OF THE WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS

I.
CASSANDRA;
OR PLAINNESS OF SPEECH.

THEY say that Cassandra was beloved by Apollo; that she contrived by various artifices to elude his desires, and yet to keep his hopes alive until she had drawn from him the gift of divination: that she had no sooner obtained this, which had all along been her object, than she openly rejected his suit; whereupon he, not being permitted to recal the boon once rashly promised, yet burning with revenge, and not choosing to be the scorn of an artful woman, annexed to it this penalty,—that though she should always foretell true, yet nobody should believe her. Her prophecies therefore had truth, but not credit: and so she found it ever after, even in regard to the destruction of her country; of which she had given many warnings, but could get nobody to listen to her or believe her.

This fable seems to have been devised in reproof of unreasonable and unprofitable liberty in giving advice and admonition. For they that are of a froward and rough disposition, and will not submit to learn of Apollo, the god of harmony, how to observe time and measure in affairs, flats and sharps (so to speak) in discourse, the differences between the learned and the vulgar ear, and the times when to speak and when to be silent; such persons, though they be wise and free, and their counsels sound and wholesome, yet with all their efforts to persuade they scarcely can do any good; on the contrary, they rather hasten the destruction of those upon whom they press their advice; and it is not till the evils they predicted have come to pass that they are celebrated as prophets and men of a far foresight. Of this we have an eminent example in Marcus Cato of Utica, by whom the ruin of his country and the usurpation that followed, by means first of the conjunction and then of the contention between Pompey and Cæsar, was long before foreseen as from a watch-tower, and foretold as by an oracle; yet all the while he did no good, but did harm rather, and brought the calamities of his country faster on; as was wisely observed and elegantly described by Marcus Cicero, when he said in a letter to a friend, Cato means well: but he does hurt sometimes to the State.; for he talks as if he. were in the republic oj Plato and not in the dregs of Romulus.

II.
TYPHON;
OR THE REBEL.

THE poets tell us that Juno being angry that Jupiter had brought forth Pallas by himself without her help, implored of all the gods and goddesses that she also might bring forth something without the help of Jupiter: to which when wearied with her violence and importunity they had assented, she smote the earth, which quaking and opening gave birth to Typhon, a huge and hideous monster. He was given to a serpent by way of foster-father to be nursed. As soon as he was grown up he made war upon Jupiter, whom in the conflict he took prisoner; and bearing him on his shoulders to a remote and obscure region, cut out the sinews of his hands and feet, and carrying them away, left him there helpless and mutilated. Then came Mercury, and having stolen the sinews from Typhon gave them back to Jupiter, who finding his strength restored attacked the monster again. And first he struck him with a thunderbolt, which made a wound the blood whereof engendered serpents; then, as he fell back and fled, threw upon him the mountain Ætna, and crushed him beneath the weight.

The fable has been composed in allusion to the variable fortune of kings and the rebellions that occur from time to time in monarchies. For kings and their kingdoms are properly, like Jupiter and Juno, man and wife. But it sometimes happens that the king, depraved by the long habit of ruling, turns tyrant and takes all into his own hands; and not caring for the consent of his nobles and senate, brings forth as it were by himself; that is to say, administers the government by his own abitrary and absolute authority. Whereat the people aggrieved endeavour on their part to set up some head of their own. This generally begins with the secret solicitation of nobles and great persons, whose connivancy being obtained, an attempt is then made to stir the people. Thence comes a kind of swelling in the State, which is signified by the infancy of Typhon. And this condition of affairs is fostered and nourished by the innate depravity and malignant disposition of the common people, which is to kings like a serpent full of malice and mischief; till the disaffection spreading and gathering strength breaks out at last into open rebellion; which because of the infinite calamities it inflicts both on kings and peoples is represented under the dreadful image of Typhon, with a hundred heads, denoting divided powers; flaming mouths, for devastations by fire; belts of snakes, for the pestilences which prevail, especially in sieges; iron hands, for slaughters; eagle's talons, for rapine; feathery body, for perpetual rumours, reports, trepidations, and the like. And sometimes these rebellions grow so mighty that the king is forced, as if carried off on the shoulders of the rebels, to abandon the seat and principal cities of his kingdom, and to contract his forces, and betake himself to some remote and obscure province; his sinews both of money and majesty being cut off. And yet if he bears his fortune wisely, he presently by the skill and industry of Mercury recovers those sinews again; that is to say, by affability and wise edicts and gracious speeches he reconciles the minds of his subjects, and awakens in them an alacrity to grant him supplies, and so recovers the vigour of his authority. Nevertheless, having learned prudence and caution, he is commonly unwilling to set all upon the toss of fortune, and therefore avoids a pitched battle, but tries first by some memorable exploit to destroy the reputation of the rebels: in which if he succeed, the rebels feeling themselves shaken and losing their confidence, resort first to broken and empty threats, like serpent's hisses, and then finding their case desperate take to flight. And then is the time, when they are beginning to fall to pieces, for the king with the entire forces and mass of his kingdom, as with the mountain ætna, to pursue and overwhelm them.

III.
THE CYCLOPES;
OR MINISTERS OF TERROR.

THE story is that the Cyclopes were at first on account of their fierceness and brutality driven by Jupiter into Tartarus, and condemned to perpetual imprisonment; but afterwards he was persuaded by the Earth that it would be for his interest to release them and employ them to make thunderbolts for him; which he accordingly did; and they with officious industry laboured assiduously with a terrible din in forging thunderbolts and other instruments of terror. In course of time it happened that Jupiter's wrath was kindled against Æsculapius, son of Apollo, for raising a man from the dead by medicine; but because the deed was pious and famous and no just cause of displeasure, he concealed his anger and secretly set the Cyclopes upon him: who made no difficulty, but presently dispatched him with their thunderbolts; in revenge whereof Apollo (with Jupiter's permission) slew them with his arrows.

This fable seems to relate to the doings of kings; by whom cruel and bloody and exacting ministers are in the first instance punished and put out of office. But afterwards by counsel of the Earth, that is by ignoble and dishonourable counsel, yielding to considerations of utility, they take them into service again, when they have need either of severity of executions or harshness in exactions. They on their part being by nature cruel and by their former fortune exasperated, and knowing well enough what they are wanted for, apply themselves to this kind of work with wonderful diligence; till for want of caution and from over eagerness to ingratiate themselves, they at one time or another (taking a nod or an ambiguous word of the prince for a warrant) perpetrate some execution that is odious and unpopular. Upon which the prince, not willing to take the envy of it upon himself, and well knowing that he can always have plenty of such instruments, throws them overboard, and leaves them to the course of law and the vengeance of the friends and relatives of their victims, and to popular hatred; and so amid much applause of the people and great acclamations and blessings on the king, they meet at last, though late, the fate they deserve.

IV.
NARCISSUS;
OR SELF-LOVE.

NARCISSUS is said to have been a young man of wonderful beauty, but intolerably proud, fastidious, and disdainful. Pleased with himself and despising all others, he led a solitary life in the woods and hunting-grounds; with a few companions to whom he was all in all; followed also whenever he went by a nymph called Echo. Living thus, he came by chance one day to a clear fountain, and (being in the heat of noon) lay down by it; when beholding in the water his own image, he fell into such a study and then into such a rapturous admiration of himself, that he could not be drawn away from gazing at the shadowy picture, but remained rooted to the spot till sense left him; and at last he was changed into the flower that bears his name; a flower which appears in the early spring; and is sacred to the infernal deities,—I'luto, Proserpine, and the Furies.

In this fable are represented the dispositions, and the fortunes too, of those persons who from consciousness either of beauty or some other gift with which nature unaided by any industry of their own has graced them, fall in love as it were with themselves. For with this state of mind there is commonly joined an indisposition to appear much in public or engage in business; because business would expose them to many neglects and scorns, by which their minds would be dejected and troubled. Therefore they commonly live a solitary, private, and shadowed life; with a small circle of chosen companions, all devoted admirers, who assent like an echo to everything they say, and entertain them with mouth-homage; till being by such habits gradually depraved and puffed up, and besotted at last with self-admiration, they fall into such a sloth and listlessness that they grow utterly stupid, and lose all vigour and alacrity. And it was a beautiful thought to choose the flower of spring as an emblem of characters like this: characters which in the opening of their career flourish and are talked of, but disappoint in maturity the promise of their youth. The fact too that this flower is sacred to the infernal deities contains an allusion to the same thing. For men of this disposition turn out utterly useless and good for nothing whatever; and anything that yields no fruit, but like the way of a ship in the sea passes and leaves no trace, was by the ancients held sacred to the shades and infernal gods.

V.
STYX;
OR TREATIES.

IT is a very common tradition that of the one oath by which the gods bound themselves when they meant to leave no room for repentance.; and finds a place in a great many fables. In that case they invoked in witness, not any majesty of heaven or any divine attribute, but Styx; a river in the infernal regions which with many windings encircled the palace of Dis. This form of oath alone, and no other, was held to be sure and inviolable: the penalty of breaking it being one which the deities most dreaded,—namely that the breaker should for a certain period of years be excluded from the banquets of the gods.

The fable seems to have been invented in allusion to treaties and compacts of princes: in respect of which it is but too true that whatever be the solemnity and sanctity of the oath they are confirmed with, yet they are little to be depended on; insomuch that they are used in fact rather with an eye to reputation and fame and ceremony, than for confidence and security and effect. And even when the ties of relationship (which are as the sacraments of nature) or of mutual good services come in to aid, yet in most cases all are too weak for ambition and interest and the licence of power: the rather because princes can always find plenty of plausible pretexts (not being accountable to any arbiter) wherewith to justify and veil their cupidity and bad faith. There is adopted therefore but one true and proper pledge of faith; and it is not any celestial divinity. This is Necessity (the great god of the powerful), and peril of state, and communion of interest. Now Necessity is elegantly represented under the. figure of Styx; the fatal river across which no man can return. This is the deity which Iphicrates the Athenian invoked to witness treaties; and since he was one that spoke out plainly what most men think and keep to themselves, his words are worth quoting. Finding that the Lacedæmonians were devising and propounding various cautions and sanctions and securities and bonds to hold the treaty fast, There is only one bond and security (said he, interrupting them) that can hold between you and us:—you must prove that you have yielded so much into our hands that you cannot hurt us if you would. And so it is that if the means of hurting be taken away, or if a breach of the treaty would endanger the existence or the integrity of the state and revenue,—then the treaty may be considered to be ratified and sanctioned and confirmed as by the oath of Styx: for then it is upon peril of being interdicted from the banquets of the gods; which was the ancient expression for the rights and prerogatives of empire, and wealth, and felicity.

VI.
PAN;
OR NATURE⁴.

THE ancients have given under the person of Pan an elaborate description of universal nature. His parentage they leave in doubt. Some call him the son of Mercury; others assign him an origin altogether different; saying that he was the offspring of a promiscuous intercourse between Penelope and all her suitors. But in this the name of Penelope has doubtless been foisted by some later author into the original fable. For it is no uncommon thing to find the more ancient narrations transferred to persons and names of later date; sometimes absurdly and stupidly, as in this instance; for Pan was one of the oldest gods, and long before the times of Ulysses; and Penelope was for her matronly chastity held in veneration by antiquity. But there is yet a third account of his birth, which must not be passed over; for some have called him the son of Jupiter and Hybris, or Insolence.

Whatever was his origin, the Fates are said to have been his sisters.

His person is described by ancient tradition as follows: With horns, and the tops of the horns reaching heaven; his whole body shaggy and hairy; his beard especially long. In figure, biform; human in the upper parts, the other half brute; ending in the feet of a goat. As emblems of his power he carried in his left hand a pipe compact of seven reeds, in his right a sheep hook or staff crooked at the top; and he was clothed in a scarf, made of panther's skin. The powers and offices assigned to him are these,—he is the god of hunters, of shepherds, and generally of dwellers in the country: also he presides over mountains; and is (next to Mercury) the messenger of the gods. He was accounted moreover the captain and commander of the nymphs, who were always dancing and frisking about him: the Satyrs, and their elders, the Sileni, were also of his company. He had the power likewise of exciting sudden terrors,—empty and superstitious ones especially;—thence called Panics. The actions that are recorded of him are not many; the principal is that he challenged Cupid to wrestle; and was beaten by him. He also entangled and caught the giant Typhon in a net; and they say besides, that when Ceres, out of grief and indignation at the rape of Proserpina, had hid herself, and all the gods were earnestly engaged in seeking her out, and had dispersed several ways in search of her, it was Pan's good fortune to light upon and discover her by accident while he was hunting. He had also the presumption to match himself against Apollo in music; and was by Midas's judgment pronounced victor; for which judgment Midas had to wear the ears of an ass, but not so as to be seen. There are no amours reported of Pan, or at least very few: which among a crowd of gods so excessively amorous may seem strange. The only thing imputed to him in this kind is a passion for Echo, who was also accounted his wife; and for one nymph called Syringa, with love of whom he was smitten by Cupid in anger and revenge because of his presumption in challenging him to wrestle. Nor had he any issue (which is again strange, seeing that the gods, especially the males, were remarkably prolific) except one daughter, a little serving woman called lambe, who used to amuse guests with ridiculous stories, and was supposed by some to be Pan's offspring by his wife Echo.

A noble fable this, if there be any such; and big almost to bursting with the secrets and mysteries of Nature.

