LXXVII. But the most common accusation of all, is that which charges the weather as the cause of our disorders. He who commits no excesses, and cannot assign any other cause for his being out of order, lays the blame upon the weather, and even he who does commit them, to avoid criminating himself, lays the blame on the weather also; which be it hot, moist, dry, variable, or settled, people are never at a loss to find out some pretence whereon to ground the accusation. If in July, as is customary at that season, we find it very hot, we say the heat is the cause of our disorders; but if the weather at that time happens to be more benign and temperate than usual, they still lay the blame upon it, alledging that such a temperature of air is not natural to the season. The same sort of charge is brought against the cold in winter, whether it is intense or moderate. If at that time of the year, the weather is variable, there is scarce any one who does not find fault with it; neither is it exempted from blame if it is settled, for then they say that change of weather is indispensably necessary to our constitutions; and that any kind of weather which lasts a long while is hostile to them; that long cold occasions constipations, long heat dissolves and weakens us, long wet suffocates us, and that long drought burns us up and consumes us. LXXVIII. I have often remarked, that all our misfortunes are imputed to two common enemies: our spiritual ones to the Devil, and our bodily ones to the weather. There is scarce any one, who, in order to extenuate his own guilt, does not say, he was tempted by the Devil to commit the crime he has been guilty of. He is as irrational who thinks, that if there was no Devil to tempt us, we should never sin, as he is who thinks, that if the weather was regulated in a most perfect form and order, we should never be sick. Within ourselves, and in the very essence of our being, lies the origin of all our ills, both spiritual and temporal; and our nature is swayed by its own weight, towards both the one and the other evil; although we can never be led into the first without our own consent; but the other species, may frequently be brought on us against our will. SECT. XVII. LXXIX. The third error committed in making experimental observations, although it is not so common as the two first, is pretty often incurred. If he for example, who on account of his having used some violent exercise, drinks small liquors to excess, and afterwards finds himself feverish, imputes his being so, as is very frequently the case, to his having drank such liquids to excess; the generality of men, seldom reflecting upon any excesses, but those of the appetite; but with all this, violent exercise is much more likely to inflame the blood, and disturb the humours, than drinking to excess of small liquids, and therefore it would be much more rational, to impute the fever to the violence of the exercise, than to drinking small liquids to excess.