring goes?
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 771.
That divine justice is grounded thereupon, punishing the fathers offences upon the children; forsomuch as the contagion of the fathers vices is in some sort printed in childrens soules, and that the misgovernment of their will toucheth them. Moreover, that if the soules came from any other place, then by a naturall consequence, and that out of the body they should have beene some other thing, they should have some remembrance of their first being: considering the naturall faculties which are proper unto him, to discourse, to reason, and to remember.
----- Si in corpus nascentibits insinuatur,
Cur super anteactam aetatem meminisse nequimus,
Nec vestigia gesta-um rerum ulla tenemus.
If our soule at our birth be in our body cast,
Why can we not remember ages over-past,
Nor any markes retaine of things done first or last?
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 692.
For, to make our soules condition to be of that worth we would, they must all be presupposed wise, even when they are in their naturall simplicitie and genuine puritie. So should they have beene such, being freed from the corporall prison, as well before they entred the same, as we hope they shall be when they shall be out of it. And it were necessarie they should (being yet in the body) remember the said knowledge (as Plato said) that what we learnt was but a new remembring of that which we had knowne before: a thing that any man may by experience maintaine to be false and erroneous. First, because we doe not precisely remember what we are tanght, and that if memorie did meerely execute her functions she would at least suggest us with something besides our learning. Secondly, what she knew being in her puritie, was a true understanding, knowing things as they are by her divine intelligence: whereas here, if she be instructed, she is made to receive lies and apprehend vice, wherein she cannot imploy her memorie; this image and conception having never had place in her. To say that the corporall prison doth so suppresse her naturall faculties, that they are altogether extinct in her: first, is cleane contrarie to this other beleefe, to knowledge her forces so great, and the operations which men in this transitorie life feel of it, so wonderfull, as to have thereby concluded this divinitie, and fore-past eternitie, and the immortalitie to come:
Nam si tantopere est animi mutata potestas,
Omnis ut actarum excident retinentia rerum,
Non ut opinor ea ab letho jam longior errat.
If of our minde the Power he so much altered,
As of things done all hold, all memorie is fled,
Then (as I guesse) it is not far from being dead.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 696.
Moreover, it is here with us, and no where else, that the soules powers and effects are to be considered; all the rest of her perfections are vaine and unprofitable unto her: it is by her present condition that all her immortalitie must be rewarded and paid, and she is only accomptable for the life of man: it were injustice to have abridged her of her meanes and faculties, and to have disarmed her against the time of her captivitie and prison, for her weaknesse and sicknesse, of the time and season where she had hectic forced and compelled to draw the judgement and condemnation of infinite and endlesse continuance, and to relye upon the consideration of so short a time, which is peradventure of one or two houres, or, if the worst happen, of an age (which have no more proportion with infinitie than a moment definitively to appoint and establish of all her being by that instant of space. It were an impious disproportion to wrest an eternall reward in consequence of so short a life. Plato, to save himselfe from this inconvenience, would have future payments limited to a hundred yeares continuance, relatively unto a humane continuance: and many of ours have given them temporall limits. By this they judged that her generation followed the common condition of humane things: as also her life, by the opinion of Epicurus and Democritus, which hath most been received; following these goodly apparences. That her birth was seene when the body was capable of her; her vertue and strength was perceived as the corporall encreased; in her infancie might her weaknesse he discerned, and in time her vigor and ripenesse, then her decay and age, and in the end her decrepitude.
------ gigni pariter cum corpore, et una
Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem.
The minde is with the body bred, we doe behold,
It jointly growes with it, with it it waxeth old.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 450.
They perceived her to be capable of diverse passions, and agitated by many languishing and painfull motions, wherethrough she fell into wearinesse and griefe, capable of alteration and change of joy, stupefaction, and languishment, subject to her infirmities, diseases, and offences, even as the stomacke or the foot;
------mentem sanari, corpus ut aegrum
Cernimus, et flecti medicine posse videmus.
We see as bodies sicke are cur'd, so is the minde,
We see, how Physicke can it each way turne and winde,
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 517.
dazled and troubled by the force of wine; removed from her seat by the vapors of a burning feaver; drowzie and sleepy by the application of some medicaments, and rouzed up againe by the vertue of some others.
------corpoream naturam animi esse necesse est,
Corporeis quoniam telis ictuque laborat.
The nature of the minde must needs corporeall bee,
For with corporeall darts and strokes it's griev'd we see.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 176.