Pan, as the very word declares, represents the universal frame of things, or Nature. About his origin there are and can be but two opinions; for Nature is either the offspring of Mercury—that is of the Divine Word (an opinion which the Scriptures establish beyond question, and which was entertained by all the more divine philosophers); or else of the seeds of things mixed and confused together. For they who derive all things from a single principle, either take that principle to be God, or if they hold it to be a material principle, assert it to be though actually one yet potentially many; so that all difference of opinion on this point is reducible to one or other of these two heads,—the world is sprung either from Mercury, or from all the suitors. He sang, says Virgil,

How through the void of space the seeds of things

Came first together; seeds of the sea, land, air,

And the clear fire; how from these elements

All embryos grew, and the great world itself

Swelled by degrees and gathered in its globe.

The third account of the generation of Pan, might make one think that the Greeks had heard something, whether through the Egyptians or otherwise, concerning the Hebrew mysteries; for it applies to the state of the world, not at its very birth, but as it was after the fall of Adam, subject to death and corruption. For that state was the offspring of God and Sin,—and so remains. So that all three stories of the birth of Pan (if they be understood with a proper distinction as to facts and times) may be accepted as indeed true. For true it is that this Pan, whom we behold and contemplate and worship only too much, is sprung from the Divine Word, through the medium of confused matter (which is itself God's creature), and with the help of sin and corruption entering in.?? the Nature of things, the Fates or destinies of things are truly represented as sisters. For natural causes are the chain which draws after it the births and durations and deaths of all things; their fallings and risings, their labours and felicities:—in short all the fates that can befall them.

That the world is represented with horns, and that such horns are broad at bottom and narrow at top, has relation to the fact that the whole frame of nature rises to a point like a pyramid. For individuals are infinite: these are collected into species, which are themselves also very numerous; the species are gathered up into genera, and these again into genera of a higher stage; till nature, contracting as it rises, seems to meet at last in one point. Nor need we wonder that Pan's horns touch heaven; since the summits, or universal forms, of nature do in a manner reach up to God; the passage from metaphysic to natural theology being ready and short.

The body of Nature is most elegantly and truly represented as covered with hair; in allusion to the rays which all objects emit; for rays are like the hairs or bristles of nature; and there is scarcely anything which is not more or less radiant. This is very plainly seen in the power of vision, and not less so in all kinds of magnetic virtue, and in every effect which takes place at a distance. For whatever produces an effect at a distance may be truly said to emit rays. But Pan's hair is longest in the beard, because the rays of the celestial bodies operate and penetrate from a greater distance than any other; and we see also that the sun, when the upper part of him is veiled by a cloud and the rays break out below, has the appearance of a face with a beard.

Again, the body of Nature is most truly described as biform; on account of the difference between the bodies of the upper and the lower world. For the upper or heavenly bodies are for their beauty and the equability and constancy of their motion, as well as for the influence they have upon earth and all that belongs to it, fitly represented under the human figure: but the others, by reason of their perturbations and irregular motions, and because they are under the influence of the celestial bodies, may be content with the figure of a brute. The same description of Nature's body may be referred also to the mixture of one species with another. For there is no nature which can be regarded as simple; every one seeming to participate and be compounded of two. Man has something of the brute; the brute has something of the vegetable; the vegetable something of the inanimate body; and so all things are in truth biformed and made up of a higher species and a lower. There is also a very ingenious allegory involved in that attribute of the goat's feet; which has reference to the motion upwards of terrestrial bodies towards the regions of air and sky: for the goat is a climbing animal, and loves to hang from rocks and cling to the sides of precipices: a tendency which is also exhibited in a wonderful manner by substances that belong properly to the lower world—witness clouds and meteors.

The emblems in Pan's hands are of two kinds—one of harmony, the other of empire. The pipe compact of seven reeds evidently indicates that harmony and concent of things, that concord mixed with discord, which results from the motions of the seven planets. Also the sheep-hook is a noble metaphor, alluding to the mixture of straight and crooked in the ways of nature. But the staff is curved chiefly towards the top; because all the works of Divine Providence in the world are wrought by winding and roundabout ways—where one thing seems to be doing, and another is doing really—as in the selling of Joseph into Egypt, and the like. So also in all the wiser kinds of human government, they who sit at the helm can introduce and insinuate what they desire for the good of the people more successfully by pretexts and indirect ways than directly; so that every rod or staff of empire is truly crooked at the top. The scarf or mantle of Pan is very ingeniously feigned to be made of a panther's skin; on account of the spots scattered all over it. For the heavens are spotted with stars, the sea with islands, the earth with flowers; and even particular objects are generally variegated on the surface, which is as it were their mantle or scarf.

Now the office of Pan can in no way be more lively set forth and explained than by calling him god of hunters. For every natural action, every motion and process of nature, is nothing else than a hunt. For the sciences and arts hunt after their works, human counsels hunt after their ends, and all things in nature hunt either after their food, which is like hunting for prey, or after their pleasures, which is like hunting for recreation;—and that too by methods skilful and saga-cious.

After the wolf the lion steals; the wolf the kid doth follow;

The kid pursues the cytisus o'er hillock and thro' hollow.

Also Pan is the god of country people in general; because they live more according to nature; whereas in courts and cities nature is corrupted by too much culture; till it is true what the poet said of his mistress,—the girl herself is the least part of the matter.

Pan is likewise especially called president of mountains—because it is in mountains and elevated places that the nature of things is most spread abroad, and lies most open to view and study. As for Pan's being, next to Mercury, the messenger of the gods, that is an allegory plainly divine; seeing that next to the Word of God, the image itself of the world is the great proclaimer of the divine wisdom and goodness. So sings the Psalmist: The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork.

Again, Pan takes delight in the nymphs; that is the souls; for the souls of the living are the delight of the world. And Pan is truly called their commander, since they follow the guidance each of her several nature; leaping and dancing about it with infinite variety, every one in her country's fashion, and with motion that never ceases. And in their company are ever found the Satyrs and the Sileni; that is old age and youth; for all things have their merry and dancing time, and likewise their heavy and tippling time. And yet to one who truly considers them, the pursuits of either age appear perhaps, as they did to Democritus, ridiculous and deformed,—like to a Satyr or Silenus.

In the Panic terrors there is set forth a very wise doctrine; for by the nature of things all living creatures are endued with a certain fear and dread, the office of which is to preserve their life and essence, and to avoid or repel approaching mischief. But the same nature knows not how to keep just measure—but together with salutary fears ever mingles vain and empty ones; insomuch that all things (if one could see into the heart of them) are quite full of Panic terrors; human things most of all; so infinitely tossed and troubled as they are with superstition (which is in truth nothing but a Panic terror), especially in seasons of hardship, anxiety, and adversity.

With regard to the audacity of Pan in challenging Cupid to fight, it refers to this,—that matter is not without a certain inclination and appetite to dissolve the world and fall back into the ancient chaos; but that the overswaying concord of things (which is represented by Cupid or Love) restrains its will and effort in that direction and reduces it to order. And therefore it is well for man and for the world that in that contest Pan was foiled. The same thing is alluded to in that other circumstance of the catching of Typhon in a net: because however it be that vast and strange swellings (for that is the meaning of Typhon) take place occasionally in nature—whether of the sea, or the clouds, or the earth, or any other body—nevertheless all such exuberancies and irregularities are by the nature of things caught and confined in an inextricable net, and bound down as with a chain of adamant.

As for the tale that the discovery of Ceres was reserved for this god, and that while he was hunting, and denied to the rest of the gods though diligently and specially engaged in seeking her; it contains a very true and wise admonition— namely that the discovery of things useful to life and the furniture of life, such as corn, is not to be looked for from the abstract philosophies, as it were the greater gods, no not though they devote their whole powers to that special end— but only from Pan; that is from sagacious experience and the universal knowledge of nature, which will often by a kind of accident, and as it were while engaged in hunting, stumble upon such discoveries.

Then again that match in music and the result of it exhibits a wholesome doctrine, fit to restrain and reduce to sobriety the pride and overweening confidence of human reason and judgment. For it seems there are two kinds of harmony and music; one of divine providence, the other of human reason; and to the human judgment, and the ears as it were of mortals, the government of the world and nature, and the more secret judgments of God, sound somewhat harsh and untunable; and though this be ignorance, such as deserves to be distinguished with the ears of an ass, yet those ears are worn secretly and not in the face of the world—for it is not a thing observed or noted as a deformity by the vulgar.

Lastly, it is not to be wondered at that no amours are attributed to Pan, except his marriage with Echo. For the world enjoys itself and in itself all things that are. Now he that is in love wants something, and where there is abundance of everything want can have no place. The world therefore can have no loves, nor any want (being content with itself) unless it be of discourse. Such is the nymph Echo, or, if it be of the more exact and measured kind, Syringa. And it is excellently provided that of all discourses or voices Echo alone should be chosen for the world's wife. For that is in fact the true philosophy which echoes most faithfully the, voice of the world itself, and is written as it were from the world's own dictation; being indeed nothing else than the image and reflexion of it, which it only repeats and echoes, but adds nothing of its own. That the world has no issue, is another allusion to the sufficiency and perfection of it in itself. Generation goes on among the parts of the world, but how can the whole generate, when no body exists out of itself? As for that little woman, Pan's putative daughter, it is an addition to the fable with a great deal of wisdom in it; for by her are represented those vain babbling doctrines about the nature of things, which wander abroad in all times and fill the world—doctrines barren in fact, counterfeit in breed, but by reason of their garrulity sometimes entertaining; and sometimes again troublesome and annoying.

VII.
PERSEUS;
OR WAR⁵.

PERSEUS was sent, it is said, by Pallas to cut off the head of Medusa, from whom many nations in the westernmost parts of Spain suffered grievous calamities:— a monster so dreadful and horrible that the mere sight of her turned men into stone. She was one of the Gorgons; and the only one of them that was mortal, the others not being subject to change. By way of equipment for this so noble exploit, Perseus received arms and gifts from three several Gods. Mercury gave him wings for his feet; Pluto gave him a helmet; Pallas a shield and a mirror. And yet, though so well provided and equipped, he did not proceed against Medusa directly, but went out of his way to visit the Graææ. These were half-sisters to the Gorgons; and had been born old women with white hair. They had but one eye and one tooth among them, and these they used to wear by turns; each putting them on as she went abroad, and putting them off again when she came back. This eye and tooth they now lent to Perseus. Whereupon, judging himself sufficiently equipped for the performance of his undertaking, he went against Medusa with all haste, flying. He found her asleep; but not daring to face her (in case she should wake) he looked back into Pallas's mirror, and taking aim by the reflexion, cut off her head. From the blood which flowed out of the wound, there suddenly leaped forth a winged Pegasus. The severed head was fixed by Perseus in Pallas's shield; where it still retained its power of striking stiff, as if thunder or planet stricken, all who looked on it.

The fable seems to have been composed with reference to the art and judicious conduct of war. And first, for the kind of war to be chosen it sets forth (as from the advice of Pallas) three sound and weighty precepts to guide the deliberation.

The first is, not to take any great trouble for the subjugation of the neighbouring nations. For the rule to be followed in the enlarging of a patrimony does not apply to the extension of an empire. In a private property, the vicinity of the estates to each other is of importance; but in extending an empire, occasion, and facility of carrying the war through, and value of conquest, should be regarded instead of vicinity. We see that the Romans, while they had hardly penetrated westward beyond Liguria, had conquered and included in their empire eastern provinces as far off as Mount Taurus. And therefore Perseus, though he belonged to the east, did not decline a distant expedition to the uttermost parts of the west.

The second is that there be a just and honourable cause of war: for this begets alacrity as well in the soldiers themselves as in the people, from whom the supplies are to come: also it opens the way to alliances, and conciliates friends; and has a great many advantages. Now there is no cause of war more pious than the overthrow of a tyranny under which the people lies prostrate without spirit or vigour, as if turned to stone by the aspect of Medusa.

Thirdly, it is wisely added that whereas there are three Gorgons (by whom are represented wars), Perseus chose the one that was mortal, that is, he chose such a war as might be finished and carried through, and did not engage in the pursuit of vast or infinite projects.

The equipment of Perseus is of that kind which is everything in war, and almost ensures success; for he received swiftness from Mercury, secrecy of counsel from Pluto, and providence from Pallas. Nor is the circumstance that those wings of swiftness were for the heels and not for the shoulders without an alle-gorical meaning, and a very wise one. For it is not in the first attack, so much as in those that follow up and support the first, that swiftness is required; and there is no error more common in war than that of not pressing on the secondary and subsidiary actions with an activity answerable to the vigour of the begin-nings. There is also an ingenious distinction implied in the images of the shield and the mirror (for the parable of Pluto's helmet which made men invisible needs no explanation) between the two kinds of foresight. For we must have not only that kind of foresight which acts as a shield, but that other kind likewise which enables us (like Pallas's mirror) to spy into the forces and movements and counsels of the enemy.

But Perseus, however provided with forces and courage, stands yet in need of one thing more before the war be commenced, which is of the highest possible importance,—he must go round to the Grææ. These Grææ are treasons; which are indeed war's sisters, yet not sisters german, but as it were of less noble birth. For wars are generous; treasons degenerate and base. They are prettily described, in allusion to the perpetual cares and trepidations of traitors, as old and white from their birth. Their power (before they break out into open revolt) lies either in the eye or the tooth; for all factions when alienated from the state, both play the spy and bite. And the eye and tooth are as it were common to them all: the eye because all their information is handed from one to another and circulates through the whole party; the tooth, because they all bite with one mouth and all tell one tale,—so that when you hear one you hear all. Therefore Perseus must make friends of those Grææ, that they may lend him their eve and tooth,—the eye for discovery of information, the tooth to sow rumours, raise envy, and stir the minds of the people.

