The Anatomy of Melancholy Part 14

_Appet.i.te_] This moving faculty is the other power of the sensitive soul, which causeth all those inward and outward animal motions in the body. It is divided into two faculties, the power of appet.i.te, and of moving from place to place. This of appet.i.te is threefold, so some will have it; natural, as it signifies any such inclination, as of a stone to fall downward, and such actions as retention, expulsion, which depend not on sense, but are vegetal, as the appet.i.te of meat and drink; hunger and thirst. Sensitive is common to men and brutes. Voluntary, the third, or intellective, which commands the other two in men, and is a curb unto them, or at least should be, but for the most part is captivated and overruled by them; and men are led like beasts by sense, giving reins to their concupiscence and several l.u.s.ts. For by this appet.i.te the soul is led or inclined to follow that good which the senses shall approve, or avoid that which they hold evil: his object being good or evil, the one he embraceth, the other he rejecteth; according to that aphorism, _Omnia appetunt bonum_, all things seek their own good, or at least seeming good. This power is inseparable from sense, for where sense is, there are likewise pleasure and pain. His organ is the same with the common sense, and is divided into two powers, or inclinations, concupiscible or irascible: or (as one [991]

translates it) coveting, anger invading, or impugning. Concupiscible covets always pleasant and delightsome things, and abhors that which is distasteful, harsh, and unpleasant. _Irascible, quasi [992] aversans per iram et odium_, as avoiding it with anger and indignation. All affections and perturbations arise out of these two fountains, which, although the stoics make light of, we hold natural, and not to be resisted. The good affections are caused by some object of the same nature; and if present, they procure joy, which dilates the heart, and preserves the body: if absent, they cause hope, love, desire, and concupiscence. The bad are simple or mixed: simple for some bad object present, as sorrow, which contracts the heart, macerates the soul, subverts the good estate of the body, hindering all the operations of it, causing melancholy, and many times death itself; or future, as fear. Out of these two arise those mixed affections and pa.s.sions of anger, which is a desire of revenge; hatred, which is inveterate anger; zeal, which is offended with him who hurts that he loves; and [Greek: epikairekakia], a compound affection of joy and hate, when we rejoice at other men's mischief, and are grieved at their prosperity; pride, self-love, emulation, envy, shame, &c., of which elsewhere.

_Moving from place to place_, is a faculty necessarily following the other.

For in vain were it otherwise to desire and to abhor, if we had not likewise power to prosecute or eschew, by moving the body from place to place: by this faculty therefore we locally move the body, or any part of it, and go from one place to another. To the better performance of which, three things are requisite: that which moves; by what it moves; that which is moved. That which moves, is either the efficient cause, or end. The end is the object, which is desired or eschewed; as in a dog to catch a hare, &c. The efficient cause in man is reason, or his subordinate phantasy, which apprehends good or bad objects: in brutes imagination alone, which moves the appet.i.te, the appet.i.te this faculty, which by an admirable league of nature, and by meditation of the spirit, commands the organ by which it moves: and that consists of nerves, muscles, cords, dispersed through the whole body, contracted and relaxed as the spirits will, which move the muscles, or [993]nerves in the midst of them, and draw the cord, and so _per consequens_ the joint, to the place intended. That which is moved, is the body or some member apt to move. The motion of the body is divers, as going, running, leaping, dancing, sitting, and such like, referred to the predicament of _situs_. Worms creep, birds fly, fishes swim; and so of parts, the chief of which is respiration or breathing, and is thus performed. The outward air is drawn in by the vocal artery, and sent by mediation of the midriff to the lungs, which, dilating themselves as a pair of bellows, reciprocally fetch it in, and send it out to the heart to cool it; and from thence now being hot, convey it again, still taking in fresh.

Such a like motion is that of the pulse, of which, because many have written whole books, I will say nothing.

