13. A diet which is very exact and precisely according to rule puts one’s body both in fear and danger; it hinders the gallantry of our soul itself, makes it suspicious of every thing or of having to do with any thing, no less in pleasures than in labors; so that it dares not undertake any thing boldly and courageously. We ought to do by our body as by the sail of a ship in fair and clear weather:—we must not contract it and draw it in too much, nor be too remiss or negligent about it when we have any suspicion upon us, but give it some allowance and make it pliable (as we have said), and not wait for crudities and diarrhoeas, or heat or drowsiness, by which some, as by messengers and apparitors, are frighted and moderate themselves when a fever is at hand; but we must long beforehand guard against the storm, as if the north wind blew at sea. 14. It is absurd, as Democritus says, by the croaking of ravens, the crowing of a cock, or the wallowing of a sow in the mire, carefully to observe the signs of windy or rainy weather, and not to prevent and guard ourselves against the motions and fluctuations of our bodies or the indication of a distemper, nor to understand the signs of a storm which is just ready to break forth within ourselves. So that we are not only to observe our bodies as to meat and exercise, whether they use them more sluggishly or unwillingly than they were wont; or whether we be more thirsty and hungry than we use to be; but we are also to take care as to our sleep, whether it be continued and easy, or whether it be irregular and convulsive. For absurd dreams and irregular and unusual fantasies show either abundance or thickness of humors, or else a disturbance of the spirits within. For the motions of the soul show that the body is nigh a distemper. For there are despondencies of mind and fears that are without reason or any apparent cause, which extinguish our hopes on a sudden. Some there are that are sharp and prone to anger, whom a little thing makes sad; and these cry and are in great trouble when ill vapors and fumes meet together and (as Plato says) are intermingled in the ways and passages of the soul. Wherefore those to whom such things happen must consider and remember, that even if there be nothing spiritual, there is some bodily cause which needs to be brought away and purged.