Melancholy

Signaturists have somewhat advanced it; who seldom omitting what Ancients delivered; drawing into inference received distinction of sex, not willing to examine its humane resemblance; and placing it in the form of strange and magical simples, have made men suspect there was more therein, then ordinary practice allowed; and so became apt to embrace whatever they heard or read conformable unto such conceptions. Lastly, The conceit promoteth it self: for concerning an effect whose trial must cost so dear, it fortifies it self in that invention; and few there are whose experiment it need to fear. For (what is most contemptible) although not only the reason of any head, but experience of every hand may well convict it, yet will it not by divers be rejected; for prepossessed heads will ever doubt it, and timorous beliefs will never dare to trie it. So these Traditions how low and ridiculous soever, will find suspition in some, doubt in others, and serve as tests or trials of Melancholy and superstitious tempers for ever. [Sidenote: _That Cinamon, Ginger, Clove, etc., are not of the same tree._]

CHAPTER VII Of some Insects, and the properties of several Plants. 1. Few ears have escaped the noise of the Dead-watch, that is, the little clickling sound heard often in many rooms, somewhat resembling that of a Watch; and this is conceived to be of an evil omen or prediction of some persons death: wherein notwithstanding there is nothing of rational presage or just cause of terrour unto melancholy and meticulous heads. For this noise is made by a little sheath-winged gray Insect found often in Wainscot, Benches, and Wood-work, in the Summer. We have taken many thereof, and kept them in thin boxes, wherein I have heard and seen them work and knack with a little _proboscis_ or trunk against the side of the box, like _Apicus Martius_, or Woodpecker against a tree. It worketh best in warm weather, and for the most part giveth not over under nine or eleven stroaks at a time. He that could extinguish the terrifying apprehensions hereof, might prevent the passions of the heart, and many cold sweats in Grandmothers and Nurses, who in the sickness of children, are so startled with these noises.

It is not agreeable to the constitution of this Animal, nor can we so reasonably conceive there wants a Gall: that is, the hot and fiery humour in a body so hot of temper, which Phlegm or Melancholy could not effect. [SN: Salubrium, 31°] Now of what complexion it is, _Julius Alexandrinus_ declareth, when he affirmeth that some upon the use thereof, have fallen into Feavers and Quinsies. The temper of their Dung and intestinal Excretions do also confirm the same; which Topically applied become a _Phænigmus_ or Rubifying Medicine, and are of such fiery parts, that as we read in _Galen_, they have of themselves conceived fire, and burnt a house about them. And therefore when in the famine of _Samaria_ (wherein the fourth part of a Cab of Pigeons dung was sold for five pieces of silver,) it is delivered by _Josephus_, that men made use hereof in stead of common Salt: although the exposition seem strange, it is more probable then many other. For that it containeth very much Salt, as beside the effects before expressed, is discernable by taste, and the earth of Columbaries or Dove-houses, so much desired in the artifice of Salt-petre.

keyboard_return Back to content * 8.59 Inward bleeding, Flux, Vo∣miting, Ruptures, Jaundice, keyboard_return Back to content * 8.60 Venemous Beasts. keyboard_return Back to content * 8.61 Ulcers, keyboard_return Back to content * 8.62 Abortion, Worms, Diabites, keyboard_return Back to content * 8.63 Running of the Reins. keyboard_return Back to content * 8.64 Wounds, keyboard_return Back to content * 8.65 Bleeding, keyboard_return Back to content * 8.66 Matrix, keyboard_return Back to content * 8.67 Terms stops, keyboard_return Back to content * 8.68 Tooth-ach, keyboard_return Back to content * 8.69 Head. keyboard_return Back to content * 8.70 Cankers, keyboard_return Back to content * 8.71 Gums, In∣flamations Almonds of the Ears. keyboard_return Back to content * 8.72 Peslilence, Wounds, Nervs. hurt. keyboard_return Back to content * 8.73 Ulcers, Sores, Quinsie, Wounds, Flux, Bloodyflux Spitting Bloud, Gravel, Stone, Secrets. keyboard_return Back to content * 8.74 Poyson, Venemous Beasts. fundament Piles, keyboard_return Back to content * 8.75 Terms stops, keyboard_return Back to content * 8.76 Feavers, Head, Eyes, Itch, Scab∣by Heads. keyboard_return Back to content * 8.77 Reds and Whites in Women. keyboard_return Back to content * 8.78 Feavers, Pestilence, Poyson, Venemous Beasts. Milk in Nurses. Melancholy, Ill Bloud,

The history of science teaches us the difficulties that have opposed the progress of this active spirit of inquiry. Inaccurate and imperfect observations have led, by false inductions, to the great number of physical views that have been perpetuated as popular prejudices among all classes of society. Thus by the side of a solid and scientific knowledge of natural phenomena there has been preserved a system of the pretended p 38 results of observation, which is so much the more difficult to shake, as it denies the validity of the facts by which it may be refuted. This empiricism, the melancholy heritage transmitted to us from former times, invariably contends for the truth of its axioms with the arrogance of a narrow-minded spirit. Physical philosophy, on the other hand, when based upon science, doubts because it seeks to investigate, distinguishes between that which is certain and that which is merely probable, and strives incessantly to perfect theory by extending the circle of observation.