SUBSECT. IX.--_Of the Rational Soul._

In the precedent subsections I have anatomised those inferior faculties of the soul; the rational remaineth, "a pleasant, but a doubtful subject" (as [994]one terms it), and with the like brevity to be discussed. Many erroneous opinions are about the essence and original of it; whether it be fire, as Zeno held; harmony, as Aristoxenus; number, as Xenocrates; whether it be organical, or inorganical; seated in the brain, heart or blood; mortal or immortal; how it comes into the body. Some hold that it is _ex traduce_, as _Phil. 1. de Anima_, Tertullian, Lactantius _de opific. Dei, cap. 19._ Hugo, _lib. de Spiritu et Anima_, Vincentius Bellavic. _spec.

natural. lib. 23. cap. 2. et 11._ Hippocrates, Avicenna, and many [995]

late writers; that one man begets another, body and soul; or as a candle from a candle, to be produced from the seed: otherwise, say they, a man begets but half a man, and is worse than a beast that begets both matter and form; and, besides, the three faculties of the soul must be together infused, which is most absurd as they hold, because in beasts they are begot, the two inferior I mean, and may not be well separated in men. [996]

Galen supposeth the soul _crasin esse_, to be the temperature itself; Trismegistus, Musaeus, Orpheus, Homer, Pindarus, Phaerecides Syrus, Epictetus, with the Chaldees and Egyptians, affirmed the soul to be immortal, as did those British [997]Druids of old. The [998]Pythagoreans defend Metempsychosis; and Palingenesia, that souls go from one body to another, _epota prius Lethes unda_, as men into wolves, bears, dogs, hogs, as they were inclined in their lives, or partic.i.p.ated in conditions:

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

[1000]Lucian's c.o.c.k was first Euphorbus, a captain:

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

a horse, a man, a sponge. [1001]Julian the Apostate thought Alexander's soul was descended into his body: Plato in Timaeo, and in his Phaedon, (for aught I can perceive,) differs not much from this opinion, that it was from G.o.d at first, and knew all, but being enclosed in the body, it forgets, and learns anew, which he calls _reminiscentia_, or recalling, and that it was put into the body for a punishment; and thence it goes into a beast's, or man's, as appears by his pleasant fiction _de sort.i.tione animarum, lib. 10.

de rep._ and after [1002]ten thousand years is to return into the former body again,

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

Others deny the immortality of it, which Pomponatus of Padua decided out of Aristotle not long since, Plinias Avunculus, _cap. 1. lib. 2, et lib. 7.

cap. 55_; Seneca, _lib. 7. epist. ad Lucilium, epist. 55_; Dicearchus _in Tull. Tusc._ Epicurus, Aratus, Hippocrates, Galen, Lucretius, _lib. 1._

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

Averroes, and I know not how many Neoterics. [1005]"This question of the immortality of the soul, is diversely and wonderfully impugned and disputed, especially among the Italians of late," saith Jab. Colerus, _lib.

de immort. animae, cap. 1._ The popes themselves have doubted of it: Leo Decimus, that Epicurean pope, as [1006]some record of him, caused this question to be discussed pro and con before him, and concluded at last, as a profane and atheistical moderator, with that verse of Cornelius Gallus, Et redit in nihilum, quod fuit ante nihil. It began of nothing, and in nothing it ends. Zeno and his Stoics, as [1007]Austin quotes him, supposed the soul so long to continue, till the body was fully putrified, and resolved into _materia prima_: but after that, _in fumos evanescere_, to be extinguished and vanished; and in the meantime, whilst the body was consuming, it wandered all abroad, _et e longinquo multa annunciare_, and (as that Clazomenian Hermotimus averred) saw pretty visions, and suffered I know not what. [1008]Errant exangues sine corpore et ossibus umbrae. Others grant the immortality thereof, but they make many fabulous fictions in the meantime of it, after the departure from the body: like Plato's Elysian fields, and that Turkey paradise. The souls of good men they deified; the bad (saith [1009]Austin) became devils, as they supposed; with many such absurd tenets, which he hath confuted. Hierome, Austin, and other Fathers of the church, hold that the soul is immortal, created of nothing, and so infused into the child or embryo in his mother's womb, six months after the [1010]conception; not as those of brutes, which are _ex traduce_, and dying with them vanish into nothing. To whose divine treatises, and to the Scriptures themselves, I rejourn all such atheistical spirits, as Tully did Atticus, doubting of this point, to Plato's Phaedon. Or if they desire philosophical proofs and demonstrations, I refer them to Niphus, Nic.