She was seene to dismay and confound all her faculties by the only biting of a sicke dog, and to containe no great constancie of discourse, no sufficiencie, no vertue, no philosophicall resolution, no contention of her forces that might exempt her from the subjection of these accidents: the spittle or slavering of a mastive dog shed upon Socrates his hands, to trouble all his wisdome, to distemper his great and regular imagination, and so to vanquish and annull them that no signe or shew of his former knowledge was left in him:
----- vis animai
Conturbatur, et divisa seorsum
Disjectatur eodem illo distracta veneno.
The soules force is disturbed, separated,
Distraught by that same poison, alienated.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 501.
And the said venome to finde no more resistance in his soule than in that of a childe of foure yeares old, a venome able to make all Philosophy (were she incarnate) become furious and mad: so that Cato, who scorned both death and fortune, could not abide the sight of a looking glasse or of water; overcome with horrour, and quelled with amazement, if by the contagion of a mad dog he had fallen into that sicknesse which physitians call hydrophobia, or feare of waters.
----- vis morbi distracta per artus
Turbat aqens animam, spumantes aequore salso
Ventorum ut validis fervescunt viribus undae.
The force of the disease disperst through joints offends,
Driving the soule, as in salt Seas the wave ascends,
Foming by furious force which the wind raging lends.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 495.
Now, concerning this point. Philosophy hath indeed armed man for the endurng' of all other accidents, whether with patience, or if it be overcostly to be found, with an infallible defeat in conveying her selfe altogether from the sense: but they are meanes which
serve a soule that is her owne, and in her proper force capable of discourse and deliberation: not serving to this inconvenience wherewith a Philosopher, a soule becommeth the soule of a foole, troubled, vanquished and lost. Which divers occasions may produce, as in an over-violent agitation, which by some vehement passion the soule may beget in her selfe: or a hurt in some part of the body, or an exhalation from the stomacke, casting as into some astonishment, dazling, or giddinesse of the head:
------morbis in corporis avius errat
Saepe animus, dementit enim, delirague fatur,
Interdumque gravi -Lethargo fertur in altum
AEternumque soporem, oculis nutuque cadenti.
The mind in bodies sicknesse often wandring strayes;
For it enraged raves, and idle talk outbrayes;
Brought by sharpe Lethargy sometime to more than deepe,
While eyes and eye-lids fall into eternall sleepe.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 467.
Philosophers have, in mine opinion, but slightly harpt upon this string, no more than other of like consequence. They have ever this dilemma in their mouth to comfort our mortall condition: 'The soule is either mortall or immortall: if mortall, she shall be without paine: if immortall, she shall mend. They never touch the other branch: what if she empaire and be worse? and leave the menaces of future paines to Poets. But thereby they deal themselves a good game. These are two omissions which in their discourses doe often offer themselves unto me.
I come to the first againe: the soule loseth the use of that Stoicall chiefe felicitie, so constant and so firme. Our goodly wisdome must necessarily in this place yeelde her selfe and quit her weapons. As for other matters, they also considered by the vanitie of mans reason, that the admixture and societie of two so different parts as is the mortall and the immortall is unimaginable:
Quippe etenim mortale aeterno jungere, et una
Consentire putare, et fungi mutua posse,
Desipere est. Quid enim diversius esse putandum est,
Aut magis inter se disjuncture discrepitansque,
Quam mortale quod est, immortali atque perenni
Iunctum in concilio saevas tolerare procellas?
For what immortall is, mortall to joyne unto,
And thinke they caN agree, and mutual duties doe,
Is to be foolish: for what thinke we stranger is,
More disagreenble or more disjoyn'd than this,
That mortall with immortall endlesse joyn'd in union,
Can most outrageous stormes endure in their communion?
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 831.
Moreover they felt their soule to be engaged in death as well as the body.
------ simul aevo fessa fatiscit,
It faints in one,
Wearied as age is gone.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 463.
Which thing (according to Zeno) the image of sleep doth manifestly show unto us. For he esteemeth that it is a fainting and declination of the soule as well as of the body:
Contrahi animum, et quasi labi putat atque decidere.
He thinks the minde is contracted, and doth as it were slide and fall downe.
Cicero, Div. 1. ii. c. 58.
