do it. Mancipia gulae, slaves to their several lusts and appetite, they precipitate and plunge [1634]themselves into a labyrinth of cares, blinded with lust, blinded with ambition; [1635]"They seek that at God's hands which they may give unto themselves, if they could but refrain from those cares and perturbations, wherewith they continually macerate their minds." But giving way to these violent passions of fear, grief, shame, revenge, hatred, malice, &c., they are torn in pieces, as Actaeon was with his dogs, and [1636]crucify their own souls.
SUBSECT. IV.—Sorrow a Cause of Melancholy.
Sorrow. Insanus dolor.] In this catalogue of passions, which so much torment the soul of man, and cause this malady, (for I will briefly speak of them all, and in their order,) the first place in this irascible appetite, may justly be challenged by sorrow. An inseparable companion, [1637]"The mother and daughter of melancholy, her epitome, symptom, and chief cause:" as Hippocrates hath it, they beget one another, and tread in a ring, for sorrow is both cause and symptom of this disease. How it is a symptom shall be shown in its place. That it is a cause all the world acknowledgeth, Dolor nonnullis insaniae causa fuit, et aliorum morborum insanabilium, saith Plutarch to Apollonius; a cause of madness, a cause of many other diseases, a sole cause of this mischief, [1638]Lemnius calls it. So doth Rhasis, cont. l. 1. tract. 9. Guianerius, Tract. 15. c. 5, And if it take root once, it ends in despair, as [1639]Felix Plater observes, and as in [1640]Cebes' table, may well be coupled with it. [1641]Chrysostom, in his seventeenth epistle to Olympia, describes it to be "a cruel torture of the soul, a most inexplicable grief, poisoned worm, consuming body and soul, and gnawing the very heart, a perpetual executioner, continual night, profound darkness, a whirlwind, a tempest, an ague not appearing, heating worse than any fire, and a battle that hath no end. It crucifies worse than any tyrant; no torture, no strappado, no bodily punishment is like unto it." 'Tis the eagle without question which the poets feigned to gnaw [1642]Prometheus' heart, and "no heaviness is like unto the heaviness of the heart," Eccles. xxv. 15, 16. [1643]"Every perturbation is a misery, but grief a cruel torment," a domineering passion: as in old Rome, when the Dictator was created, all inferior magistracies ceased; when grief appears, all other passions vanish. "It dries up the bones," saith Solomon, cap. 17. Prov., makes them hollow-eyed, pale, and lean, furrow-faced, to have dead looks, wrinkled brows, shrivelled cheeks, dry bodies, and quite perverts their temperature that are misaffected with it. As Eleonara, that exiled mournful duchess (in our [1644]English Ovid), laments to her noble husband Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester,
"Sawest thou those eyes in whose sweet cheerful look
Duke Humphrey once such joy and pleasure took,
Sorrow hath so despoil'd me of all grace,
Thou couldst not say this was my Elnor's face.
Like a foul Gorgon," &c.
[1645]"It hinders concoction, refrigerates the heart, takes away stomach, colour, and sleep, thickens the blood," ([1646]Fernelius, l. 1. c. 18. de morb. causis,) "contaminates the spirits." ([1647]Piso.) Overthrows the natural heat, perverts the good estate of body and mind, and makes them weary of their lives, cry out, howl and roar for very anguish of their souls. David confessed as much, Psalm xxxviii. 8, "I have roared for the very disquietness of my heart." And Psalm cxix. 4, part 4 v. "My soul melteth away for very heaviness," v. 38. "I am like a bottle in the smoke." Antiochus complained that he could not sleep, and that his heart fainted for grief, [1648]Christ himself, vir dolorum, out of an apprehension of grief, did sweat blood, Mark xiv. "His soul was heavy to the death, and no sorrow was like unto his." Crato, consil. 24. l. 2, gives instance in one that was so melancholy by reason of [1649]grief; and Montanus, consil. 30, in a noble matron, [1650]"that had no other cause of this mischief." I. S. D. in Hildesheim, fully cured a patient of his that was much troubled with melancholy, and for many years, [1651]"but afterwards, by a little occasion of sorrow, he fell into his former fits, and was tormented as before." Examples are common, how it causeth melancholy, [1652]desperation, and sometimes death itself; for (Eccles. xxxviii. 15,) "Of heaviness comes death; worldly sorrow causeth death." 2 Cor. vii. 10, Psalm xxxi. 10, "My life is wasted with heaviness, and my years with mourning." Why was Hecuba said to be turned to a dog? Niobe into a stone? but that for grief she was senseless and stupid. Severus the Emperor [1653] died for grief; and how [1654]many myriads besides? Tanta illi est feritas, tanta est insania luctus. [1655]Melancthon gives a reason of it, [1656]"the gathering of much melancholy blood about the heart, which collection extinguisheth the good spirits, or at least dulleth them, sorrow strikes the heart, makes it tremble and pine away, with great pain; and the black blood drawn from the spleen, and diffused under the ribs, on the left side, makes those perilous hypochondriacal convulsions, which happen to them that are troubled with sorrow."
