part do) he trouble or hurt himself, and get in conclusion more harm
than good. I advise them therefore warily to peruse that tract, Lapides
loquitur (so said [175]Agrippa de occ. Phil.) et caveant lectores ne
cerebrum iis excutiat. The rest I doubt not they may securely read, and
to their benefit. But I am over-tedious, I proceed.
Of the necessity and generality of this which I have said, if any man
doubt, I shall desire him to make a brief survey of the world, as [176]
Cyprian adviseth Donat, supposing himself to be transported to the top
of some high mountain, and thence to behold the tumults and chances of
this wavering world, he cannot choose but either laugh at, or pity it.
S. Hierom out of a strong imagination, being in the wilderness,
conceived with himself, that he then saw them dancing in Rome; and if
thou shalt either conceive, or climb to see, thou shalt soon perceive
that all the world is mad, that it is melancholy, dotes; that it is
(which Epichthonius Cosmopolites expressed not many years since in a
map) made like a fool's head (with that motto, Caput helleboro dignum)
a crazed head, cavea stultorum, a fool's paradise, or as Apollonius, a
common prison of gulls, cheaters, flatterers, &c. and needs to be
reformed. Strabo in the ninth book of his geography, compares Greece to
the picture of a man, which comparison of his, Nic. Gerbelius in his
exposition of Sophianus' map, approves; the breast lies open from those
Acroceraunian hills in Epirus, to the Sunian promontory in Attica;
Pagae and Magaera are the two shoulders; that Isthmus of Corinth the
neck; and Peloponnesus the head. If this allusion hold, 'tis sure a mad
head; Morea may be Moria; and to speak what I think, the inhabitants of
modern Greece swerve as much from reason and true religion at this day,
as that Morea doth from the picture of a man. Examine the rest in like
sort, and you shall find that kingdoms and provinces are melancholy,
cities and families, all creatures, vegetal, sensible, and rational,
that all sorts, sects, ages, conditions, are out of tune, as in Cebes'
table, omnes errorem bibunt, before they come into the world, they are
intoxicated by error's cup, from the highest to the lowest have need of
physic, and those particular actions in [177]Seneca, where father and
son prove one another mad, may be general; Porcius Latro shall plead
against us all. For indeed who is not a fool, melancholy, mad?—[178]
Qui nil molitur inepte, who is not brain-sick? Folly, melancholy,
madness, are but one disease, Delirium is a common name to all.
Alexander, Gordonius, Jason Pratensis, Savanarola, Guianerius,
Montaltus, confound them as differing secundum magis et minus; so doth
David, Psal. xxxvii. 5. I said unto the fools, deal not so madly, and
'twas an old Stoical paradox, omnes stultos insanire, [179]all fools
are mad, though some madder than others. And who is not a fool, who is
free from melancholy? Who is not touched more or less in habit or
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