And that (which is perceived in some) its force and vigor maintaineth it selfe even in the end of life, they referred and imputed the same to the diversitie of diseases, as men are seene in that extremitie to maintaine some one sense and some another, some their hearing and some their smelling, without any alteration; and there is no weaknesse or decay seene so universall but some entire and vigorous parts will remaine.
Non alio pacto quam si pes cum dolet aegri,
In nullo caput interea sit forte dolore.
No otherwise than if, when sick-mans foote doth ake,
Meane time perhaps his head no fellow-feeling take.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii.
Our judgements sight referreth it selfe unto truth, as doth the owles eyes unto the shining of the sunne, as saith Aristotle. How should we better convince him than by so grosse blindnesse in so apparent a light? For the contrarie opinion of the soules immortalitie, which Cicero saith to have first beene brought in (at least by the testimonie of books) by Pherecydes Syrius in the time of King Tullus (others ascribe the invention thereof to Thales, and other to others) it is the part of humane knowledge treated most sparingly and with more doubt. The most constant Dogmatists (namely in this point) are enforced to cast themselves under the shelter of the Academikes wings. No man knowes what Aristotle hath established upon this subject no more than all the ancients in generall, who handle the same with a very wavering beliefe:
Rem gratissimam promittentium magis quam probantium.
Who rather promise than approve a thing most acceptable.
He hath hidden himself under the clouds of intricat and ambiguous words and unintelligible senses, and hath left his Sectaries as much cause to dispute upon his judgement as upon the matter.
Two things made this his opinion plausible to them: the one, that without the immortality of soules there should no meanes be left to ground or settle the vaine hopes of glorie a consideration of wonderfull credit in the world: the other (as Plato saith) that it is a most profitable impression, that vices, when they steal away from out the sight and knowledge of humane justice, remaine ever as a blancke before divine justice, which even after the death of the guilty will severely pursue them. Man is ever possessed with an extreme desire to prolong his being, and hath to the uttermost of his skill provided for it. Toombs and Monuments are for the preservation of his body, and glorie for the continuance of his name. He hath employed all his wit to frame him selfe anew (as impatient of his fortune) and to underprop or uphold himselfe by his inventions. The soule by reason of her trouble and imbecility, as unable to
subsist of her selfe, is ever and in all places questing and searching comforts, hopes, foundations and forraine circumstances, on which she may take hold and settle herselfe. And how light and fantasticall soever his invention doth frame them unto him, he notwithstanding relieth more surely upon them and more willingly than upon himself: But it is a wonder to see how the most obstinat in this so just and manifest perswasion of our spirits immortalitie have found themselves short and unable to establish the same by their humane forces.
Somnia sunt non docentis sed optantis.
These are dreames not of one that teacheth, but wisheth what he would have.
Said an ancient Writer. Man may by his owne testimonie know that the truth he alone discovereth, the same he oweth unto fortune and chance, since even when she is falne into his hands, he wanteth wherwith to lay hold on her and keepe her; and that this reason hath not the power to prevaile with it. All things produced by our owne discource and sufficiencie, as well true as false, are subject to uncertaintie and disputation. It is for the punishment of our temeritie and instruction of our miserie and incapacitie, that God caused the trouble, downefall and confusion of Babels Tower. Whatsoever we attempt without his assistance, whatever we see without the lampe of his grace, is but vanity and folly: With our weaknes we corrupt and adulterate the very essence of truth (which is uniforme and constant when fortune giveth us the possession of it. What course soever man taketh of himself, it is Gods permission that he ever commeth to that confusion whose image he so lively representeth unto us by the just punishment, wherewith he framed the presumptuous overweening of Nembroth, and brought to nothing the frivolous enterprises of the building of his high-towring Pvramis or Heaven-menacing tower.
Perdam sapientiam sapientium et prudentiam prudentium reprobabo.
I will destroy the wisdome of the wise, and reprove the providence of them that are most prudent.
The diversitie of tongues and languages wherewith he disturbed that worke and overthrew that proudly-raisd Pile; what else is it but this infinit altercation and perpetual discordance of opinions and reasons which accompanieth and entangleth the frivolous frame of mans learning, or vaine building of human science? Which he doth most profitably. Who might containe us, had we but one graine of knowledge? This Saint hath done me much pleasure:
Ipsa Veritatis occultatio, aut humilitatis exercitatio est, out elationis attritio.
The very concealing of the profit is either an exercise of humilitie or a beating downe of arrogancie.
Augustine, de Civ. Dei, xi. 22.