Digitized by Google MINERAL EVOLUTION Creator and creature, God and man, are undis- tinguishable one from the other. And Nature in her earliest or fluid beginnings does but exactly symbolize this indistinction. All things are then chaotically blent. Confusion reigns: that is to say, there exists a sensible fusing together and indistinction of all forms of individuality, of all forms of life or consciousness, under strictly uni- versal forms. And the entire scope of what we call history is to reduce this chaos to order, to lift up this sobbing and prostrate universe into beautiful and joyous and individual form, to train this mute and melancholy and boundless nature into the free and glorified lineaments of human personality or character.

a pallid face in prayer to God lest some hideous calamity engulf his fairest hopes. Few persons have maintained their natural naiveU and candour so unbronzed by contact with the world, as this great and hearty Thackeray, this huge, yet child- like, man; but if the secret bosom of men were canvassed, there would be none found who does not profoundly sympathize with him. We are all of us without real selfhood, without the selfhood which comes from God alone. We have only the shewy and fallacious one which inflows from the spiritual world, and which is wholly inadequate to guarantee us against calamity. We shiver in every breeze, and stand aghast at every cloud that passes over the sun. When our worthless ships (which we ought to be ashamed of building, which we ought in fact to hang our shipmasters for building) go down at sea, what shrieks we hear from blanched and frenzied lips peopling the melancholy main, perturbing the sombre and sympathetic air, for months afterwards ! When our children die, and take back to heaven the brimming innocence which our corrupt manhood feels no use for, and there- fore knows not how to shelter ; when our friends drop off ; when our property exhales ; when our reason totters on its throne, and menaces us with a downfall ; who then is strong ? Who, in fact, if he were left in these cases for a moment to him- self, that is, if he were not steadied in his own despite by the mere life of routine and tradition.

cause with constitution. It is only the philoso- pher who is speculatively aux abois that ever finds himself drifting at this helpless and melancholy rate. In practice one never dreams of asking a cause for things^ for fixed existence, but only for the observed vicissitudes to which they are liable. Things we suppose to be created not caused. Phenomena^ that is, the mutations to which things are subject inwardly and out- wardly, we claim to be caused not created. Things have an absolute existence to sense, and never suggest the conception which is implie4 in all causation, that they exist for the sake of something else than themselves. The origin of things, or of finite existence, is a question of pure Philosophy, not of science, all whose attention goes to ascertaining the purely logical relations of unity and variety which characterize finite existence to our apprehension, and noting the purely phenomenal modifications to which its forms are incidentally and accidentally exposed The vulgar designation of the creator as a cause (the First cause) is owing exclusively to this inveterate habit among philosophers, of reducing questions of pure Philosophy (such for example, as the origin of existence) to ques* tions of science, to the extent of envisaging creation itself at last as a mere event in space and time. The question of creation which is a question not about any event in space and time, but about the origin of space and time them- selves, is a purely philosophic question, wholly insoluble by any scientific acumen, and disdain* >

Clearly then Kant was as treacherous to sdi- ence as he was to Philosophy, as disloyal to reason as he was to Revelation, in making the objective sphere of human life fall outside of man's subjectivity or below it, rather than with- in or above it He systematically identified the realm of the not-me with nature instead of God: or if he allowed it any pertinency to the latter designation, it could only be by divesting God meanwhile of every spiritual attribute, and pos- tulating Him as a purely natural existence sep- arated from man by the totality of space and time, or the integrality of nature. It is as in- structive as it is melancholy to observe how the whole current of subsequent philosophic, or rather logical, speculation in Germany reflected the unhappy scientific bias Kant had thus im- pressed upon it, by hastening to precipitate itself into the fatal embraces of Pantheism. For of course if, not negligently but on principle, you exteriorate object to subject, being to seem- ing, substance to form, you necessarily exalt the minor element of thought to the unchallenged primacy of its major element, and consequently end by identifying man with- Deity. Fichte accordingly in accepting without examination the ICantian analysis of knowledge, found him-

God's spiritual perfection ! To think hereupon what a stupid dreary thing the human soul is reduced to after it has undergone scientific manipulation, and been run into a mere pruritus of the senses ! Ham let the play with Hamlet the person left out is noth ing in comparison. The melancholy thing in this case is — not that one's bread of life becomes mere unleavened dough, for one can exist well enough, if bare existence contents him, on unleavened bread ; but that any considerable number of men should be so lacking in the sentiment of infinitude within their proper nature, as willingly to make sense, in which all animals are superior to them, the sovereign arbiter of truth in intellectual things ! I beg however that you will not think that it seems to me vitally important in what sense the existing battle between religious faith and science is settled. Neither party is contending for the interests of the living God, so spiritually active at present within the precincts of human nature, but only and at best for those of some traditional deity now deceased; the deity, for example, of orthodox ecclesiastical culture. The worship of this time-and-space deity at this day, and especially in this land, where human nature is vindicating with startling emphasis and iteration its immaculate Divine dignity against all manner of finite private or personal pretension in men, seems to me a