Faventinus' tracts of this subject. To Fran. and John Picus _in digress: sup. 3. de Anima_, Tholosa.n.u.s, Eugubinus, To. Soto, Canas, Thomas, Peresius, Dandinus, Colerus, to that elaborate tract in Zanchius, to Tolet's Sixty Reasons, and Lessius' Twenty-two Arguments, to prove the immortality of the soul. Campanella, _lib. de sensu rerum_, is large in the same discourse, Albertinus the Schoolman, Jacob. Nactantus, _tom. 2. op._ handleth it in four questions, Antony Brunus, Aonius Palearius, Marinus Marcennus, with many others. This reasonable soul, which Austin calls a spiritual substance moving itself, is defined by philosophers to be "the first substantial act of a natural, humane, organical body, by which a man lives, perceives, and understands, freely doing all things, and with election." Out of which definition we may gather, that this rational soul includes the powers, and performs the duties of the two other, which are contained in it, and all three faculties make one soul, which is inorganical of itself, although it be in all parts, and incorporeal, using their organs, and working by them. It is divided into two chief parts, differing in office only, not in essence. The understanding, which is the rational power apprehending; the will, which is the rational power moving: to which two, all the other rational powers are subject and reduced.

SUBSECT. X.--_Of the Understanding_.

"Understanding is a power of the soul, [1011]by which we perceive, know, remember, and judge as well singulars, as universals, having certain innate notices or beginnings of arts, a reflecting action, by which it judgeth of his own doings, and examines them." Out of this definition (besides his chief office, which is to apprehend, judge all that he performs, without the help of any instruments or organs) three differences appear betwixt a man and a beast. As first, the sense only comprehends singularities, the understanding universalities. Secondly, the sense hath no innate notions.

Thirdly, brutes cannot reflect upon themselves. Bees indeed make neat and curious works, and many other creatures besides; but when they have done, they cannot judge of them. His object is G.o.d, _ens_, all nature, and whatsoever is to be understood: which successively it apprehends. The object first moving the understanding, is some sensible thing; after by discoursing, the mind finds out the corporeal substance, and from thence the spiritual. His actions (some say) are apprehension, composition, division, discoursing, reasoning, memory, which some include in invention, and judgment. The common divisions are of the understanding, agent, and patient; speculative, and practical; in habit, or in act; simple, or compound. The agent is that which is called the wit of man, ac.u.men or subtlety, sharpness of invention, when he doth invent of himself without a teacher, or learns anew, which abstracts those intelligible species from the phantasy, and transfers them to the pa.s.sive understanding, [1012]

"because there is nothing in the understanding, which was not first in the sense." That which the imagination hath taken from the sense, this agent judgeth of, whether it be true or false; and being so judged he commits it to the pa.s.sible to be kept. The agent is a doctor or teacher, the pa.s.sive a scholar; and his office is to keep and further judge of such things as are committed to his charge; as a bare and rased table at first, capable of all forms and notions. Now these notions are twofold, actions or habits: actions, by which we take notions of, and perceive things; habits, which are durable lights and notions, which we may use when we will. Some reckon up eight kinds of them, sense, experience, intelligence, faith, suspicion, error, opinion, science; to which are added art, prudency, wisdom: as also [1013]synteresis, _dictamen rationis_, conscience; so that in all there be fourteen species of the understanding, of which some are innate, as the three last mentioned; the other are gotten by doctrine, learning, and use.

Plato will have all to be innate: Aristotle reckons up but five intellectual habits; two practical, as prudency, whose end is to practise; to fabricate; wisdom to comprehend the use and experiments of all notions and habits whatsoever. Which division of Aristotle (if it be considered aright) is all one with the precedent; for three being innate, and five acquisite, the rest are improper, imperfect, and in a more strict examination excluded. Of all these I should more amply dilate, but my subject will not permit. Three of them I will only point at, as more necessary to my following discourse.

Synteresis, or the purer part of the conscience, is an innate habit, and doth signify "a conversation of the knowledge of the law of G.o.d and Nature, to know good or evil." And (as our divines hold) it is rather in the understanding than in the will. This makes the major proposition in a practical syllogism. The _dictamen rationis_ is that which doth admonish us to do good or evil, and is the minor in the syllogism. The conscience is that which approves good or evil, justifying or condemning our actions, and is the conclusion of the syllogism: as in that familiar example of Regulus the Roman, taken prisoner by the Carthaginians, and suffered to go to Rome, on that condition he should return again, or pay so much for his ransom.