Unto what point of presumption and insolencie do we not carry our blindnesse and foolishnesse? But to returne to my purpose: Verily there was great reason that we should be beholding to God alone, and to the benefit of his grace, for the truth of so noble a beliefe, since from his liberalitie alone we receive the fruit of immortalitie, which consisteth in enjoying of eternall blessednesse. Let us ingenuously confesse that only God and Faith hath told it us: for it is no lesson of Nature, nor comming from our reason. And he that shall both within and without narrowly sift and curiously sound his being and his forces without this divine privilege, he that shall view and consider man without flattering him, shall nor finde nor see either efficacie or facultie in him that tasteth of any other thing but death and earth. The more we give, the more we owe: and the more we yeeld unto God, the more Christian-like doe we. That which the Stoike Philosopher said he held by the casuall consent of the peoples voice, had it not beene better he had held it of God?
Cum de animorum aeternitate disserimus, non leue momentum apud nos habet Consensus hominum, aut timentium inferos aut colentium. Vtor hac publica persuasione.
When we discourse of the immortalitie of soules, in my conceit the consent of those men is of no small authoritie, who either feare or adore the infernall powers.
Seneca, Epist. 117.
This publike persuasion I make use of. Now the weaknes of human arguments on this subject is very manifestly knowne by the fabulous circumstances they have added unto the traine of this opinion, to finde out what condition this our immortalitie was of. Let us omit the Stoickes.
Usuram nobis largiuntur, tanquam cornicibus: diu mansuros aiunt animos, semper, negant.
They grant us use of life, as is unto Ravens: they say our soules shall long continue, but they deny they shall last ever. Who gives unto soules a life beyond this but finite.
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 1. i.
The most universall and received fantasie, and which endureth to this day, hath beene that whereof Pythagoras is made Author, not that he was the first inventor of it, but because it received much force and credit by the authoritie of his approbation; which is, that soules, at their departure from us did but pass and roule from one to another body, from a Lyon to a Horse, from a Horse to a King, uncessantly wandring up and downe from House to Mansion. And himselfe said that he remembred to have been AEthalides, then Euphorbus, afterward Hermotimus, at last from Pyrrhus to have passed into Pythagoras; having memorie of himselfe the space of two hundred and six years: some added more, that the same soules doe sometimes ascend up to heaven and come downe againe:
O Pater anne aliquas ad coelum hinc ire putandum est
Sublimes animas, interumque ad tarda reverti
Corpora? Quae lucis miseris tam dira cupido?
Must we thinke (Father) some soules hence doe go,
Raised to heav'n, thence turne to bodies slow?
Whence doth so dyre desire of light on wretches grow?
Virgil, AEneid, 1. vi. 739.
Origen makes them eternally to go and come from a good to a bad estate. The opinion that Varro reporteth is, that in the revolution of foure hundred and forty yeares they reconjoyned themselves unto their first bodies. Chrysippus, that that must come to passe after a certaine space of time unknowne and not limited. Plato (who saith that he holds this opinion from Pindarus and from ancient Poesie) of infinite vicissitudes of alteration to which the soule is prepared, having no wearines nor rewards in the other world but temporall, as her life in this is but temporall, concludeth in her a singular knowledge of the affaires of Heaven, of Hell, and here below, where she hath passed, repassed, and sojourned in many voyages, a matter in his remembrance. Beholde her progresse elsewhere: he that hath lived well reconjoyneth himself unto that Star or Planet to which he is assigned: who evill, passeth into a woman: and if then he amend not himself, he trans-changeth himselfe into a beast of condition agreeing to his vicious customes, and shall never see an end of his punishments untill he returne to his naturall condition, and by virtue of reason he have deprived himselfe of those grose, stupide, and elementarie qualities that were in him. But I will not forget the objection which the Epicureans make unto this transmigration from one body to another: which is very pleasant. They demand what order there should be if the throng of the dying should be greater than that of such as be borne. For the soules removed from their abode would throng and strive together who should get the best seat in this new case: and demand besides what they would pass their time about, whilst they should stay untill any other mansion were made ready for them: Or contrary-wise, if more creatures were borne than should dye, they say bodies shall be in an ill taking, expecting the infusion of their soule, and it would come to passe that some of them should dye before they had ever been living.
Denique connubia ad veneris, partusque ferarunt,
Esse animas praesto deridiculum esse videtur,
Et spectare immortales mortalia membra
Innumero numero, certareque praeproperanter
Inter se, quae prima potissimaque insinuetur.
