confession that passions unguided are for the most part mere mad

ness.

The opinions of the world, both in ancient and later ages, concerning the cause of madness have been two. Some deriving them from the passions; some from demons, or spirits, either good or bad, which they thought might enter into a man, possess him, and move his organs in such strange and uncouth manner as madmen use to do. The former sort, therefore, called such men madmen; but the latter called them sometimes 'demoniacs,' that is, possessed with spirits; sometimes energumeni, that is, agitated or moved with spirits; and now in Italy they are called not only pazzi, madmen, but also spiritati, men possessed.

There was once a great conflux of people in Abdera, a city of the Greeks, at the acting of the tragedy of Andromeda upon an extreme hot day; whereupon a great many of the spectators falling into fevers had this accident from the heat and from the tragedy together, that they did nothing but pronounce iambics, with the names of Perseus and Andromeda; which, together with the fever, was cured by the coming on of winter; and this madness was thought to proceed from the passion imprinted by the tragedy. Likewise there reigned a fit of madness in another Grecian city, which seized only the young maidens, and caused many of them to hang themselves. This was by most then thought an act of the devil. But one that suspected that contempt of life in them might proceed from some passion of the mind, and supposing that they did not contemn also their honour, gave counsel to the magistrates to strip such as so hanged themselves, and let them hang out naked. This, the story says, cured that madness. But, on the other side, the same Grecians did often ascribe madness to the operation of Eumenides, or Furies; and sometimes of Ceres, Phoebus, and other gods; so much did men attribute to phantasms as to think them aërial living bodies, and generally to call them spirits. And as the Romans in this held the same opinion with the Greeks, so also did the Jews, for they called madmen prophets, or, according as they thought the spirits good or bad, demoniacs; and some of them called both prophets and demoniacs madmen; and some called the same man both demoniac and madman. But for the Gentiles it is no wonder, because diseases and health, vices and

virtues, and many natural accidents, were with them termed and worshipped as demons. So that a man was to understand by demon as well sometimes an ague as a devil. But for the Jews to have such opinion is somewhat strange. For neither Moses nor Abraham pretended to prophesy by possession of a spirit; but from the voice of God, or by a vision or dream; nor is there anything in his law, moral or ceremonial, by which they were taught there was any such enthusiasm or any possession. When God is said (Numb. xi. 25) to take from the spirit that was in Moses, and give to the seventy elders, the Spirit of God (taking it for the substance of God) is not divided. The Scriptures by the Spirit of God in man mean a man's spirit, inclined to godliness. And where it is said (Exod. xxviii. 3) ‘whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom to make garments for Aaron' is not meant a spirit put into them that can make garments, but the wisdom of their own spirits in that kind of work. In the like sense, the spirit of man, when it produceth unclean actions, is ordinarily called an unclean spirit, and so other spirits, though not always, yet as often as the virtue or vice so styled is extraordinary and eminent. Neither did the other prophets of the Old Testament pretend enthusiasm, or that God spake in them, but to them, by voice, vision, or dream; and the 'burthen of the Lord' was not possession, but command. How then could the Jews fall into this opinion of possession? I can imagine no reason but that which is common to all men, namely the want of curiosity to search natural causes, and their placing felicity in the acquisition of the gross pleasures of the senses and the things that most immediately conduce thereto. For they that see any strange and unusual ability or defect in a man's mind, unless they see withal from what cause it may probably proceed, can hardly think it natural; and, if not natural, they must needs think it supernatural; and then what can it be but that either God or the devil is in him? And hence it came to pass, when our Saviour (Mark iii, 21) was compassed about with the multitude, those of the house doubted He was mad, and went out to hold Him; but the Scribes said He had Beelzebub, and that was it by which He cast out devils; as if the greater madman had awed the lesser; and that (John x, 20) some said 'He hath a devil, and is mad,' whereas others holding Him

for a prophet said 'these are not the words of one that hath a devil.' So in the Old Testament he that came to anoint Jehu (2 Kings ix, 11) was a prophet; but some of the company asked Jehu 'what came that madman for'? So that in sum it is manifest that whosoever behaved himself in extraordinary manner was thought by the Jews to be possessed either with a good or evil spirit, except by the Sadducees, who erred so far on the other hand as not to believe there were at all any spirits, which is very near to direct atheism; and thereby perhaps the more provoked others to term such men demoniacs rather than madmen.