These matters being thus arranged and prepared, we come next to the carriage of the war itself. And here we see that Perseus finds Medusa asleep; for the undertaker of a war almost always, if he is wise, takes his enemy unprepared and in security. And now it is that Pallas's mirror is wanted. For there are many who before the hour of danger can look into the enemy's affairs sharply and attentively; but the chief use of the mirror is in the very instant of peril, that you may examine the manner of it without being confused by the fear of it; which is meant by the looking at it with eyes averted.

The conclusion of the war is followed by two effects: first the birth and springing up of Pegasus, which obviously enough denotes fame, flying abroad and celebrating the victory. Secondly the carrying of Medusa's head upon the shield; for this is incomparably the best kind of safeguard. A single brilliant and memorable exploit, happily conducted and accomplished, paralyses all the enemies' movements, and mates malevolence itself.

VIII.
ENDYMION;
OR THE FAVOURITE.

TRADITION says that Endymion, a shepherd, was beloved by the moon. But the intercourse between them was of a strange and singular kind. For while he lay reposing according to his habit in a natural cave under the rocks of Latmos, the moon would come down from heaven and kiss him as he slept, and go up into heaven again. And yet this idleness and sleeping did not hurt his fortunes; for the moon in the mean time so ordered it that his sheep fattened and increased exceedingly; insomuch that no shepherd had finer flocks or fuller.

The fable relates (as I take it) to the dispositions and manners of princes. For princes being full of thoughts and prone to suspicions, do not easily admit to familiar intercourse men that are perspicacious and curious, whose minds are always on the watch and never sleep; but choose rather such as are of a quiet and complying disposition, and submit to their will without inquiring further, and shew like persons ignorant and unobserving, and as if asleep; displaying simple obedience rather than fine observation. With men of this kind princes have always been glad to descend from their greatness, as the moon from heaven; and to lay aside their mask, the continual wearing of which becomes a kind of burden; and to converse familiarly; for with such they think they can do so safely. It was a point especially noted in Tiberius Cæsar, a prince extremely difficult to deal with; with whom those only were in favour who, though they really understood him, yet dissembled their knowledge with a pertinacity which seemed like dulness. The same thing was observable in Louis XI. of France, a most cautious and crafty king. The circumstance of the cave also, in which according to the fable Endymion used to lie, is not without its elegance. For those who enjoy this kind of favour with princes have commonly some pleasant places of retirement to invite them to, where they may have the comfort of leisure and relaxation of mind, discharged of the incumbrances which their position lays upon them. And it is true that favourites of this class are commonly prosperous in their private fortunes; for princes though they may not raise them to honours, yet since their favour springs from true affection and not from considerations of utility, they generally enrich them with their bounty.

IX.
THE SISTER OF THE GIANTS;
OR FAME.

THE poets tell us that the Giants, being brought forth by Earth, made war upon Jupiter and the gods, and were routed and vanquished with thunderbolts, whereupon Earth, in rage at the wrath of the gods, to revenge her sons brought forth Fame, youngest sister of the giants.

The meaning of the fable appears to be this; by Earth is meant the nature of the common people; always swelling with malice towards their rulers, and hatching revolutions. This upon occasion given brings forth rebels and seditious persons, who with wicked audacity endeavour the overthrow of princes. And when these are suppressed, the same nature of the common people, still leaning to the worse party and impatient of tranquillity, gives birth to rumours and malignant whispers, and querulous fames, and defamatory libels, and the like; tending to bring envy upon the authorities of the land: so that seditious fames differ from acts of rebellion, not in race and parentage, but only in sex: the one being feminine and the other masculine.

X.
ACTÆON AND PENTHEUS;
OR CURIOSITY.

THE curiosity and unhealthy appetite of man for the discovery of secrets, is reproved by the ancients in two examples: one of Actæon, the other of Pentheus. Actæon having unawares and by chance seen Diana naked, was turned into a stag and worried by his own dogs. Pentheus having climbed a tree for the purpose of seeing the secret mysteries of Bacchus, was struck with madness; and the form of his madness was this: he thought everything was double; saw two suns, and again two citie3 of Thebes: insomuch that when he set out towards Thebes, he presently saw another Thebes behind, which made him go back; and so was kept continually going backwards and forwards without any rest.

As to distracted Pentheus there appear

Furies in troops, and in the sky two suns,

And on the earth two several Thebes at once.

The first of these fables seems to relate to the secrets of princes, the other to the secrets of divinity. For whoever becomes acquainted with a prince's secrets without leave and against his will, is sure to incur his hatred: and then knowing that he is marked and that occasions are sought against him, he lives the life of a stag; a life full of fears and suspicions. Often too it happens that his own servants and domestics, to curry favour with the prince, accuse and overthrow him. For when the displeasure of the prince is manifest, a man shall scarcely have a servant but will betray him; and so he may expect the fate of Actæon.

The calamity of Pentheus is of a different kind. For the punishment assigned to those who with rash audacity, forgetting their mortal condition, aspire by the heights of nature and philosophy, as by climbing a tree, to penetrate the divine mysteries, is perpetual inconstancy, and a judgment vacillating and perplexed. For since the light of nature is one thing and the light of divinity another, they are as men that see two suns; and since the actions of life and the determinations of the will depend upon the intellect, it follows that they are perplexed in will no less than in opinion, and cannot be consistent with themselves: in which sense they in like manner see two Thebes; for by Thebes is meant the ends and aims of our actions; Thebes being Pentheus's home and resting-place. And hence it comes that they know not which way to turn, but being uncertain and fluctuating as to the sum and end of all, they are carried round and round from one thing to another, according to the impulse of the moment.

XI.
ORPHEUS;
OK PHILOSOPHY.

THE story of Orpheus, which though so well known has not yet been in all points perfectly well interpreted, seems meant for a representation of universal Philosophy. For Orpheus himself,—a man admirable and truly divine, who being master of all harmony subdued and drew all things after him by sweet and gentle measures,—may pass by an easy metaphor for philosophy personified. For as the works of wisdom surpass in dignity and power the works of strength, so the labours of Orpheus surpass the labours of Hercules.

Orpheus, moved by affection for his wife who had been snatched from him by an untimely death, resolved to go down to Hell and beg her back again of the Infernal Powers; trusting to his lyre. Nor was he disappointed. For so soothed and charmed were the infernal powers by the sweetness of his singing and playing, that they gave him leave to take her away, with him; but upon one condition; she was to follow behind him, and he was not to look back until they had reached the confines of light. From this however in the impatience of love and anxiety he could not refrain. Before he had quite reached the point of safety, he looked back; and so the covenant was broken, and she suddenly fell away from him and was hurried back into Hell. From that time Orpheus betook himself to solitary places, a melancholy man and averse from the sight of women; where by the same sweetness of his song and lyre he drew to him all kinds of wild beasts, in such manner that putting off their several natures, forgetting all their quarrels and ferocity, no longer driven by the stings and furies of lust, no longer caring to satisfy their hunger or to hunt their prey, they all stood about him gently and sociably, as in a theatre, listening only to the concords of his lyre. Nor was that all: for so great was the power of his music that it moved the woods and the very stones to shift themselves and take their stations decently and orderly about him. And all this went on for some time with happy success and great admiration; till at last certain Thracian women, under the stimulation and excitement of Bacchus, came where he was; and first they blew such a hoarse and hideous blast upon a horn that the sound of his music could no longer be heard for the din: whereupon the charm being broken that had been the bond of that order and good fellowship, confusion began again; the beasts returned each to his several nature and preyed one upon the other as before; the stones and woods stayed no longer in their places: while Orpheus himself was torn to pieces by the women in their fury, and his limbs scattered about the fields: at whose death, Helicon (river sacred to the Muses) in grief and indignation buried his waters under the earth, to reappear elsewhere. The meaning of the fable appears to be this.

The singing of Orpheus is of two kinds; one to propitiate the infernal powers, the other to draw the wild beasts and the woods. The former may be best understood as referring to natural philosophy; the latter to philosophy moral and civil. For natural philosophy proposes to itself as its noblest work of all, nothing less than the restitution and renovation of things corruptible, and (what is indeed the same thing in a lower degree) the conservation of bodies in the state in which they are, and the retardation of dissolution and putrefaction. Now certainly if this can be effected at all, it cannot be otherwise than by due and exquisite attempering and adjustment of parts in nature, as by the harmony and perfect modulation of a lyre. And yet being a thing of all others the most difficult, it commonly fails of effect; and fails (it may be) from no cause more than from curious and premature meddling and impatience. Then Philosophy finding that her great work is too much for her, in sorrowful mood, as well becomes her, turns to human affairs; and applying her powers of persuasion and eloquence to insinuate into men's minds the love of virtue and equity and peace, teaches the people to assemble and unite and take upon them the yoke of laws and submit to authority, and forget their ungoverned appetites, in listening and conforming to precepts and discipline; whereupon soon follows the building of houses, the founding of cities, the planting of fields and gardens with trees; insomuch that the stones and the woods are not unfitly said to leave their places and come about her. And this application of Philosophy to civil affairs is properly represented, and according to the true order of things, as subsequent to the diligent trial and final frustration of the experiment of restoring the dead body to life. For true it is that the clearer recognition of the inevitable necessity of death sets men upon seeking immortality by merit and renown. Also it is wisely added in the story that Orpheus was averse from women and from marriage; for the sweets of marriage and the dearness of children commonly draw men away from performing great and lofty services to the commonwealth; being content to be perpetuated in their race and stock, and not in their deeds.

But howsoever the works of wisdom are among human things the most excellent, yet they too have their periods and closes. For so it is that after kingdoms and commonwealths have flourished for a time, there arise perturbations and seditions and wars; amid the uproars of which, first the laws are put to silence, and then men return to the depraved conditions of their nature, and desolation is seen in the fields and cities. And if such troubles last, it is not long before letters also and philosophy are so torn in pieces that no traces of them can be found but a few fragments, scattered here and there like planks from a shipwreck; and then a season of barbarism sets in, the waters of Helicon being sunk under the ground, until, according to the appointed vicissitude of things, they break out and issue forth again, perhaps among other nations, and not in the places where they were before.

XII.
CŒLUM;
OR, THE ORIGIN OF THINGS.

It is a tradition of the poets that Cœlum was the most ancient of all the gods: that his parts of generation were cut off by his son Saturn with a scythe; that Saturn himself begot a numerous progeny, but devoured his sons as fast as they were born; that at last Jupiter escaped this fate, and as soon as he grew up overthrew his father Saturn, cast him into Tartarus, and took possession of his kingdom; also that he cut off his genitals with the same scythe with which he, Saturn, had cut off those of Cœlum, and threw them into the sea; and that from them was born Venus. Afterwards they say that the kingdom of Jupiter, when as yet it was scarcely settled, had to stand the brunt of two memorable wars; the first, the war of the Titans, in the subduing of whom the assistance of the Sun (the only one of the Titans that was on Jupiter's side) was conspicuous; the second, the war of the Giants, who were likewise by thunder and the arms of Jupiter defeated; and that when these were put down Jupiter reigned after wards in security.

This fable seems to be an enigma concerning the origin of things, not much differing from the philosophy afterwards embraced by Democritus: who more openly than any one else asserted the eternity of matter, while he denied the eternity of the world; a point in which he came somewhat nearer to the truth as declared in the divine narrative; for that represents matter without form as existing before the six days' works.

The fable may be explained in this manner. By Cœlum is meant the concave or circumference which encloses all matter. By Saturn is meant matter itself; which, inasmuch as the sum total of matter remains always the same and the absolute quantum of nature suffers neither increase nor diminution, is said to have deprived its parent of all power of generation. Now the agitation and motions of matter produced at first imperfect and ill-compacted structures of things, that would not hold together,—mere attempts at worlds. Afterwards in process of time a fabric was turned out which could keep its form. Of these two divisions of time, the first is meant by the reign of Saturn; who by reason of the frequent dissolutions and short durations of things in his time, was called the devourer of his children: the second by the reign of Jupiter, who put an end to those continual and transitory changes, and thrust them into Tartarus—that is to say the place of perturbation: which place seems to be midway between the lowest parts of heaven and the innermost parts of the earth: in which middle region perturbation and fragility and mortality or corruption have their chief operation. And while that former system of generation lasted which had place under the reign of Saturn, Venus, according to the story, was not yet born. For so long as in the universal frame of matter discord was stronger than concord and prevailed over it, there could be no change except of the whole together; and in this manner did the generation of things proceed before Saturn was castrated. But as soon as this mode of generation ceased, it was immediately succeeded by that other which proceeds by Venus, and belongs to a state in which concord being powerful and predominant, change proceeds part by part only, the total fabric remaining entire and undisturbed. Nevertheless Saturn is represented as thrust out and overthrown only, not as cut off and extinguished; because it was the opinion of Democritus that the world might yet relapse into its ancient confusion and intervals of no government: an event which Lucretius prayed might not happen in his own times.

Which may all-ruling Fortune keep far hence,

And reason tench it, not experience.

Again, after the world was established and settled in respect of its mass and moving force, yet it did not from the first remain in quiet. For first there followed notable commotions in the heavenly regions; which however, by the power of the Sun predominating in those regions, were so composed that the world survived and kept its state; afterwards in like manner followed convulsions in the lower regions, by inundations, tempests, winds, earthquakes of more universal character than any we now have; and when these likewise were subdued and dispersed, things settled at last into a more durable state of consent and harmonious operation.

It must be said however of all this, that as there is philosophy in the fable so there is fable in the philosophy. For we know (through faith) that all such speculations are but the oracles of sense which have long since ceased and failed; the world, both matter and fabric, being in truth the work of the Creator.