The synteresis proposeth the question; his word, oath, promise, is to be religiously kept, although to his enemy, and that by the law of nature.

[1014]"Do not that to another which thou wouldst not have done to thyself."

Dictamen applies it to him, and dictates this or the like: Regulus, thou wouldst not another man should falsify his oath, or break promise with thee: conscience concludes, therefore, Regulus, thou dost well to perform thy promise, and oughtest to keep thine oath. More of this in Religious Melancholy.

SUBSECT. XI.--_Of the Will_.

Will is the other power of the rational soul, [1015]"which covets or avoids such things as have been before judged and apprehended by the understanding." If good, it approves; if evil, it abhors it: so that his object is either good or evil. Aristotle calls this our rational appet.i.te; for as, in the sensitive, we are moved to good or bad by our appet.i.te, ruled and directed by sense; so in this we are carried by reason. Besides, the sensitive appet.i.te hath a particular object, good or bad; this an universal, immaterial: that respects only things delectable and pleasant; this honest. Again, they differ in liberty. The sensual appet.i.te seeing an object, if it be a convenient good, cannot but desire it; if evil, avoid it: but this is free in his essence, [1016]"much now depraved, obscured, and fallen from his first perfection; yet in some of his operations still free," as to go, walk, move at his pleasure, and to choose whether it will do or not do, steal or not steal. Otherwise, in vain were laws, deliberations, exhortations, counsels, precepts, rewards, promises, threats and punishments: and G.o.d should be the author of sin. But in [1017]

spiritual things we will no good, p.r.o.ne to evil (except we be regenerate, and led by the Spirit), we are egged on by our natural concupiscence, and there is [Greek: ataxia], a confusion in our powers, [1018]"our whole will is averse from G.o.d and his law," not in natural things only, as to eat and drink, l.u.s.t, to which we are led headlong by our temperature and inordinate appet.i.te,

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

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

The actions of the will are _velle_ and _nolle_, to will and nill: which two words comprehend all, and they are good or bad, accordingly as they are directed, and some of them freely performed by himself; although the stoics absolutely deny it, and will have all things inevitably done by destiny, imposing a fatal necessity upon us, which we may not resist; yet we say that our will is free in respect of us, and things contingent, howsoever in respect of G.o.d's determinate counsel, they are inevitable and necessary.

Some other actions of the will are performed by the inferior powers, which obey him, as the sensitive and moving appet.i.te; as to open our eyes, to go hither and thither, not to touch a book, to speak fair or foul: but this appet.i.te is many times rebellious in us, and will not be contained within the lists of sobriety and temperance. It was (as I said) once well agreeing with reason, and there was an excellent consent and harmony between them, but that is now dissolved, they often jar, reason is overborne by pa.s.sion: _Fertur equis auriga, nec audit currus habenas_, as so many wild horses run away with a chariot, and will not be curbed. We know many times what is good, but will not do it, as she said,

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

l.u.s.t counsels one thing, reason another, there is a new reluctancy in men.

[1022]_Odi, nec possum, cupiens non esse, quod odi_. We cannot resist, but as Phaedra confessed to her nurse, [1023]_quae loqueris, vera sunt, sed furor suggerit sequi pejora_: she said well and true, she did acknowledge it, but headstrong pa.s.sion and fury made her to do that which was opposite.

So David knew the filthiness of his fact, what a loathsome, foul, crying sin adultery was, yet notwithstanding he would commit murder, and take away another man's wife, enforced against reason, religion, to follow his appet.i.te.

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

MEMB. III.

SUBSECT. I.--_Definition of Melancholy, Name, Difference_.