But why then does our Saviour proceed in the curing of them, as if they were possessed, and not as if they were mad? To which I can give no other kind of answer but that which is given to those that urge the Scripture in like manner against the opinion of the motion of the earth. The Scripture was written to show unto men the kingdom of God, and to prepare their minds to become his obedient subjects, leaving the world, and the philosophy thereof to the disputation of men, for the exercising of their natural reason. Whether the earth's or sun's motion make the day and night, or whether the exorbitant action of men proceed from passion or from the devil, so we worship him not, it is all one, as to our obedience and subjection to God Almighty; which is the thing for which the Scripture was written. As for that our Saviour speaketh to the disease as to a person, it is the usual phrase of all that cure by words only, as Christ did and enchanters pretend to do, whether they speak to a devil or not. For is not Christ also said (Matt. viii, 26) to have rebuked the winds? Is not He said also (Luke iv, 39) to rebuke a fever? Yet this does not argue that a fever is a devil. And whereas many of the devils are said to confess Christ, it is not necessary to interpret those places otherwise than that those madmen confessed Him. And whereas our Saviour (Matt. xii, 43) speaketh of an unclean spirit, that having gone out of a man wandereth through dry places, seeking rest and finding none, and returning into the same man with seven other spirits worse than himself, it is manifestly a parable alluding to a man that after a little endeavour to quit his lusts is vanquished by the strength of them, and becomes seven

times worse than he was. So that I see nothing at all in the Scripture that requireth a belief that demoniacs were any other thing but madmen.

There is yet another fault in the discourses of some men, which may also be numbered amongst the sorts of madness, namely that abuse of words, whereof I have spoken before in the fifth chapter, by the name of absurdity. And that is when men speak such words as, put together, have in them no signification at all, but are fallen upon by some, through misunderstanding of the words they have received and repeat by rote, by others from intention to deceive by obscurity. And this is incident to none but those that converse in questions of matters incomprehensible, as the schoolmen, or in questions of abstruse philosophy. The common sort of men seldom speak insignificantly, and are therefore by those other egregious persons counted idiots. But, to be assured their words are without anything correspondent to them in the mind, there would need some examples, which if any man require, let him take a schoolman in his hands and see if he can translate any one chapter concerning any difficult point, as the Trinity, the Deity, the nature of Christ, transubstantiation, free-will, etc., into any of the modern tongues, so as to make the same intelligible, or into any tolerable Latin, such as they were acquainted withal, that lived when the Latin tongue was vulgar. What is the meaning of these words: "The first cause does not necessarily inflow anything into the second, by force of the essential subordination of the second causes, by which it may help it to work?' They are the translation of the title of the sixth chapter of Suarez, first book, Of the Concourse, Motion, and Help of God. When men write whole volumes of such stuff, are they not mad, or intend to make others so? And particularly in the question of transubstantiation, where, after certain words spoken, they that say the whiteness, roundness, magnitude, quality, corruptibility, all which are incorporeal, etc., go out of the wafer into the body of our blessed Saviour, do they not make those 'nesses,' 'tudes,' and 'ties' to be so many spirits possessing his body? For by spirits they mean always things that, being incorporeal, are nevertheless movable from one place to another. So that this kind of absurdity may rightly be numbered amongst the many sorts of madness, and all the time that guided by

clear thoughts of their worldly lust they forbear disputing or writing thus, but lucid intervals. And thus much of the virtues and defects intellectual.

CHAPTER IX

OF THE SEVERAL SUBJECTS OF Knowledge

THERE are of 'knowledge' two kinds, whereof one is 'knowledge of fact,' the other 'knowledge of the consequence of one affirmation to another.' The former is nothing else but sense and memory, and is 'absolute knowledge,' as when we see a fact doing or remember it done; and this is the knowledge required in a witness. The latter is called 'science,' and is 'conditional,' as when we know that if the figure shown be a circle, then any straight line through the centre shall divide it into two equal parts.' And this is the knowledge required in a philosopher, that is to say of him that pretends to reasoning.

The register of 'knowledge of fact' is called 'history,' whereof there be two sorts: one called 'natural history,' which is the history of such facts or effects of Nature as have no dependence on man's 'will,' such as are the histories of 'metals,' 'plants,' ‘animals,' 'regions,' and the like. The other is 'civil history,' which is the history of the voluntary actions of men in commonwealths.

The registers of science are such 'books,' as contain the 'demonstrations' of consequences of one affirmation to another, and are commonly called 'books of philosophy,' whereof the sorts are many, according to the diversity of the matter, and may be divided in such manner as I have divided them in the following table (pp. 360–361).

CHAPTER X

OF POWER, WORTH, DIGNITY, HONOUR, AND WORTHINESS

THE 'power of a man,' to take it universally, is his present means, to obtain some future apparent good; and is either 'original' or 'instrumental.'

'Natural power' is the eminence of the faculties of body or mind,