XIII.
PROTEUS;
OR MATTER.

PROTEUS, the poets tell us, was herdsman to Neptune. He was an old man and a prophet; a prophet moreover of the very first order, and indeed thrice excellent; for he knew all three,—not the future only, but likewise the past and the present; insomuch that besides his power of divination, he was the messenger and interpreter of all antiquity and all secrets. His dwelling was under an immense cave. There it was his custom every day at noon to count his flock of seals and then go to sleep. And if any one wanted his help in any matter, the only way was first to secure his hands with handcuffs, and then to bind him with chains. Whereupon he on his part, in order to get free, would turn himself into all manner of strange shapes—fire, water, wild beasts, etc., till at last he returned again to his original shape.

The sense of this fable relates, it would seem, to the secrets of nature and the conditions of matter. For under the person of Proteus, Matter—the most ancient of all things, next to God—is meant to be represented. Now matter has its habitation under the vault of heaven, as under a cave. And it may be called the servant of Neptune, inasmuch as all the operation and dispensation of matter is effected principally in liquids. The herd or flock of Proteus seems to be nothing else than the ordinary species of animals, plants, minerals, etc., in which matter may be said to diffuse and use itself up; insomuch that having once made up and finished those species it seems to sleep and rest, as if its task were done; without applying itself or attempting or preparing to make any more. And this is what is meant by Proteus counting his herd and then going to sleep. Now this is said to take place not in the morning or in the evening, but at noon: that is to say, when the full and legitimate time has come for completing and bringing forth the species out of matter already duly prepared and predisposed: which is the middle point between the first rudiments of them and their declination. And this we know from the sacred history to have been in fact at the very time of the creation. For then it was that by virtue of the divine word producat matter came together at the command of the Creator, not by its own circuitous processes, but all at once; and brought its work to perfection on the instant, and constituted the species. And here the story is complete, as regards Proteus free and at large with his herd. For the universe with its several species according to their ordinary frame and structure, is merely the face of matter unconstrained and at liberty, with its flock of materiate creatures. Nevertheless if any skilful Servant of Nature shall bring force to bear on matter, and shall vex it and drive it to extremities as if with the purpose of reducing it to nothing, then will matter (since annihilation or true destruction is not possible except by the omnipotence of God) finding itself in these straits, turn and transform itself into strange shapes, passing from one change to another till it has gone through the whole circle and finished the period; when, if the force be continued, it returns at last to itself. And this constraint and binding will be more easily and expeditiously effected, if matter be laid hold on and secured by the hands; that is, by its extremities. And whereas it is added in the fable that Proteus was a prophet and knew the three times; this agrees well with the nature of matter: for if a man knew the conditions, affections, and processes of matter, he would certainly comprehend the sum and general issue (for I do not say that his knowledge would extend to the paris and singularities) of all things past, present, and to come.

XIV.
MEMNON;
OR THE EARLY-RIPE.

MEMNON, according to the poets, was the son of Aurora. Conspicuous for the beauty of his arms, and great in popular reputation, he came to the Trojan war; where rushing with breathless haste and headlong courage at the highest mark, he engaged Achilles, the bravest of all the Greeks, in single fight; and fell by his hand. In pity of his fate Jupiter sent birds to grace his funeral, that kept up a continual cry of grief and lamentation. His statue also, as often as the rays of the rising sun touched it, is said to have uttered a mournful sound.

The fable seems meant to apply to the unfortunate deaths of young men of high promise. For such are as it were the sons of the morning, and it commonly happens that, being puffed up with empty and outward advantages, they venture upon enterprises that are beyond their strength, provoke and challenge to combat the bravest heroes, and falling in the unequal conflict are extinguished But the death of such persons is wont to be followed by infinite commiseration for of all mortal accidents there is none so lamentable, none so powerful to move pity, as this cropping of the flower of virtue before its time: the rather because their life has been too short to give occasion of satiety or of envy, which might otherwise mitigate sorrow at their death and temper compassion. And not only do lamentations and wailings hover like those mourner birds about the funeral pile; but the same feeling of pity lasts long after: and more especially upon all fresh accidents and new movements and beginnings of great events, as by the touch of sunrise, the regret for them is stirred up again and renewed.

XV.
TITHONUS;
OR SATIETY.

IT is an elegant fable they relate of Tithonus; that Aurora was in love with him. and, desiring to enjoy his company for ever, begged of Jupiter that he might never die; but forgot, with a woman's thoughtlessness, to add to her petition that neither might he suffer the infirmities of age. So he was exempted from the condition of dying; but there came upon him a strange and miserable old age, such as he must needs undergo to whom death is denied, while the burden of years continues to grow heavier and heavier; so that Jupiter, pitying such a condition, changed him at last into a grasshopper.

The fable seems to be an ingenious picture and description of Pleasure; which in its beginning, or morning-time, is so agreeable that men are fain to pray that such delights may last and be their own for ever; forgetting that satiety and loathing of the same will come upon them, like old age, before they are aware. So that at last when men have become incapable of the acts of pleasure and yet retain the desire and appetite, they fall to talking and telling stories about the pleasures of their youth, and find their delight in that: as we see in lewd persons, who are always harping upon indecent stories, and in soldiers that are for ever recounting their deeds, like grasshoppers, whose vigour is only in their voice.

XVI.
JUNO'S SUITOR;
OR DISHONOUR.

THE poets tell us that Jupiter in pursuit of his loves assumed many different shapes,—a bull, an eagle, a swan, a shower of gold; but that when he courted Juno, he turned himself into the ignoblest shape that could be, a very object of contempt and ridicule; that of a wretched cuckoo, drenched with rain and tempest amazed, trembling, and half dead.

It is a wise fable, derived from the depths of moral science. The meaning is that men are not to flatter themselves that an exhibition of their virtue and worth will win them estimation and favour with everybody. For that depends upon the nature and character of those to whom they apply themselves. If these be persons of no gifts or ornaments of their own, but only a proud and malignant disposition (the character represented by Juno), then they should know that they must put off everything about them that has the least show of honour or dignity, and that it is mere folly in them to proceed any other way; nay that it is not enough to descend to the baseness of flattery, unless they put on the outward show and character of abjectness and degeneracy.

XVII.
CUPID;
OR THE ATOM.

THE accounts given by the poets of Cupid, or Love, are not properly applicable to the same person; yet the discrepancy is such that one may see where the confusion is and where the similitude, and reject the one and receive the other.

They say then that Love was the most ancient of all the gods; the most ancient therefore of all things whatever, except Chaos, which is said to have been coeval with him; and Chaos is never distinguished by the ancients with divine honour or the name of a god. This Love is introduced without any parent at all; only that some say he was an egg of Night. And himself out of Chaos begot all things, the gods included. The attributes which are assigned to him are in number four; he is always an infant; he is blind; he is naked; he is an archer. There was also another Love, the youngest of all the gods, son of Venus, to whom the attributes of the elder are transferred, and whom in a way they suit.

The fable relates to the cradle and infancy of nature, and pierces deep. This Love I understand to be the appetite or instinct of primal matter; or to speak more plainly, the natural motion of the atom; which is indeed the original and unique force that constitutes and fashions all things out of matter. Now this is entirely without parent; that is, without cause. For the cause is as it were parent of the effect; and of this virtue there can be no cause in nature (God always excepted): there being nothing before it, therefore no efficient; nor anything more original in nature; therefore neither kind nor form. Whatever it be therefore, it is a thing positive and inexplicable. And even if it were possible to know the method and process of it, yet to know it by way of cause is not possible; it being, next to God, the cause of causes—itself without cause. That the method even of its operation should ever be brought within the range and comprehension of human inquiry, is hardly perhaps to be hoped; with good reason therefore it is represented as an egg hatched by night. Such certainly is the judgment of the sacred philosopher, when he says, He hath made all things beautiful according to their seasons; also he hath submitted the world to man's inquiry, yet so that man connot find out the work which God worketh from the beginning to the end. For the summary law of nature, that impulse of desire impressed by God upon the primary particles of matter which makes them come together, and which by repetition and multiplication produces all the variety of nature, is a thing which mortal thought may glance at, but can hardly take in.

Now the philosophy of the Greeks, which in investigating the material principles of things is careful and acute, in inquiring the principles of motion, wherein lies all vigour of operation, is negligent and languid; and on the point now in question seems to be altogether blind and babbling; for that opinion of the Peripatetics which refers the original impulse of matter to privation, is little more than words —a name for the thing rather than a description of it. And those who refer it to God, though they are quite right in that, yet they ascend by a leap and not by steps. For beyond all doubt there is a single and summary law in which nature centres and which is subject and subordinate to God; the same in fact which in the text just quoted is meant by the words, The work which God worketh from the beginning to the end. Democritus considered the matter more deeply; and having first given the atom some dimension and shape, attributed to it a single desire or primary motion simply and absolutely, and a second by comparison. For he thought that all things move by their proper nature towards the centre of the world; but that that which has more matter, moving thither faster, strikes aside that which has less, and forces it to go the other way. This however was but a narrow theory, and framed with reference to too few particulars: for it does not appear that either the motion of the heavenly bodies in circle, or the phenomena of contraction and expansion, can be reduced to this principle, or reconciled with it. As for Epicurus's opinion of the declination and fortuitous agitation of the atom, it is a relapse to trifling and ignorance. So it is but too plain that the parentage of this Cupid is wrapped in night.

Let us now consider his attributes. He is described with great elegance as a little child, and a child for ever; for things compounded are larger and are affected by age; whereas the primary seeds of things, or atoms, are minute and remain in perpetual infancy.

Most truly also is he represented as naked: for all compounds (to one that considers them rightly) are masked and clothed; and there is nothing properly naked, except the primary particles of things.

The blindness likewise of Cupid has an allegorical meaning full of wisdom. For it seems that this Cupid, whatever he be, has very little providence; but directs his course, like a blind man groping, by whatever he finds nearest; which makes the supreme divine Providence all the more to be admired, as that which contrives out of subjects peculiarly empty and destitute of providence, and as it were blind, to educe by a fatal and necessary law all the order and beauty of the universe.

His last attribute is archery: meaning that this virtue is such as acts at a distance: for all operation at a distance is like shooting an arrow. Now whoever maintains the theory of the atom and the vacuum (even though he suppose the vacuum not to be collected by itself but intermingled through space), necessarily implies the action of the virtue of the atom at a distance; for without this no motion could be originated, by reason of the vacuum interposed; but all things would remain fixed and immovable.

As for that younger Cupid, it is with reason that he is reported to be the youngest of the gods; since until the species were constituted he could have no operation. In the description of him the allegory changes its aim and passes to morals. And yet there remains a certain conformity between him and the elder Cupid. For Venus excites the general appetite of conjunction and procreation; Cupid, her son, applies the appetite to an individual object. From Venus therefore comes the general disposition, from Cupid the more exact sympathy. Now the general disposition depends upon causes near at hand, the particular sympathy upon principles more deep and fatal, and as if derived from that ancient Cupid, who is the source of all exquisite sympathy.

XVIII.
DIOMEDES;
OR RELIGIOUS ZEAL.

DIOMEDES, a hero of high renown and a special favourite of Pallas, was incited by her (being of himself apt enough) if he chanced to encounter Venus in the battle, not to spare her. He boldly did as he was bid, and wounded Venus in the hand. This for the time he carried with impunity, and returned to his own country in great fame and reputation: but meeting there with domestic troubles he took refuge abroad in Italy. Here also he had a good enough fortune at first. King Daunus entertained him with hospitality and enriched him with honours and presents, and many statues were raised to him throughout the country. But no sooner did a calamity befall the people among whom he had taken up his abode, than Daunus bethought him that he was entertaining under his roof a man impious and hated by the gods, a fighter against heaven, who had violently assaulted and wounded with the sword a goddess whom it was forbidden even to touch. Whereupon, to free his country from the curse under which it lay, he suddenly (setting aside the bond of hospitality, in respect of the more ancient bond of religion) puts Diomedes to death, and orders his statues to be thrown down and his honours cancelled. Nor was it safe in such a case even to pity so grievous an accident; but his comrades likewise, when they bewailed the death of their chief and filled the land with lamentations, were changed into a kind of swans,—a bird which at the approach of its own death also utters a sweet and plaintive sound.

The subject of this fable is rare and almost singular; for there is no other story in which any hero is represented as having wounded a god. This is told of Diomedes only: and in him certainly seems meant to be portrayed the character and fortunes of a man who makes it his declared object to persecute and overthrew by violence and the sword some religious worship or sect, though a vain and light one. For though religious wars were unknown to the ancients (the heathen gods having no touch of jealousy, which is the attribute of the true God), yet so great appears to have been the wisdom of the primitive ages and so wide the range of it, that what they did not know by experience they nevertheless attained in idea by reflexion and imagination.

Now those who make war against any religious sect, though a vain, corrupt, and infamous one (and this is signified in the person of Venus), proceeding not by force of reason and doctrine and by sanctity of life and by weight of examples and authorities to correct and confute, but by fire and sword and sharpness of punishment to cut out and exterminate the same;—such persons are perhaps set upon the work by Pallas,—that is, by a certain keenness of discernment and severity of judgment which gives them a thorough insight into the fallacies and falsehoods of such errors, joined with hatred of evil and honest zeal;—and for a time they commonly acquire great glory, and are by the vulgar (who can never like what is moderate) celebrated and almost worshipped as the only champion of truth and religion; all others appearing lukewarm and timid. And yet this glory and felicity seldom endures to the end; but almost every kind of violence, unless by an early death it escape the vicissitudes of fortune, is in the end unprosperous. And if it so happen that an alteration takes place in the state, whereby that proscribed and depressed sect gathers strength and raises its head, then are the zealous and contentious courses of these men condemned, their very name hated, and all their honours turned into reproach. The murder of Diomedes by the hands of his host alludes to the fact that difference in matter of religion breeds falsehood and treachery even among the nearest and dearest friends. And where it is said that the very grief and lamentations of his comrades were not tolerated, but visited with punishment, the meaning is that whereas almost every crime is open to pity, insomuch that they who hate the offence may yet in humanity commiserate the person and calamity of the offender, —and it is the extremity of evil to have the offices of compassion interdicted,— yet where religion and piety are in question, the very expression of pity is noted and disliked. On the other hand, the sorrows and lamentations of the comrades of Diomedes, that is of those who are of the same sect and opinion, are commonly very piercing and musical, like the notes of swans, or birds of Diomedes. And this part of the allegory has a further meaning which is striking and noble; namely that in the case of persons who suffer for religion the words which they speak at their death, like the song of the dying swan, have a wonderful effect and impression upon men's minds, and dwell long after in their memory and feelings.