Having thus briefly anatomised the body and soul of man, as a preparative to the rest; I may now freely proceed to treat of my intended object, to most men's capacity; and after many ambages, perspicuously define what this melancholy is, show his name and differences. The name is imposed from the matter, and disease denominated from the material cause: as Bruel observes, [Greek: Melancholia] quasi [Greek: Melainacholae], from black choler. And whether it be a cause or an effect, a disease or symptom, let Donatus Altomarus and Salvia.n.u.s decide; I will not contend about it. It hath several descriptions, notations, and definitions. [1024]Fracastorius, in his second book of intellect, calls those melancholy, "whom abundance of that same depraved humour of black choler hath so misaffected, that they become mad thence, and dote in most things, or in all, belonging to election, will, or other manifest operations of the understanding." [1025]

Melanelius out of Galen, Ruffus, Aetius, describe it to be "a bad and peevish disease, which makes men degenerate into beasts:" Galen, "a privation or infection of the middle cell of the head," &c. defining it from the part affected, which [1026]Hercules de Saxonia approves, _lib. 1.

cap. 16._ calling it "a depravation of the princ.i.p.al function:" Fuschius, _lib. 1. cap. 23._ Arnoldus _Breviar. lib. 1. cap. 18._ Guianerius, and others: "By reason of black choler," Paulus adds. Halyabbas simply calls it a "commotion of the mind." Aretaeus, [1027]"a perpetual anguish of the soul, fastened on one thing, without an ague;" which definition of his, Mercurialis _de affect. cap. lib. 1. cap. 10._ taxeth: but Aelia.n.u.s Montaltus defends, _lib. de morb. cap. 1. de Melan._ for sufficient and good. The common sort define it to be "a kind of dotage without a fever, having for his ordinary companions, fear and sadness, without any apparent occasion." So doth Laurentius, _cap. 4._ Piso. _lib. 1. cap. 43._ Donatus Altomarus, _cap. 7. art. medic_. Jacchinus, _in com. in lib. 9. Rhasis ad Almansor, cap. 15._ Valesius, _exerc. 17._ Fuschius, _inst.i.tut. 3. sec. 1.

c. 11._ &c. which common definition, howsoever approved by most, [1028]Hercules de Saxonia will not allow of, nor David Crucius, _Theat.

morb. Herm. lib. 2. cap. 6._ he holds it insufficient: as [1029]rather showing what it is not, than what it is: as omitting the specific difference, the phantasy and brain: but I descend to particulars. The _summum genus_ is "dotage, or anguish of the mind," saith Aretaeus; "of the princ.i.p.al parts," Hercules de Saxonia adds, to distinguish it from cramp and palsy, and such diseases as belong to the outward sense and motions [depraved] [1030]to distinguish it from folly and madness (which Montaltus makes _angor animi_, to separate) in which those functions are not depraved, but rather abolished; [without an ague] is added by all, to sever it from frenzy, and that melancholy which is in a pestilent fever. (Fear and sorrow) make it differ from madness: [without a cause] is lastly inserted, to specify it from all other ordinary pa.s.sions of [fear and sorrow.] We properly call that dotage, as [1031]Laurentius interprets it, "when some one princ.i.p.al faculty of the mind, as imagination, or reason, is corrupted, as all melancholy persons have." It is without a fever, because the humour is most part cold and dry, contrary to putrefaction. Fear and sorrow are the true characters and inseparable companions of most melancholy, not all, as Her. de Saxonia, _Tract. de posthumo de Melancholia, cap. 2._ well excepts; for to some it is most pleasant, as to such as laugh most part; some are bold again, and free from all manner of fear and grief, as hereafter shall be declared.

SUBSECT. II.--_Of the part affected. Affection. Parties affected_.

Some difference I find amongst writers, about the princ.i.p.al part affected in this disease, whether it be the brain, or heart, or some other member.

Most are of opinion that it is the brain: for being a kind of dotage, it cannot otherwise be but that the brain must be affected, as a similar part, be it by [1032]consent or essence, not in his ventricles, or any obstructions in them, for then it would be an apoplexy, or epilepsy, as [1033]Laurentius well observes, but in a cold, dry distemperature of it in his substance, which is corrupt and become too cold, or too dry, or else too hot, as in madmen, and such as are inclined to it: and this [1034]

Hippocrates confirms, Galen, the Arabians, and most of our new writers.

