So many fine things as he told me, gave me the curiosity to question him about his Birth and Death; if in the Country of the Sun, the _individual_ was procreated by the ways of Generation, and if it died by the dissolution of its Constitution, or the discomposure of its Organs? "Your senses," replied he, "bear but too little proportion to the Explication of these Mysteries: Ye Gentlemen imagine, that whatsoever you cannot comprehend is spiritual, or that it is not at all; but that Consequence[22] is absurd, and it is an argument, that there are a Million of things, perhaps, in the Universe, that would require a Million of different Organs in you to understand them. For instance, I by my Senses know the cause of the Sympathy that is betwixt the Load-stone and the Pole, of the ebbing and flowing of the Sea, and what becomes of the Animal after Death; you cannot reach these high Conceptions but by Faith, because they are Secrets above the power of your Intellects; no more than a Blind-man can judge of the beauties of a Land-skip, the Colours of a Picture, or the streaks of a Rainbow; or at best he will fancy them to be somewhat palpable, to be like Eating, a Sound, or a pleasant Smell: Even so, should I attempt to explain to you what I perceive by the Senses which you want, you would represent it to your self as somewhat that may be Heard, Seen, Felt, Smelt or Tasted, and yet it is no such thing." He was gone on so far in his Discourse, when my Juggler perceived, that the Company began to be weary of my Gibberish, that they understood not, and which they took to be an inarticulated Grunting: He therefore fell to pulling my Rope afresh to make me leap and skip, till the Spectators having had their Belly-fulls of Laughing, affirmed that I had almost as much Wit as the Beasts of their Country, and so broke up. [1] Astonishment. [2] Mobile = people, populace. _Cf_. p. 145. (Search: start p. 145: "... there he entertained me till Suppertime...") [3] Lemures; malicious spirits of the dead. _Cf_. Milton: "The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint." [4] Lars, larvas; ghosts, spectres. [5] Lamias; female demons or vampires. [6] _Cf_. p. 12 (Search: start p. 12: "... Accident, Providence, Fortune, or what...") [7] "Jerome Cardan pretended to have written most of his books under the dictation of a Familiar Spirit ... but, in his treatise _De Rerum Varietate_, he ingenuously declares that he had never had any other genius but his own: _Ego certe nullum dæmonem aut genium mihi adesse cognosce_" (Note of Paul Lacroix.) [8] Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, 1486-1535, philosopher, astrologer, and alchemist. Cyrano introduces him in his _Lettre XII_., "Pour les Sorciers." [9] Jean Trithème (or Johann Tritheim), Abbot of Spanheim; a man of universal scholarship, and an experimenter in alchemy; also accused of sorcery. [10] César de Nostradamus, physician and astrologer of the early sixteenth century.