XIX.
DÆDALUS;
OR THE MECHANIC.

UNDER the person of Dædalus, a man of the greatest genius but of very bad character, the ancients drew a picture of mechanical skill and industry, together with its unlawful artifices and depraved applications. Dædalus had been banished for murdering a fellow-pupil and rival; yet found favour in his banishment with kings and states. Many and excellent works, as well in honour of the gods as for the adornment and ennobling of cities and public places, had been built and modelled by him; but it is for unlawful inventions that his name is most famous. For he it was who supplied the machine which enabled Pasiphae to satisfy her passion for the bull; so that the unhappy and infamous birth of the monster Minotaurus, which devoured the ingenuous youth, was owing to the wicked industry and pernicious genius of this man. Then to conceal the first mischief he added another, and for the security of this pest devised and constructed the Labyrinth; a work wicked in its end and destination, but in respect of art and contrivance excellent and admirable. Afterwards again, that his fame might not rest on bad arts only, and that he might be sought to for remedies as well as instruments of evil, he became the author likewise of that ingenious device of the clue, by which the mazes of the labyrinth should be retraced. This Dædalus was persecuted with great severity and diligence and inquisition by Minos; yet he always found both means of escape and places of refuge. Last of all, he taught his son Icarus how to fly; who being a novice and ostentatious of his art fell from the sky into the water.

The parable may be interpreted thus. In the entrance is noted that envy which is strongly predominant in great artists and never lets them rest; for there is no class of men more troubled with envy, and that of the bitterest and most implacable character.

Then is touched the impolitic and improvident nature of the punishment inflicted; namely banishment. For it is the prerogative of famous workmen to be acceptable all over the world, insomuch that to an excellent artisan exile is scarcely any punishment at all. For whereas other modes and conditions of life cannot easily flourish out of their own country, the admiration of an artisan spreads wider and grows greater among strangers and foreigners; it being the nature of men to hold their own countrymen, in respect of mechanical arts, in less estimation.

The passages which follow concerning the use of mechanical arts are plain enough. Certainly human life is much indebted to them, for very many things which concern both the furniture of religion and the ornament of state and the culture of life in general, are drawn from their store. And yet out of the same fountain come instruments of lust, and also instruments of death. For (not to speak of the arts of procurers) the most exquisite poisons, also guns, and such like engines of destruction, are the fruits of mechanical invention; and well we know how far in cruelty and destructiveness they exceed the Minotaurus himself.

Very beautiful again is that allegory of the labyrinth; under which the general nature of mechanics is represented. For all the more ingenious and exact mechanical inventions may, for their subtlety, their intricate variety, and the apparent likeness of one part to another, which scarcely any judgment can order and discriminate, but only the clue of experiment, be compared to a labyrinth. Nor is the next point less to the purpose; viz. that the same man who devised the mazes of the labyrinth disclosed likewise the use of the clue. For the mechanical arts may be turned either way, and serve as well for the cure as for the hurt and have power for the most part to dissolve their own spell.

Moreover the unlawful contrivances of art, and indeed the arts themselves, are often persecuted by Minos; that is by the laws; which condemn them and forbid people to use them. Nevertheless they are secretly preserved, and find everywhere both hiding-places and entertainment; as was well observed by Tacitus in his times, in a case not much unlike; where speaking of the mathematicians and fortune-tellers, he calls them a class of men which in our state will always be retained and always prohibited. And yet these unlawful and curious arts do in tract of time, since for the most part they fail to perform their promises, fall out of estimation, as Icarus from the sky, and come into contempt, and through the very excess of ostentation perish. And certainly if the truth must be told, they are not so easily bridled by law as convicted by their proper vanity.

XX.
ERICTHONIUS;
OR IMPOSTURE.

THE poets tell us that Vulcan wooed Minerva, and in the heat of desire attempted to force her; that in the struggle which followed his seed was scattered on the ground; from which was born Ericthonius, a man well made and handsome in the upper parts of the body, but with thighs and legs like an eel, thin and deformed: and that he, from consciousness of this deformity, first invented chariots, whereby he might shew off the fine part of his body and hide the mean.

This strange and prodigious story seems to bear this meaning: that Art (which is represented under the person of Vulcan, because it makes so much use of fire) when it endeavours by much vexing of bodies to force Nature to its will and conquer and subdue her (for Nature is described under the person of Minerva on account of the wisdom of her works) rarely attains the particular end it aims at; and yet in the course of contriving and endeavouring, as in a struggle, there fall out by the way certain imperfect births and lame works, specious to look at but weak and halting in use: yet impostors parade them to the world with a great deal of false shew in setting forth, and carry them about as in triumph. Such things may often be observed among chemical productions, and among mechanical subtleties and novelties; the rather because men being too intent upon their end to recover themselves from the errors of their way, rather struggle with Nature than woo her embraces with due observance and attention.

XXI.
DEUCALION;
OR RESTORATION.

THE poets relate that when the inhabitants of the old world were utterly extinguished by the universal deluge, and none remained except Deucalion and Pyrrha, these two, being inflamed with a pious and noble desire to restore the human race, consulted the oracle and received answer to the following effect: they should have their wish if they took their mother's bones and cast them behind their backs. This struck them at first with great sorrow and despair, for the face of nature being laid level by the deluge, to seek for a sepulchre would be a task altogether endless. But at last they found that the stones of the earth (the earth being regarded as the mother of all things) were what the oracle meant.

This fable seems to disclose a secret of nature, and to correct an error which is familiar to the human mind. For man in his ignorance concludes that the renewal and restoration of things may be effected by means of their own corruption and remains; as the Phœnix rises out of her own ashes; which is not so; for matters of this kind have already reached the end of their course, and can give no further help towards the first stages of it: so we must go back to more common principles.

XXII.
NEMESIS;
OR THE VICISSITUDE OF THINGS.

NEMESIS, according to the tradition, was a goddess, the object of veneration to all, to the powerful and fortunate of fear also. They say she was the daughter of Night and Ocean. She is represented with wings, and a crown: an ashen spear in her right hand; a phial, with Ethiops in it, in her left; sitting upon a stag.

The parable may be understood thus. The very name Nemesis plainly signifies Revenge or Retribution: for it was the office and function of this goddess to interrupt the felicity of fortunate persons, and let no man be constantly and perpetually happy, but step in like a tribune of the people with her veto; and not to chastise insolence only, but to see also that prosperity however innocent and moderately borne had its turn of adversity: as if no one of human race could be admitted to the banquets of the gods, except in derision. And certainly when I have read that chapter of Caius Plinius in which he has collected the misfortunes and miseries of Augustus Cæsar,—him whom I thought of all men the most fortunate, and who had moreover a certain art of using and enjoying his fortune, and in whose mind were no traces of swelling, of lightness, of softness, of confusion, or of melancholy—(insomuch that he had once determined to die voluntarily),—great and powerful must this goddess be, I have thought, when such a victim was brought to her altar.

The parents of this goddess were Ocean and Night; that is, the vicissitude of things, and the dark and secret judgment of God. For the vicissitude of things is aptly represented by the Ocean, by reason of its perpetual flowing and ebbing; and secret providence is rightly set forth under the image of Night. For this Nemesis of the Darkness (the human not agreeing with the divine judgment) was matter of observation even among the heathen.

Ripheus fell too,

Than whom a juster and a truer man

In all his dealings was not found in Troy.

But the gods judged not so.

Nemesis again is described as winged; because of the sudden and unforeseen revolutions of things. For in all the records of time it has commonly been found that great and wise men have perished by the dangers which they most despised. So was it with M. Cicero; who when warned by Decimus Brutus to beware of Octavius Cæsar's bad faith and evil mind towards him, only answered, I am duly grateful to you, my dear Brutus, for giving me that information, though it is but folly.

Nemesis is distinguished also with a crown; in allusion to the envious and malignant nature of the vulgar; for when the fortunate and the powerful fall, the people commonly exult and set a crown upon the head of Nemesis.

The spear in her right hand relates to those whom she actually strikes and transfixes. And if there be any whom she does not make victims of calamity and misfortune, to them she nevertheless exhibits that dark and ominous spectre in her left: for mortals must needs be visited, even when they stand at the summit of felicity, with images of death, diseases, misfortunes, perfidies of friends, plots of enemies, changes of fortune, and the like; even like those Ethiops in the phial. It is true that Virgil, in describing the battle of Actium, adds elegantly concerning Cleopatra:—

Midmost the Queen with sounding timbrel cheers

Her armies to the fight; nor dreams the while

Of those two aspics at her back.

But it was not long before, turn which way she would, whole troops of Ethiops met her eyes.

Lastly, it is wisely added that Nemesis is mounted on a stag: for the stag is a very long lived animal; and it may be that one who is cut off young may give Nemesis the slip; but if his prosperity and greatness endure for any length of time, he is without doubt a subject of Nemesis, and carries her as it were on his back.

XXIII.
ACHELOUS;
OR THE BATTLE.

THE ancients relate that when Hercules and Achelous disputed which should marry Deianira, they agreed to decide the question by a fight. Now Achelous began by trying a variety of different shapes, which he was at liberty to do, and presented himself before Hercules at last in the shape of a savage and roaring bull, and so prepared for the combat. Hercules on the other hand retaining his wonted human figure, fell upon him. A close fight followed; the end of which was that Hercules broke off one of the bull's horns: whereupon he, greatly hurt and terrified, to redeem his own horn gave Hercules the horn of Amalthea, or Abundance, in exchange.

The fable alludes to military expeditions. The preparations for war on the part defensive (which is represented by Achelous) is various and multiform. For the form assumed by the invader is one and simple, consisting of an army only, or perhaps a fleet. Whereas a country preparing to receive an enemy on its own ground sets to work in an infinity of ways; fortifies one town, dismantles another, gathers the people from the fields and villages into cities and fortified places; builds a bridge here, breaks down a bridge there; raises, and distributes, forces and provisions; is busy about rivers, harbours, gorges of hills, woods, and numberless other matters; so that it may be said to try a new shape and put on a new aspect every day; and when at last it is fully fortified and prepared, it represents to the life the form and threatening aspect of a fighting bull. The invader meanwhile is anxious for a battle, and aims chiefly at that; fearing to be left without supplies in an enemy's country; and if he win the battle, and so break as it were the enemy's horn, then he brings it to this: that the enemy, losing heart and reputation, must, in order to recover himself and repair his forces, fall back into his more fortified positions, leaving his cities and lands to the conqueror to be laid waste and pillaged; which is indeed like giving him Amalthea's horn.

XXIV.
DIONYSUS;⁶ OR DESIRE.

THEY say that Semele, Jupiter's paramour, made him take, an inviolable oath to grant her one wish, whatever it might be, and then prayed that he would come to her in the same shape in which he was used to come to Juno. The consequence was that she was scorched to death in his embrace. The infant in her womb was taken by its father and sewed up in his thigh, until the time of gestation should be accomplished. The burden made him limp, and the infant, because while it was carried in his thigh it caused a pain or pricking, received the name of Dionysus. After he was brought forth he was sent to Proserpina for some years to nurse; but as he grew up his face was so like a woman's, that it seemed doubtful of which sex he was. Moreover he died and was buried for a time, and came to life again not long after. In his early youth he discovered and taught the culture of the vine, and therewithal the composition and use of wine, which had not been known before: whereby becoming famous and illustrious, he subjugated the whole world and advanced to the furthest limits of India. He was borne in a chariot drawn by tigers; about him tripped certain deformed demons called Cobali,—Acratus and others. The Muses also joined his train. He took to wife Ariadne, whom Theseus had abandoned and deserted. His sacred tree was the Ivy. He was accounted likewise the inventor and founder of sacred rites and ceremonies; yet such as were fanatical and full of corruption, and cruel besides. He had power to excite phrensy. At least it was by women excited to phrensy in his orgies that two illustrious persons, Pentheus and Orpheus, are said to have been torn to pieces; the one having climbed a tree to see what they were doing; the other in the act of striking his lyre. Moreover the actions of this god are often confounded with those of Jupiter.

The fable seems to bear upon morals, and indeed there is nothing better to be found in moral philosophy. Under the person of Bacchus is described the nature of Desire, or passion and perturbation. For the mother of all desire, even the most noxious, is nothing else than the appetite and aspiration for apparent good: and the conception of it is always in some unlawful wish, rashly granted before it has been understood and weighed. But as the passion warms, its mother (that is, the nature of good), not able to endure the heat of it, is destroyed and perishes in the flame. Itself while still in embryo remains in the human soul (which is its father and represented by Jupiter), especially in the lower part of the soul, as in the thigh; where it is both nourished and hidden; and where it causes such prickings, pains, and depressions in the mind, that its resolutions and actions labour and limp with it. And even after it has grown strong by indulgence and custom, and breaks forth into acts, it is nevertheless brought up for a time with Proserpina; that is to say, it seeks hiding-places, and keeps itself secret and as it were underground; until casting off all restraints of shame and fear and growing bold, it either assumes the mask of some virtue or sets infamy itself, at defiance. Most true also it is that every passion of the more vehement kind is as it were of doubtful sex, for it has at once the force of the man and the weakness of the woman. It is notably said too that Bacchus came to life again after death. For the passions seem sometimes to be laid asleep and extinguished; but no trust can be placed in them, no not though they be buried; for give them matter and occasion, they rise up again.