Marcus de Oddis (in a consultation of his, quoted by [1035]Hildesheim) and five others there cited are of the contrary part; because fear and sorrow, which are pa.s.sions, be seated in the heart. But this objection is sufficiently answered by [1036]Montaltus, who doth not deny that the heart is affected (as [1037]Melanelius proves out of Galen) by reason of his vicinity, and so is the midriff and many other parts. They do _compati_, and have a fellow feeling by the law of nature: but forasmuch as this malady is caused by precedent imagination, with the appet.i.te, to whom spirits obey, and are subject to those princ.i.p.al parts, the brain must needs primarily be misaffected, as the seat of reason; and then the heart, as the seat of affection. [1038]Capivaccius and Mercurialis have copiously discussed this question, and both conclude the subject is the inner brain, and from thence it is communicated to the heart and other inferior parts, which sympathise and are much troubled, especially when it comes by consent, and is caused by reason of the stomach, or _mirach_, as the Arabians term it, whole body, liver, or [1039]spleen, which are seldom free, pylorus, mesaraic veins, &c. For our body is like a clock, if one wheel be amiss, all the rest are disordered; the whole fabric suffers: with such admirable art and harmony is a man composed, such excellent proportion, as Ludovicus Vives in his Fable of Man hath elegantly declared.

As many doubts almost arise about the [1040]affection, whether it be imagination or reason alone, or both, Hercules de Saxonia proves it out of Galen, Aetius, and Altomarus, that the sole fault is in [1041]imagination.

Bruel is of the same mind: Montaltus in his _2 cap._ of Melancholy confutes this tenet of theirs, and ill.u.s.trates the contrary by many examples: as of him that thought himself a sh.e.l.lfish, of a nun, and of a desperate monk that would not be persuaded but that he was d.a.m.ned; reason was in fault as well as imagination, which did not correct this error: they make away themselves oftentimes, and suppose many absurd and ridiculous things. Why doth not reason detect the fallacy, settle and persuade, if she be free?

[1042]Avicenna therefore holds both corrupt, to whom most Arabians subscribe. The same is maintained by [1043]Areteus, [1044]Gorgonius, Guianerius, &c. To end the controversy, no man doubts of imagination, but that it is hurt and misaffected here; for the other I determine with [1045]

Albertinus Bottonus, a doctor of Padua, that it is first in "imagination, and afterwards in reason; if the disease be inveterate, or as it is more or less of continuance;" but by accident, as [1046]Herc. de Saxonia adds; "faith, opinion, discourse, ratiocination, are all accidentally depraved by the default of imagination."

_Parties affected_.] To the part affected, I may here add the parties, which shall be more opportunely spoken of elsewhere, now only signified.

Such as have the moon, Saturn, Mercury misaffected in their genitures, such as live in over cold or over hot climes: such as are born of melancholy parents; as offend in those six non-natural things, are black, or of a high sanguine complexion, [1047]that have little heads, that have a hot heart, moist brain, hot liver and cold stomach, have been long sick: such as are solitary by nature, great students, given to much contemplation, lead a life out of action, are most subject to melancholy. Of s.e.xes both, but men more often; yet [1048]women misaffected are far more violent, and grievously troubled. Of seasons of the year, the autumn is most melancholy.

Of peculiar times: old age, from which natural melancholy is almost an inseparable accident; but this artificial malady is more frequent in such as are of a [1049]middle age. Some a.s.sign 40 years, Gariopontus 30.

Jubertus excepts neither young nor old from this advent.i.tious. Daniel Sennertus involves all of all sorts, out of common experience, [1050]_in omnibus omnino corporibus cujuscunque const.i.tutionis dominatar_. Aetius and Aretius [1051]ascribe into the number "not only [1052]discontented, pa.s.sionate, and miserable persons, swarthy, black; but such as are most merry and pleasant, scoffers, and high coloured." "Generally," saith Rhasis, [1053]"the finest wits and most generous spirits, are before other obnoxious to it;" I cannot except any complexion, any condition, s.e.x, or age, but [1054]fools and stoics, which, according to [1055]Synesius, are never troubled with any manner of pa.s.sion, but as Anacreon's _cicada, sine sanguine et dolore; similes fere diis sunt_. Erasmus vindicates fools from this melancholy catalogue, because they have most part moist brains and light hearts; [1056]they are free from ambition, envy, shame and fear; they are neither troubled in conscience, nor macerated with cares, to which our whole life is most subject.

SUBSECT. III.--_Of the Matter of Melancholy_.