rules, indeed a hierarchical class system, but it was accompanied by a horizontal net of correspondences, the concept of Man as Microcosm, which emphasized the analogy and harmony between Man and Cosmos:
Man is called the lesser world, in regard of the perfect analogie and similitude, betwixt him and this greater world, wherein there is nothing whose likenesse and resemblance may not be seene in man; and this you may call the Analogicall world.61
Parallels were created between different levels in microcosm and between man, the state and the universe, between cosmic and political order.62 ‘Rain of tears’ and ‘eyes as stars’ were popular correspondences. ‘This little World, this wondrous Ile of Man.’63 The head of man is ‘the Castle and tower of the Soule’ the sun is ‘the heart of the world, and the heart the Sunne of man’s bodie’.64 Because man, like cosmos, was a mixture of the four elements a web of correspondences and parallels appeared between microcosm, the soul and body of man, and macrocosm, (‘wilt thou see in this Microcosme or little world, the wandering planets’),65 between body politic (the state or the king) and macrocosm. As the King was the head of the State and the heart was the most vital part of Man, the King would be referred to as the Heart of the State. Each of the four humours was linked to a planet; the sanguine humour to Jupiter (‘in man’s body Jupiter helpeth to fairnesse and honestie’),66 the phlegmatic humour to the Moon, the choleric humour to Mars and the melancholy humour to Saturn (the saturnine humour). The position of each planet was seen as its house (home), ‘Jupiter’s house is good in all things, namely to peace, love, and accord’.67 The planets would influence the four elements and complexions in Man differently:
In each men and women, raigneth the Planets, and every signe of the Zodiacke, and every Prime qualitie, and every Element, and every Complexion, but not in every one alike: for in some men raigneth one more, and in some raigneth another: and therefore men be of divers manners, as shall be made apparent.68
The use of manners is here identified with the original meaning of humours and not with the fashionable all inclusive cant term.
The movements of the elements were seen as a dance in the universe, ‘framed by a kind of harmony of sounds’,69 an orchestra in the heavens inviting the elements to dance:
Dauncing, bright lady, then began to be,
When the first seedes whereof the world did spring,
The Fire, Aire, Earth and Water, did agree
By Love’s persuation, Nature’s mighty King,
To leave their first disordered combating,
And in a dance such measure to observe,
As all the world their motion should preserve.70
Jonson in his plays observes and respects the ‘bond of order’ to the extent that his characters remain unchanged throughout the play. The Great Chain, fundamentally, supported his obedience to decorum. Jonson surveyed the vertical ladder of order and degree, the horizontal comparisons and the universal dance, as the collective habit of mind and incorporated the Elizabethan world picture as a fundamental poetic reference in his creative writing. Queen Elizabeth was a keen observer of astrology and astral influences. Jonson turned his interest to Galileo’s telescope (1609) and the new astronomical discoveries but allowed a light ridicule of the excesses of astrology in Volpone and Bartholomew Fair.
ANCIENT MEDICAL THEORY AND RENAISSANCE PSYCHOLOGY
And much adoe, and many words are spent in finding out the path that humours went.71
The theory of humours has its roots in early Greek medicine and natural philosophy and springs from a fundamental search for the primal material, substance or element in the Universe.
Thales (636–546), the astronomer and mathematician from Milet, introduced Water as the first principle and original substance. Anaximander suggested Air, Heraclitus Fire and Empedocles, the physician and philosopher, added Earth but accepted all four as equals.
Heraclitus recognized the eternal change of fire into different and separate forms, ‘the transformations of Fire are, first, sea; of sea half is earth and half fiery storm-cloud’. He reasoned that everything in the world is subject to perpetual change and decay caused by inevitable clash of opposites. He unwrapped the two basic ideas of the historian’s trade, change over time and causation.72 His favourite aphorism was, ‘you cannot step into the same river twice’. He also studied human nature, dreams and emotions. ‘I went in search of myself … you will not find out the limits of the soul by travelling, even if you travel over every pole.’73 The word ‘psychology’ springs to mind.
Hippocrates (460–357) separated medicine from religion and magic.74 The four elements continued in a new medical system as the four humours in the body. The humours were conceived in exact analogy with the cosmic elements and a perfect harmony in body and soul depended on a balanced and evenly proportioned distribution. The balance of health could be disturbed by a deficiency or excess of elements and by isolation of one element from the rest of the group. The constituents would vary with the four seasons, ‘as the year goes round they become now greater and less, each in turn and according to its nature’.75 Phlegm contained the primary quality of Cold in analogy with its parental element Water and was associated with the coldest time of the year. In the same way Blood and the Sanguine humour would increase during the spring because its corresponding element Air contained the qualities of Moisture and Heat which were the qualities of the seasonable weather. With the hot weather in the summer, yellow bile or Choler developed its natural disposition to Heat, the primary quality of the corresponding element Fire: ‘And in summer blood is still strong, and (yellow) bile rises in the body and extends until autumn.’76 Finally, the dry weather in the autumn exhausted the quality of Moisture contained in the blood and black bile or Melancholy would then dominate the constitution of man. Black bile gained its distinction of dryness from the primary quality of the corresponding element Earth. ‘In autumn blood becomes least in man, for autumn is dry and begins from this point to chill him. It is black bile which in autumn is the greatest and strongest.’77
The humoral theory, introduced and explored by the Hippocratic medical school, became the central aspect of medicine for more than two thousand years. The theory spread within the Hellenistic world and continued in Roman, Byzantine, Arabic and Chinese medicine. It finally obtained a new wave of popularity in European medicine with the Renaissance rediscoveries of ancient medical sources. The theory was not always accepted without discussion and opposition among the ancients. The Greek physician, Erasistratus, whose medical skill became known in Alexandria in the middle of the third century B.C., is the first on record to refute the humoral theory completely. The very prominent Greek medical scholar, Asclepiades, who introduced Greek medicine to the Romans at the beginning of the first century B.C., was also hostile to the doctrine.
The second century (A.D.) scientist and logician, Claudius Galenus deserves the credit for preserving the theory of humours.78 His explanations became the accepted authority for successive students of medicine until William Harvey’s circulation theory. Galen’s findings were introduced into Arabian medicine and made the basis for further elaborations in the eleventh century. These extensions were translated back into Latin from Arabic. Thus the medieval European humoral tradition was linked to Galenic (and Hippocratic) theories often sifted through an Arabian temperament and scholarship. Galen’s own interpretations and explanations of the humoral theory started from a recognition of ancestry:
Of all those known to us who have been both physicians and philosophers Hippocrates was the first who took in hand to demonstrate that there are, in all, four mutually