It is a wise parable too, that of the invention of the Vine; for every passion is ingenious and sagacious in finding out its own stimulants. And there is nothing we know of so potent and effective as wine, in exciting and inflaming perturbations of every kind; being a kind of common fuel to them all. Very elegantly too is Passion represented as the subjugator of provinces, and the undertaker of an endless course of conquest. For it never rests satisfied with what it has, but goes on and on with infinite insatiable appetite panting after new triumphs. Tigers also are kept in its stalls and yoked to its chariot; for as soon as Passion ceases to go on foot and comes to ride in its chariot, as in celebration of its victory and triumph over reason, then is it cruel, savage, and pitiless towards every thing that stands in its way. Again, there is humour in making those ridiculous demons dance about the chariot: for every passion produces motions in the eyes, and indeed in the whole countenance and gesture, which are uncomely, unsettled, skipping and deformed; insomuch that when a man under the influence of any passion, as anger, scorn, love, or the like, seems most grand and imposing in his own eyes, to the lookers-on he appears unseemly and ridiculous. It is true also that the Muses are seen in the train of Passion, there being scarce any passion which has not some branch of learning to flatter it. For herein the majesty of the Muses suffers from the licence and levity of men's wits, turning those that should be the guides of man's life into mere followers in the train of his passions.

And again that part of the allegory is especially noble which represents Bacchus as lavishing his love upon one whom another man had cast off. For most certain it is that passion ever seeks and aspires after that which experience has rejected. And let all men who in the heat of pursuit and indulgence are ready to give any price for the fruition of their passion, know this—that whatever be the object of their pursuit, be it honour or fortune or love or glory or knowledge, or what it will, they are paying court to things cast off,—things which many men in all times have tried, and upon trial rejected with disgust.

Nor is the consecration of the Ivy to Bacchus without its mystery. For this has a double propriety. First because the Ivy flourishes in winter; next because it has the property of creeping and spreading about so many things,—as trees, walls, buildings. For as to the first, every passion flourishes and acquires vigour by being resisted and forbidden, as by a kind of antiperistasis; like the ivy by the cold of winter. As to the second, the master passion spreads itself like ivy about all human actions and resolutions, forcing itself in and mixing itself up with them. Nor is it wonderful that superstitious rites are attributed to Bacchus, since every insane passion grows rank in depraved religions; or if phrensies are supposed to be inflicted by him, seeing that every passion is itself a brief madness, and if it be vehement and obstinate ends in insanity. Again, that circumstance of the tearing of Pentheus and Orpheus has an evident allegorical meaning; since curious inquisition and salutary and free admonition are alike hateful and intolerable to an overpowering passion.

Lastly, the confusion of the persons of Bacchus and Jupiter may be well understood as a parable; inasmuch as deeds of high distinction and desert proceed sometimes from virtue and right reason and magnanimity, and sometimes (however they may be extolled and applauded) only from some lurking passion or hidden lust; and thus the deeds of Bacchus are not easily distinguished from the deeds of Jupiter.

XXV.
ATALANTA;
OR PROFIT.

ATALANTA, who was remarkable for swiftness, was matched to run a race with Hippomenes. The conditions were that if Hippomenes won he was to marry Atalanta, if he lost he was to be put to death; and there seemed to be no doubt about the issue, since the matchless excellence of Atalanta in running had been signalized by the death of many competitors. Hippomenes therefore resorted to an artifice. He provided himself with three golden apples, and carried them with him. The race began. Atalanta ran ahead. He seeing himself left behind bethought him of his stratagem, and rolled forward one of the golden apples, so that she might see it,—not straight forwards, but a little on one side, that it might not only delay her but also draw her out of the course. She, with a woman's eagerness, attracted by the beauty of the apple, left the course, ran after it, and stooped to take it up. Hippomenes in the meantime made good way along the course and got before her. She however by force of her natural swiftness made good the loss of time and was again foremost; when Hippomenes a second and a third time interrupted her in the same way, and so at last by craft not speed won the race.

The story carries in it an excellent allegory, relating to the contest of art with Nature. For Art, which is meant by Atalanta, is in itself, if nothing stand in the way, far swifter than Nature and, as one may say, the better runner, and comes sooner to the goal. For this may be seen in almost everything; you see that fruit grows slowly from the kernel, swiftly from the graft; you see clay harden slowly into stones, fast into baked bricks: so also in morals, oblivion and comfort of grief comes by nature in length of time; but philosophy (which may be regarded as the art of living) does it without waiting so long, but forestalls and anticipates the day. But then this prerogative and vigour of art is retarded, to the infinite loss of mankind, by those golden apples. For there is not one of the sciences or arts which follows the true and legitimate course constantly forth till it reach its end; but it perpetually happens that arts stop in their undertakings half way, and forsake the course, and turn aside like Atalanta after profit and commodity,—

Leaving the course the rolling gold to seize.

And therefore it is no wonder if Art cannot outstrip Nature, and according to the agreement and condition of the contest put her to death or destroy her; but on the contrary Art remains subject to Nature, as the wife is subject to the husband.

XXVI.
PROMETHEUS;
OR THE STATE OF MAN.

TRADITION says that Man was made by Prometheus, and made of clay; only that Prometheus took particles from different animals and mixed them in. He, desiring to benefit and protect his own work, and to be regarded not as the founder only but also as the amplifier and emarger of the human race, stole up to heaven with a bundle of fennel-stalks in his hand, kindled them at the chariot of the sun, and so brought fire to the earth and presented it to mankind. For this so great benefit received at his hands, men (it is said) were far from being grateful; so far indeed, that they conspired together and impeached him and his invention before Jupiter. This act of theirs was not so taken as justice may seem to have required. For the accusation proved very acceptable both to Jupiter and the rest of the gods; and so delighted were they, that they not only indulged mankind with the use of fire, but presented them likewise with a new gift, of all others most agreeable and desirable,—perpetual youth. Overjoyed with this, the foolish people put the gift of the gods on the back of an ass. The ass on his way home, being troubled with extreme thirst, came to a fountain; but a serpent that was set to guard it, would not let him drink unless he gave in payment whatever that was that he carried on his back. The poor ass accepted the condition; and so for a mouthful of water the power of renewing youth was transferred from men to serpents. After mankind had lost their prize, Prometheus made up his quarrel with them; but retaining his malice, and being bitterly incensed against Jupiter, he did not scruple to tempt him with deceit, even in the act of sacrifice. Having slain (it is said) two bulls, he stuffed the hide of one of them with the flesh and fat of both, and bringing them to the altar, with an air of devotion and benignity offered Jupiter his choice. Jupiter, detesting his craft and bad faith, but knowing how to requite it, chose the mock bull; then bethinking him of vengeance, and seeing that there was no way to take down the insolence of Prometheus except by chastising the human race (of which work he was extravagantly vain and proud), ordered Vulcan to make a fair and lovely woman. When she was made, each of the gods bestowed upon her his several gift; whence she was called Pandora. Then they placed in her hands an elegant vase, in which were enclosed all mischiefs and calamities; only at the bottom there remained Hope. With her vase in her hand she repaired first of all to Prometheus, to see if he would take and open it, which he, cautious and cunning, declined. Thus rejected she went away to Epimetheus, Prometheus's brother, but of a character entirely different, who opened it without hesitation; but as soon as he saw all the mischiefs rushing out, growing wise when it was too late, he struggled to get the lid on again as fast as possible; but it was all he could do to keep in the last of the party, which was Hope, that lay at the bottom. In the end Jupiter seized Prometheus, and upon many and grave charges,—as that of old he had stolen fire, that he had made a mock of Jupiter's majesty in that deceitful sacrifice, that he had scorned and rejected his gift, together with another not mentioned before, that he had attempted to ravish Minerva,—threw him into chains and condemned him to perpetual tortures. For by Jupiter's command he was dragged to Mount Caucasus, and there bound fast to a column so that he could not stir. And there was an eagle which gnawed and consumed his liver by day; but what was eaten in the day grew again in the night, so that matter was never wanting for the torture to work upon. Yet they say that this punishment had its end at last; for Hercules sailed across the ocean in a cup that was given to him by the Sun, came to Caucasus, shot the eagle with his arrows, and set Prometheus free. In honour of Prometheus there were instituted in some nations games called torch-races, in which the runners carried lighted torches in their hands; and if any went out the bearer stood aside, leaving the victory to those that followed; and the first who reached the goal with his torch still burning received the prize.

This fable carries in it many true and grave speculations both on the surface and underneath. For there are some things in it that have been long ago observed: others have never been touched at all.

Prometheus clearly and expressly signifies Providence: and the one thing singled out by the ancients as the special and peculiar work of Providence was the creation and constitution of Man. For this one reason no doubt was, that the nature of man includes mind and intellect, which is the seat of providence; and since to derive mind and reason from principles brutal and irrational would be harsh and incredible, it follows almost necessarily that the human spirit was endued with providence not without the precedent and intention and warrant of the greater providence. But this was not all. The chief aim of the parable appears to be, that Man, if we look to final causes, may be regarded as the centre of the world; insomuch that if man were taken away from the world, the rest would seem to be all astray, without aim or purpose, to be like a besom without a binding, as the saying is, and to be leading to nothing. For the whole world works together in the service of man; and there is nothing from which he does not derive use and fruit. The revolutions and courses of the stars serve him both for distinction of the seasons and distribution of the quarters of the world. The appearances of the middle sky afford him prognostications of weather. The winds sail his ships and work his mills and engines. Plants and animals of all kinds are made to furnish him either with dwelling and shelter or clothing or food or medicine, or to lighten his labour, or to give him pleasure and comfort; insomuch that all things seem to be going about man's business and not their own. Nor is it without meaning added that in the mass and composition of which man was made, particles taken from the different animals were infused and mixed up with the clay; for it is most true that of all things in the universe man is the most composite, so that he was not without reason called by the ancients the little world. For though the Alchemists, when they maintain that there is to be found in man every mineral, every vegetable, etc., or something corresponding to them, take the word microcosm in a sense too gross and literal, and have so spoiled the elegance and distorted the meaning of it, yet that the body of man is of all existing things both the most mixed and the most organic, remains not the less a sober and solid truth. And this is indeed the reason it is capable of such wonderful powers and faculties; for the powers of simple bodies, though they be certain and rapid, yet being less refracted, broken up, and counteracted by mixture, they are few; but abundance and excellence of power resides in mixture and composition. Nevertheless we see that man in the first Stage of his existence is a naked and defenceless thing, slow to help himself, and full of want. Therefore Prometheus applied himself with all haste to the invention of fire; which in all human necessities and business is the great minister of relief and help; insomuch that if the soul be the form of forms and the hand the instrument of instruments, fire may rightly be called the help of helps and the mean of means. For through it most operations are effected, through it the arts mechanical and the sciences themselves are furthered in an infinite variety of ways.

Now the description of the manner in which the theft of fire was accomplished is apt and according to the nature of the thing. It was by applying a stalk of fennel to the chariot of the Sun. For fennel is used as a rod to strike with. The meaning therefore clearly is that Fire is produced by violent percussions and collisions of one body with another; whereby the matter they are made of is attenuated and set in motion, and prepared to receive the heat of the celestial bodies, and so by clandestine processes, as by an act of theft, snatches fire as it were from the chariot of the Sun.

There follows a remarkable part of the parable. Men, we are told, instead of gratulation and thanksgiving fell to remonstrance and indignation, and brought an accusation before Jupiter both against Prometheus and against Fire; and this act was moreover by him so well liked, that in consideration of it he accumulated fresh benefits upon mankind. For how should the crime of ingratitude towards their maker, a vice which includes in itself almost all others, deserve approbation and reward? and what could be the drift of such a fiction? But this is not what is meant. The meaning of the allegory is, that the accusation and arraignment by men both of their own nature and of art, proceeds from an excellent condition of mind and issues in good; whereas the contrary is hated by the gods, and unlucky. For they who extravagantly extol human nature as it is and the arts as received; who spend themselves in admiration of what they already possess, and hold up as perfect the sciences which are professed and cultivated; are wanting, first, in reverence to the divine nature, with the perfection of which they almost presume to compare, and next in usefulness towards man; as thinking that they have already reached the summit of things and finished their work, and therefore need seek no further. They on the other hand who arraign and accuse nature and the arts, and abound with complainings are not only more modest (if it be truly considered) in their sentiment, but are also stimulated perpetually to fresh industry and new discoveries. And this makes me marvel all the more at the ignorance and evil genius of mankind, who being overcrowed by the arrogance of a few persons, hold in such honour that philosophy of the Peripatetics, which was but a portion, and no large portion either, of the Greek philosophy, that every attempt to find fault with it has come to be not only useless, but also suspected and almost dangerous. Whereas certainly in my opinion both Empedocles and Democritus, who complain, the first madly enough, but the second very soberly, that all things are hidden away from us, that we know nothing, that we discern nothing, that truth is drowned in deep wells, that the true and the false are strangely joined and twisted together, (for the new Academy carried it a great deal too far), are more to be approved than the school of Aristotle, so confident and dogmatical. Therefore let all men know that the preferring of complaints against nature and the arts is a thing well pleasing to the gods, and draws down new alms and bounties from the divine goodness; and that the accusation of Prometheus, our maker and master though he be, yea sharp and vehement accusation, is a thing more sober and profitable than this overflow of congratulation and thanksgiving: let them know that conceit of plenty is one of the principal causes of want.