Lastly, ridiculous it is, soules should be prest
To Venus meetings, and begetting of a beast:
That they to mortall lims immortall be addrest
In number numberlesse, and over-hasty strive,
Which of them first and chiefe should get in there to live.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. iii. 802.
Others have staid the soule in the deceased bodies, therewith to animate serpents, wormes, and other beasts, which are said to engender from the corruption of our members, yea, and from our ashes: others divide it in two parts, one mortall, another immortall: others make it corporeall, and yet notwithstanding immortall: others make it immortall, without any science or knowledge. Nay, there are some of ours who have deemed that of condemned mens souls divels were made: as Plutarke thinks, that Gods are made of those soules which are saved: for there be few things that this author doth more resolutely averre then this; holding every where else an ambiguous and doubtfull kind of speech. It is to be imagined and firmlie believed (saith he) that the soules of men, vertuous both according unto nature and divine justice, become of Men, Saints, and of Saints, Demi-Gods, and after they are once perfectly, as in sacrifices of purgation, cleansed and purified being delivered from all possibility and mortalitie, become, of Demi-Gods (not by any civill ordinance, but in good truth, and according to manifest reason) perfect and very very Gods; receiving a most blessed and thrice glorious end. But whosoever shall see him who is notwithstanding one of the most sparing and moderate of that faction, so undantedly to skirmish, and will beare him relate his wonders upon this subject, him I refer to his discourse of the Moone, and of Socrates his Daemon; where as evidently as in any other place, may be averred that the mysteries of Philosophy have many strange conceits, common with those of Poesie; mans understanding losing it selfe once goes about to sound and controule all things to the utmost ende; as, tired and troubled by a long and wearisome course of our life, we returne to a kind of doting childhood. Note here the goodly and certaine instructions which concerning our soules-subject we drawe from humane knowledge.
There is no lesse rashnesse in that which shee teacheth us touching our corporall parts. Let us make choyce but of one or two examples, else should we lose our selves in this troublesome and vaste Ocean of Physicall errours. Let us know whether they agree but in this one, that is to say, of what matter men are derived and produced one from another. For, touching their first production, it is no marvell if in a thing so high and so ancient mans wit is troubled and confounded. Archelaus, the Physitian, to whom (as Aristoxenus affirmeth) Socrates was disciple and Minion, assevered that both men and beasts had beene made of milkie slime or mudde, expressed by the heate of the earth. Pythagoras saith that our seed is the scumme or froth of our best blood: Plato, the distilling of the marrow in the back-bone, which he argueth thus because that place feeleth first the wearinesse which followeth the generative businesse. Alcmaeon, a part of the braine substance, which to prove he saith their eyes are ever most troubled that over-intemperately addict themselves to that exercise. Democritus, a substance extracted from all parts of this corporall Masse. Epicurus, extracted from the last soule and the body. Aristotle, an excrement drawne from the nourishment of the blood, the last scattereth it selfe in our severall members; others, blood, concocted and digested by the heate of the genitories, which they judge because in the extreme, earnest, and forced labours, many shed drops of pure blood; wherein some appearance seemeth to be, if from so infinit a confusion any likelihood may be drawne. But to bring this seed to effect, how many contrary opinions make they of it? Aristotle and Democritus hold that women have no sperme, that it is but a sweate, which by reason of the pleasure and frication they cast forth, and availeth nothing in generation. Galen and his adherents contrariwise, affirme that there can be no generation except two seeds meete together. Behold the Physitians, the Philosophers, the Lawyers, and the Divines pell-mell together by the eares with our women about the question and disputation how long women beare their fruite in their wombe. And as for me, by mine owne example, I take their part that maintaine a woman may go eleven months with childe. The worlde is framed of this experience, there is no meane woman so simple that cannot give her censure upon all these contestations, although we could not agree.
This is sufficient to verifie that in the corporall part man is no more instructed of himselfe than in the spirituall. We have proposed himselfe to himselfe, and his reason to reason, to see what shee shall tell us of it. Mee thinkes I have sufficiently declared how little understanding shee hath of herselfe. And hee who hath no understanding of himselfe, what can he have understanding of?
Quasi vero mensuram ullius rei possit agere qui sui nesciat.
As though he could take measure of any thing that knowes not his owne measure.
Pliny, Nat. Hist. 1. ii. c. 1.