Now for the gift which men are said to have received as the reward of their accusation, namely the unfading flower of youth; it seems to show that methods and medicines for the retardation of age and the prolongation of life were by the ancients not despaired of, but reckoned rather among those things which men once had and by sloth and negligence let slip, than among those which were wholly denied or never offered. For they seem to say that by the true use of fire, and by the just and vigorous accusation and conviction of the errors of art, such gifts might have been compassed; and that it was not the divine goodness that was wanting to them therein, but they that were wanting to themselves; in that having received this gift of the gods, they committed the carriage of it to a lazy and slow-paced ass. By this seems to be meant experience; a thing stupid and full of delay, whose slow and tortoise-like pace gave birth to that ancient complaint that life is short and art is long. And for my own part I certainly think that those two faculties—the Dogmatical and the Empirical—have not yet been well united and coupled; but that the bringing down of new gifts from the gods has ever been left either to the abstract philosophies, as to a light bird; or to sluggish and tardy experience, as to an ass. And yet it must be said in behalf of the ass, that he might perhaps do well enough, but for that accident of thirst by the way. For if a man would put himself fairly under the command of experience, and proceed steadily onward by a certain law and method, and not let any thirst for experiments either of profit or ostentation seize him by the way and make him lay down and unsettle his burthen in order that he may taste them,—such a man I do think would prove a carrier to whom new and augmented measures of divine bounty might be well enough entrusted.

As for the transfer of the gift to serpents, it seems to be an addition merely for ornament; unless it were inserted in shame of mankind, who with that fire of theirs and with so many arts, cannot acquire for themselves things which nature has of herself bestowed on many other animals.

The sudden reconciliation of men with Prometheus after the frustration of their hope, contains likewise a wise and useful observation. It alludes to the levity and rashness of men in new experiments; who if an experiment does not at once succeed according to wish, are in far too great a hurry to give up the attempt as a failure, and so tumble back to where they were and take on with the old things again.

Having thus described the state of man in respect of arts and matters intellectual, the parable passes to Religion; for with the cultivation of the arts came likewise the worship of things divine; and this was immediately seized on and polluted by hypocrisy. Therefore under the figure of that double sacrifice is elegantly represented the person of the truly religious man and the hypocrite. For in the one there is the fat, which is God's portion, by reason of the flame and sweet savour, whereby is meant affection and zeal burning and rising upward for the glory of God. In him are the bowels of charity; in him wholesome and useful meat. In the other is found nothing but dry and bare bones, with which the skin is stuffed out till it looks like a fair and noble victim: whereby are signi-fied those external and empty rites and ceremonies with which men overload and inflate the service of religion: things rather got up for ostentation than conducing to piety. Nor is it enough for men to offer such mockeries to God, but they must also lay and father them upon himself, as though he had himself chosen and prescribed them. It is against such a kind of choice that the prophet in God's person remonstrates, when he says, Is this such a fast as I have CHOSEN, that man should afflict his soul for one day and bow his head like a bulrush?

After touching the state of Religion, the parable turns to morals and the conditions of human life. Pandora has been generally and rightly understood to mean pleasure and sensual appetite; which after the introduction of civil arts and culture and luxury, is kindled up as it were by the gift of fire. To Vulcan therefore, who in like manner represents fire, the making of Pleasure is imputed. And from her have flowed forth infinite mischief upon the minds, the bodies, and the fortunes of men, together with repentance when too late; nor upon individuals only, but upon kingdoms also and commonwealths. For from this same fountain have sprung wars and civil disturbances and tyrannies. But it is worth while to observe how prettily and elegantly the two conditions and as it were pictures or models of human life are set forth in the story, under the persons of Prometheus and Epimetheus. The followers of Epimetheus are the improvident, who take no care for the future but think only of what is pleasant at the time; and on this account it is true that they suffer many distresses, difficulties, and calamities, and are engaged in a perpetual struggle with them; and yet in the mean time they indulge their genius, and amuse their minds moreover, as their ignorance allows them to do, with many empty hopes, in which they take delight as in pleasant dreams, and so sweeten the miseries of life. The school of Prometheus on the other hand, that is the wise and fore-thoughtful class of men, do indeed by their caution decline and remove out of their way many evils and misfortunes; but with that good there is this evil joined, that they stint themselves of many pleasures and of the various agreeableness of life, and cross their genius, and (what is far worse) torment and wear themselves away with cares and solicitude and inward fears. For being bound to the column of Necessity, they are troubled with innumerable thoughts (which because of their flightiness are represented by the eagle), thoughts which prick and gnaw and corrode the liver: and if at intervals, as in the night, they obtain some little relaxation and quiet of mind, yet new fears and anxieties return presently with the morning. Very few therefore are they to whom the benefit of both portions falls,—to retain the advantages of providence and yet free themselves from the evils of solicitude and perturbation. Neither is it possible for any one to attain this double blessing, except by the help of Hercules; that is, fortitude and constancy of mind, which being prepared for all events and equal to any fortune, foresees without fear, enjoys without fastidiousness, and bears without impatience. It is worth noting too that this virtue was not natural to Prometheus, but adventitious, and came by help from without; for it is not a thing which any inborn and natural fortitude can attain to; it comes from beyond the ocean, it is received and brought to us from the Sun; for it comes of Wisdom, which is as the Sun, and of meditation upon the inconstancy and fluctuations of human life, which is as the navigation of the ocean: two things which Virgil has well coupled together in those lines:—

Ah, happy, could we but the causes know

Of all that is! Then should we know no fears:

Then should the inexorable Fate no power

Possess to shake us, nor the jaws of death.

Most elegantly also is it added for the consolation and encouragement of men's minds, that that mighty hero sailed in a cup or pitcher; lest they should too much mistrust the narrowness and frailty of their own nature, or plead it in their own excuse, as though it were altogether incapable of this kind of fortitude and constancy: the true nature of which was well divined by Seneca, when he said, It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of man and the security of God.

But I must now return to a part which, that I might not interrupt the connexion of what precedes, I have purposely passed by. I mean that last crime of Prometheus, the attempt upon the chastity of Minerva. For it was even for this offence,—certainly a very great and grave one,—that he underwent that punishment of the tearing of his entrails. The crime alluded to appears to be no other than that into which men not unfrequently fall when puffed up with arts and much knowledge,—of trying to bring the divine wisdom itself under the dominion of sense and reason: from which attempt inevitably follows laceration of the mind and vexation without end or rest. And therefore men must soberly and modestly distinguish between things divine and human, between the oracles of sense and of faith; unless they mean to have at once a heretical religion and a fabulous philosophy.

The last point remains,—namely the races with burning torches instituted in honour of Prometheus. This again, like that fire in memory and celebration of which these games were instituted, alludes to arts and sciences, and carries in it a very wise admonition, to this effect,—that the perfection of the sciences is to be looked for not from the swiftness or ability of any one inquirer, but from a succession. For the strongest and swiftest runners are perhaps not the best fitted to keep their torch alight; since it may be put out by going too fast as well as too slow. It seems however that these races and games of the torch have long been intermitted; since it is still in their first authors,—Aristotle, Galen, Euclid, Ptolemy,—that we find the several sciences in highest perfection; and no great matter has been done, nor hardly attempted, by their successors. And well were it to be wished that these games in honour of Prometheus, that is of Human Nature, were again revived; that the victory may no longer depend upon the unsteady and wavering torch of each single man; but competition, emulation, and good fortune be brought to aid. Therefore men should be advised to rouse themselves, and try each his own strength and the chance of his own turn, and not to stake the whole venture upon the spirits and brains of a few persons.

Such are the views which I conceive to be shadowed out in this so common and hacknied fable. It is true that there are not a few things beneath which have a wonderful correspondency with the mysteries of the Christian faith. The voyage of Hercules especially, sailing in a pitcher to set Prometheus free, seems to present an image of God the Word hastening in the frail vessel of the flesh to redeem the human race. But I purposely refrain myself from all licence of speculation in this kind, lest peradventure I bring strange fire to the altar of the Lord.

XXVII.
THE FLIGHT OF ICARUS;
ALSO SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS; OR THE MIDDLE WAY.

MODERATION, or the Middle Way, is in Morals much commended; in Intellectuals less spoken of, though not less useful and good; in Politics only, questionable and to be used with caution and judgment.

The principle of moderation in Morals is represented by the ancients in the path which Icarus was directed to take through the air; the same principle in relation to the intellect, by the passage between Scylla and Charybdis, so famous for its difficulty and danger.

Icarus was instructed by his father to beware, when he came to fly over the sea, of taking either too high or too low a course. For his wings being fixed on with wax, the fear was that if he rose too high the wax would be melted by the sun's heat; if he kept down too near the vapour of the sea, it would lose its tenacity by the moisture. Icarus, in the adventurous spirit of youth, made for the heights, and so fell headlong down.

It is an easy and a familiar parable. The path of virtue goes directly midway between excess on the one hand and defect on the other. Icarus, being in the pride of youthful alacrity, naturally fell a victim to excess. For it is on the side of excess that the young commonly sin, as the old on the side of defect. And yet if he was to perish one way, it must be admitted that of two paths, both bad and mischievous, he chose the better. For sins of defect are justly accounted worse than sins of excess; because in excess there is something of magnanimity,— something, like the flight of a bird, that holds kindred with heaven; whereas defect creeps on the ground like a reptile. Excellently was it said by Heraclitus, Dry light is the best soul. For when the moisture and humours of earth get into the soul, it becomes altogether low and degenerate. And yet here too a measure must be kept: the dryness, so justly praised, must be such as to make the light more subtle, but not such as to make it catch fire. But this is what everybody knows.

Now for the passage between Scylla and Charybdis (understood of the conduct of the understanding), certainly it needs both skill and good fortune to navigate it. For if the ship run on Scylla, it is dashed on the rocks; if on Charybdis, it is sucked in by the whirlpool: by which parable (I can but briefly touch it, though it suggests reflexions without end) we are meant to understand that in every knowledge and science, and in the rules and axioms appertaining to them, a mean must be kept between too many distinctions and too much generality,— between the rocks of the one and the whirlpools of the other. For these two are notorious for the shipwreck of wits and arts.

XXVIII.
SPHINX;
OR SCIENCE.

SPHINX, says the story, was a monster combining many shapes in one. She had the face and voice of a virgin, the wings of a bird, the claws of a griffin. She dwelt on the ridge of a mountain near Thebes and infested the roads, lying in ambush for travellers, whom she would suddenly attack and lay hold of; and when she had mastered them, she propounded to them certain dark and perplexed riddles, which she was thought to have obtained from the Muses. And if the wretched captives could not at once solve and interpret the same, as they stood hesitating and confused she cruelly tore them to pieces. Time bringing no abatement of the calamity, the Thebans offered to any man who should expound the Sphinx's riddles (for this was the only way to subdue her) the sovereignty of Thebes as his reward. The greatness of the prize induced Œdipus, a man of wisdom and penetration, but lame from wounds in his feet, to accept the condition and make the trial: who presenting himself full of confidence and alacrity before the Sphinx, and being asked what kind of animal it was which was born four-footed, afterwards became two-footed, then three-footed and at last four-footed again, answered readily that it was man; who at his birth and during his infancy sprawls on all four, hardly attempting to creep; in a little while walks upright on two feet; in later years leans on a walkingstick and so goes as it were on three; and at last in extreme age and decrepitude, his sinews all failing, sinks into a quadruped again, and keeps his bed. This was the right answer and gave him the victory; whereupon he slew the Sphinx; whose body was put on the back of an ass and carried about in triumph; while himself was made according to compact King of Thebes.

The fable is an elegant and a wise one, invented apparently in allusion to Science; especially in its application to practical life. Science, being the wonder of the ignorant and unskilful, may be not absurdly called a monster. In figure and aspect it is represented as many-shaped, in allusion to the immense variety of matter with which it deals. It is said to have the face and voice of a woman, in respect of its beauty and facility of utterance. Wings are added because the sciences and the discoveries of science spread and fly abroad in an instant; the communication of knowledge being like that of one candle with another, which lights up at once. Claws, sharp and hooked, are ascribed to it with great elegance, because the axioms and arguments of science penetrate and hold fast the mind, so that it has no means of evasion or escape; a point which the sacred philosopher also noted: The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails driven deep in. Again, all knowledge may be regarded as having its station on the heights of mountains; for it is deservedly esteemed a thing sublime and lofty, which looks down upon ignorance as from an eminence, and has moreover a spacious prospect on every side, such as we find on hill-tops. It is described as infesting the roads, because at every turn in the journey or pilgrimage of human life, matter and occasion for study assails and encounters us. Again, Sphinx proposes to men a variety of hard questions and riddles which she received from the Muses. In these, while they remain with the Muses, there is probably no cruelty; for so long as the object of meditation and inquiry is merely to know, the understanding is not oppressed or straitened by it, but is free to wander and expatiate, and finds in the very uncertainty of conclusion and variety of choice a certain pleasure and delight; but when they pass from the Muses to Sphinx, that is from contemplation to practice, whereby there is necessity for present action, choice, and decision, then they begin to be painful and cruel; and unless they be solved and disposed of, they strangely torment and worry the mind, pulling it first this way and then that, and fairly tearing it to pieces. Moreover the riddles of the Sphinx have always a twofold condition attached to them; distraction and laceration of mind, if you fail to solve them; if you succeed, a kingdom. For he who understands his subject is master of his end; and every workman is king over his work.

Now of the Sphinx's riddles there are in all two kinds; one concerning the nature of things, another concerning the nature of man; and in like manner there are two kinds of kingdom offered as the reward of solving them; one over nature, and the other over man. For the command over things natural,—over bodies, medicine, mechanical powers, and infinite other of the kind—is the one proper and ultimate end of true natural philosophy; however the philosophy of the School, content with what it finds, and swelling with talk, may neglect or spurn the search after realities and works. But the riddle proposed to Œdi us, by the solution of which he became King of Thebes, related to the nature of man; for whoever has a thorough insight into the nature of man may shape his fortune almost as he will, and is born for empire; as was well declared concerning the arts of the Romans,—

Be thine the art,

O Rome, with government to rule the nations,

And to know whom to spare and whom to abate,

And settle the condition of the world.

And therefore it fell out happily that Augustus Cæsar, whether on purpose or by chance, used a Sphinx for his seal. For he certainly excelled in the art of politics if ever man did; and succeeded in the course of his life in solving most happily a great many new riddles concerning the nature of man, which if he had not dexterously and readily answered he would many times have been in imminent danger of destruction. The fable adds very prettily that when the Sphinx was subdued, her body was laid on the back of an ass: for there is nothing so subtle and abstruse, but when it is once thoroughly understood and published to the world, even a dull wit can carry it. Nor is that other point to be passed over, that the Sphinx was subdued by a lame man with club feet; for men generally proceed too fast and in too great a hurry to the solution of the Sphinx's riddles; whence it follows that the Sphinx has the better of them, and instead of obtaining the sovereignty by works and effects, they only distract and worry their minds with disputations.

XXIX.
PROSERPINA;
OR SPIRIT.

THEY say that when Pluto upon that memorable partition of the kingdoms received for his portion the infernal regions, he despaired of gaining any of the goddesses above in marriage by addresses and gentle methods, and so was driven to take measures for carrying one of them off by force. Seizing his opportunity therefore, while Proserpina, daughter of Ceres, a fair virgin, was gathering flowers of Narcissus in the Sicilian meadows, he rushed suddenly upon her and carried her off in his chariot to the subterranean regions. Great reverence was paid her there: so much that she was even called the Mistress or Queen of Dis. Meanwhile her mother Ceres, filled with grief and anxiety by the disappearance of her dearly beloved daughter, took a lighted torch in her hand, and wandered with it all round the world in quest of her. Finding the search fruitless, and hearing by chance that she had been carried down to the infernal regions, she wearied Jupiter with tears and lamentations, praying to have her restored; till at last she won a promise from him that if her daughter had not eaten of anything belonging to the under world, then she might bring her back. This condition was unfortunate for the mother; for Proserpina had eaten (it was found) three grains of a pomegranate. But this did not prevent Ceres from renewing her prayers and lamentations; and it was agreed at last that Proserpina should divide the year between the two, and live by turns six months with her husband and the other six with her mother.

Afterwards a very daring attempt to carry away the same Proserpina from the chamber of Dis was made by Theseus and Pirithous. But having sate down to rest by the way on a stone in the infernal regions, they were unable to rise again, and continued sitting there for ever. So Proserpina remained Queen of the under world, where a great and new privilege was granted in honour of her; for whereas they who went down to the under world were not permitted to go back, a singular exception was made in favour of any who should bring a certain golden branch as a present to Proserpina; such present entitling the bearer to go and return. It was a single branch growing by itself in a vast and dark wood; neither had it a stock of its own, but grew like misseltoe upon a tree of different kind; and as soon as it was plucked off, another came in its place.

The fable relates, as I take it, to Nature, and explains the source of that rich and fruitful supply of active power subsisting in the under world, from which all the growths of our upper world spring, and into which they again return and are resolved. By Proserpina the ancients signified that ethereal spirit which, having been separated by violence from the upper globe, is enclosed and imprisoned beneath the earth (which earth is represented by Pluto); as was well expressed in those lines,—

Whether that the Earth yet fresh, and from the deeps

Of heaven new-sundered, did some seeds retain,

Some sparks and motions of its kindred sky.

This spirit is represented as having been ravished, that is suddenly and forcibly carried off, by the Earth; because there is no holding it in if it have time and leisure to escape, and the only way to confine and fix it is by a sudden pounding and breaking up; just as if you would mix air with water, you can only do it by sudden and rapid agitation: for thus it is that we see these bodies united in foam, the air being as it were ravished by the water. It is prettily added that Proserpina was carried off while in the act of gathering flowers of Narcissus in the valleys: for Narcissus takes its name from torpor or stupor; and it is only when beginning to curdle, and as it were to gather torpor, that spirit is in the best state to be caught up and carried off by earthly matter. It is right too that Proserpina should have that honour, which is not conceded to the wife of any other God,—to be called the Mistress or Queen of Dis: for the spirit does in fact govern and manage everything in those regions, without the help of Pluto, who remains stupid and unconscious.

The air meanwhile and the power of the celestial region (which is represented by Ceres) strives with infinite assiduity to win forth and recover this imprisoned spirit again; and that torch which the air carries—the lighted torch in Ceres's hand—means no doubt the Sun, which does the office of a lamp all over the earth, and would do more than anything else for the recovery of Proserpina, were the thing at all possible. But Proserpina remains fixed where she is; the reason and manner whereof is accurately and admirably set forth in those two agreements between Jupiter and Ceres. For with regard to the first, most certain it is that there are two ways of confining and restraining spirit in solid and earthy matter; one by constipation and obstruction, which is simple im-prisonment and violence; the other by administering some suitable aliment, which is spontaneous and free. For when the imprisoned spirit begins to feed and nourish itself, it is no longer in a hurry to escape, but becomes settled as in its own land. And this is what is meant by Proserpina's tasting of the pomegranate; which if she had not done, she would have been long since carried off by Ceres as she traversed the globe with her torch in quest of her. For though the spirit which is contained in metals and minerals is prevented from getting out chiefly perhaps by the solidity of the mass, that which is contained in plants and animals dwells in a porous body, from which it could easily escape if it were not by that process of tasting reconciled to remain. As for the second agree-ment,—that she should stay six months at a time with either party,—it is nothing else but an elegant description of the division of the year; since that spirit which is diffused through the earth does (in regard to the vegetable kingdom) live in the upper world during the summer months, and retires to the under world in the winter months.

Now for that attempt of Theseus and Pirithous to carry Proserpina away, the meaning is that the subtler spirits which in many bodies descend to the earth often fail to draw out and assimilate and carry away with them the subterranean spirit, but contrariwise are themselves curdled and never reascend again, and so go to increase the number of Proserpina's people and the extent of her empire.

As for that golden branch, it may seem difficult for me to withstand the Alchemists, if they attack me from that side; seeing they promise us by that same stone of theirs not only mountains of gold, but also the restitution of natural bodies as it were from the gates of the Internals. Nevertheless for Alchemy and those that are never weary of their wooing of that stone, as I am sure they have no ground in theory, so I suspect that they have no very good pledge of success in practice. And therefore putting them aside, here is my opinion as to the meaning of that last part of the parable. From many figurative allusions I am satisfied that the ancients regarded the conservation, and to a certain extent the restoration, of natural bodies as a thing not desperate, but rather as abstruse and out of the way. And this is what I take them in the passage before us to mean, by placing this branch in the midst of the innumerable other branches of a vast and thick wood. They represented it as golden; because gold is the emblem of duration; and grafted, because the effect in question is to be looked for as the result of art, not of any medicine or method which is simple or natural.

XXX.
METIS;
OR COUNSEL.

THE ancient poets tell us that Jupiter took Metis, whose name plainly signifies Counsel, to wife; that she conceived by him and was with child; which he perceiving did not wait till she brought forth, but ate her up; whereby he became himself with child; but his delivery was of a strange kind; for out of his head or brain he brought forth Pallas armed.

This monstrous and at first sight very foolish fable contains, as I interpret it, a secret of government. It describes the art whereby kings so deal with the councils of state as not only to keep their authority and majesty untouched, but also to increase and exalt it in the eyes of their people. For kings by a sound and wise arrangement tie themselves to their councils with a bond like that of wedlock, and deliberate with them concerning all their greatest matters, rightly judging that this is no diminution to their majesty. But when the question grows ripe for a decision (which is the bringing forth) they do not allow the council to deal any further in it, lest their acts should seem to be dependent upon the council's will; but at that point, (unless the matter be of such a nature that they wish to put away the envy of it) they take into their own hands whatever has been by the council elaborated and as it were shaped in the womb; so that the decision and execution (which, because it comes forth with power and carries necessity, is elegantly represented under the figure of Pallas armed) may seem to emanate from themselves. Nor is it enough that it be seen to proceed from their free and unconstrained and independent authority and will, but they must have the world think that the decision comes out of their own head, that is out of their proper wisdom and judgment.

XXXI.
THE SIRENS;
OR PLEASURE.

THE fable of the Sirens is truly applied to the pernicious allurements of pleasure; but in a very poor and vulgar sense. For I find the wisdom of the ancients to be like grapes ill-trodden: something is squeezed out, but the best parts are left behind and passed over.

The Sirens were daughters (we are told) of Achelous and of Terpsichore, one of the Muses. Originally they had wings; but being beaten in a contest with the Muses which they had rashly challenged, their wings were plucked off, and turned by the Muses into crowns for themselves, who thenceforward all wore wings on their heads, except only the mother of the Sirens. These Sirens had their dwelling in certain pleasant islands, whence they kept watch for ships; and when they saw any approaching, they began to sing; which made the voyagers first stay to listen, then gradually draw near, and at last laud; when they took and killed them. Their song was not all in one strain; but they varied their measures according to the nature of the listener, and took each captive with those which best suited him. So destructive the plague was, that the islands of the Sirens were seen afar off white with the bones of unburied carcasses. For this evil two different remedies were found; one by Ulysses, the other by Orpheus. Ulysses caused the ears of his crew to be stopped with wax; and himself (wishing to make trial of the thing without incurring the danger) to be bound to the mast; at the same time forbidding any one at his peril to loose him even at his own request. Orpheus, not caring to be bound, raised his voice on high, and singing to his lyre the praises of the Gods, drowned the voices of the Sirens, and so passed clear of all danger.

The fable relates to Morals, and contains an elegant though obvious parable. Pleasures spring from the union of abundance and affluence with hilarity and exultation of mind. And formerly they carried men away at once, as if with wings, by the first view of their charms. But doctrine and instruction have succeeded in teaching the mind, if not to refrain altogether, yet to pause and consider consequences; and so have stripped the Pleasures of their wings. And this redounded greatly to the honour of the Muses—for as soon as it appeared by some examples that Philosophy could induce a contempt of Pleasures, it was at once regarded as a sublime thing, which could so lift the soul from earth, and make the cogitations of man (which live in his head) winged and ethereal. Only the mother of the Sirens still goes on foot and has no wings; and by her no doubt are meant those lighter kinds of learning which are invented and applied only for amusement; such as those were which Petronius held in estimation; he who being condemned to die, sought in the very waiting-room of death for matter to amuse him, and when he turned to books among other things for consolation, would read (says Tacitus) none of those which teach constancy of mind, but only light verses. Of this kind is that of Catullus,

Let's live and love, love, while we may;

And for all the old men say

Just one penny let us care;

and that other,—

Of Rights and Wrongs let old men prate, and learn

By scrupulous weighing in fine scales of law

What is allowed to do and what forbid.

For doctrines like these seem to aim at taking the wings away from the Muses' crowns and giving them back to the Sirens. The Sirens are said to live in islands; because Pleasures commonly seek retiring-places aloof from the throngs of men. As for the song of the Sirens, its fatal effect and various artifice, it is everybody's theme, and therefore needs no interpreter. But that circumstance of the bones being seen from a distance like white cliffs, has a finer point: implying that the examples of other men's calamities, however clear and conspicuous, have little effect in deterring men from the corruptions of pleasure.

The parable concerning the remedies remains to be spoken of: a wise and noble parable, though not at all abstruse. For a mischief so fraught with cunning, and violence alike, there are proposed three remedies; two from philosophy, the third from religion. The first method of escape is to resist the beginnings, and sedulously to avoid all occasions which may tempt and solicit the mind. This is the waxing up of the ears, and for minds of ordinary and plebeian cast— such as the crew of Ulysses—is the only remedy. But minds of a loftier order, if they fortify themselves with constancy of resolution, can venture into the midst of pleasures; nay and they take delight in thus putting their virtue to a more exquisite proof; besides gaining thereby a more thorough insight—as lookers-on rather than followers—into the foolishness and madness of pleasures: which is that which Solomon professes concerning himself, when he closes his enumeration of the pleasures with which he abounded in these words: Likewise my wisdom remained with me. Heroes of this order may therefore stand unshaken amidst the greatest temptations, and refrain themselves even in the steep-down paths of pleasures; provided only that they follow the example of Ulysses, and forbid the pernicious counsels and flatteries of their own followers, which are of all things most powerful to unsettle and unnerve the mind. But of the three remedies, far the best in every way is that of Orpheus; who by singing and sounding forth the praise of the gods confounded the voices of the Sirens and put them aside: for meditations upon things divine excel the pleasures of the sense, not in power only, but also in sweetness,

¹ For an enlarged version of this fable see above, pp. 442–447.

² For an enlarged version of this table, see above, pp. 448–450.

³ For a slightly enlarged version of this fable, see pp. 450–453.