Truely Protagoras told us prettie tales, when hee makes a man the measure of all things, who never knew so much as his owne. If it be not hee, his dignitie will never suffer any other creature to have this advantage over him. Now he being so contrary in himselfe, and one judgement so uncessantly subverting another, this favorable proposition was but a jest, which induced us necessarily to conclude the nullity of the Compasse and the Compasser. When Thales judgeth the knowledge of man very hard unto man, he teacheth him the knowledge of all other things to be impossible unto him.
You for whom I have taken the paines to enlarge so long a worke (against my custome) will not shun to maintaine your Sebond with the ordinary forme of arguing, whereof you are daily instructed, and will therein exercise both your minde and study; for this last trick of sense must not be employed but as an extreme remedy. It is a desperate thrust, gainst which you must forsake your weapons, to force your adversary to renounce his, and a secret slight, which must seldome and very sparingly be put in practice. It is a great fond hardnesse to lose our selfe for the losse of another. A man must not be willing to die to revenge himselfe, as Gobrias was: who being close by the eares with a Lord of Persia, Darius chanced to come in with his sword in his hand, and fearing to strike for feare he should hurt Gobrias, he called unto him, and bade him smite boldly, although he should smite through both./1 I have heard armes and conditions of single combates being desperate, and in which he that offered them put not himselfe and his enemie in danger of an end inevitable to both, reproved as unjust, and condemned as unlawfull. The Portugais took once certaine Turkes prisoners in the Indian Seas, who, impatient of their capacity, resolved with themselves (and their resolution succeeded) by rubbing of Ship- nailes one against another, and causing sparkes of fire to fall amongst the barrels of powder (which lay not far from them) with intent to consume both themselves, their masters, and the ship. We but touch at the skirts, and glance at the last closings of the Sciences, wherein extremity, as well as in vertue, is vicious. Keepe your selves in the common path, it is not good to be so subtil and so curious. Remember what the Italian proverbe saith,
Chi troppo assottiglia, si scavezza.
Who makes himselfe too fine,
Doth break himselfe in fine.
Petr. p. i. canz. xiii. 48.
I perswade you, in your opinions and discourses, as much as in your customes, and in every other thing to use moderation and temperance, and avoide all newfangled inventions and strangenesse. All extravagant waies displease me. You, who by the authoritie and preheminence which your greatnesse hath laied upon you, and more by the advantages which the qualities that are most your owne, bestow on you, may with a nod command whom you please, should have laied this charge upon some one that had made profession of learning, who might otherwise have disposed and enriched this fantasie. Notwithstanding here you have enoughto supply your wants of it.
Epicurus said of the lawes that the worst were so necessary unto us, that without them men would enterdevour one another. And Plato verifieth that without lawes we should live like beasts. Our spirit is a vagabond, a dangerous and fond-hardy implement; it is very harde to joyne order and measure to it. In my time, such as have any rare excellency above others, or extraordinary vivacity, we see them almost all so lavish and unbridled in licence of opinions and manners, as it may be counted a wonder to find any one settled and sociable. There is great reason why the spirit of man should be so strictly embarred. In his study, as in all things else, he must have his steps numbered and ordered. The limits of his pursuite must be cut out by art. He is bridled and fettered with and by religions, lawes, customes, knowledge, precepts, paines, and recompences, both mortall and immortall; yet we see him, by meanes of his volubility and dissolution, escape all these bonds. It is a vaine body that hath no way about him to be seized on or cut off: a diverse and deformed body, on which neither knot nor hold may be fastened. Verily there are few soules so orderly, so constante and so well borne as may be trusted with their owne conduct, and may not with moderation, and without rashnes, faile in the liberty of their judgements beyond common opinions. It is more expedient to give some body the charge and tuition of them. The spirit is an outrageous glaive, yea even to his owne possessor, except he have the grace very orderly and discreetly to arme himselfe therewith. And there is no beast to whom one may more justly apply a blinding bord, to keepe her sight in and force her to her footing, and keepe from straying here and there, without the tracke which use and lawes trace her out. Therefore shall it be better for you to close and bound your selves in the accustomed path, however it be, than to take your flight to this unbridled licence. But if any one of these new doctors shall undertake to play the wise or ingenious before you, at the charge of his and your health: to rid you out of this dangerous plague, which daily more and more spreds it selfe in your Courts this preservative will in any extreame necessity, be a let, that the contagion of this venome shall neither offend you nor your assistance.