SUBSECT. V.—Fear, a Cause.
Cousin german to sorrow, is fear, or rather a sister, fidus Achates, and continual companion, an assistant and a principal agent in procuring of this mischief; a cause and symptom as the other. In a word, as [1657] Virgil of the Harpies, I may justly say of them both,
"Tristius haud illis monstrum, nec saevior ulla
Pestis et ira Deum stygiis sese extulit undis."
"A sadder monster, or more cruel plague so fell,
Or vengeance of the gods, ne'er came from Styx or Hell."
This foul fiend of fear was worshipped heretofore as a god by the Lacedaemonians, and most of those other torturing [1658]affections, and so was sorrow amongst the rest, under the name of Angerona Dea, they stood in such awe of them, as Austin, de Civitat. Dei, lib. 4. cap. 8, noteth out of Varro, fear was commonly [1659]adored and painted in their temples with a lion's head; and as Macrobius records, l. 10. Saturnalium; [1660]"In the calends of January, Angerona had her holy day, to whom in the temple of Volupia, or goddess of pleasure, their augurs and bishops did yearly sacrifice; that, being propitious to them, she might expel all cares, anguish, and vexation of the mind for that year following." Many lamentable effects this fear causeth in men, as to be red, pale, tremble, sweat, [1661]it makes sudden cold and heat to come over all the body, palpitation of the heart, syncope, &c. It amazeth many men that are to speak, or show themselves in public assemblies, or before some great personages, as Tully confessed of himself, that he trembled still at the beginning of his speech; and Demosthenes, that great orator of Greece, before Philippus. It confounds voice and memory, as Lucian wittily brings in Jupiter Tragoedus, so much afraid of his auditory, when he was to make a speech to the rest of the Gods, that he could not utter a ready word, but was compelled to use Mercury's help in prompting. Many men are so amazed and astonished with fear, they know not where they are, what they say, [1662]what they do, and that which is worst, it tortures them many days before with continual affrights and suspicion. It hinders most honourable attempts, and makes their hearts ache, sad and heavy. They that live in fear are never free, [1663]resolute, secure, never merry, but in continual pain: that, as Vives truly said, Nulla est miseria major quam metus, no greater misery, no rack, nor torture like unto it, ever suspicious, anxious, solicitous, they are childishly drooping without reason, without judgment, [1664]"especially if some terrible object be offered," as Plutarch hath it. It causeth oftentimes sudden madness, and almost all manner of diseases, as I have sufficiently illustrated in my [1665] digression of the force of imagination, and shall do more at large in my section of [1666]terrors. Fear makes our imagination conceive what it list, invites the devil to come to us, as [1667]Agrippa and Cardan avouch, and tyranniseth over our phantasy more than all other affections, especially in the dark. We see this verified in most men, as [1668]Lavater saith, Quae metuunt, fingunt; what they fear they conceive, and feign unto themselves; they think they see goblins, hags, devils, and many times become melancholy thereby. Cardan, subtil. lib. 18, hath an example of such an one, so caused to be melancholy (by sight of a bugbear) all his life after. Augustus Caesar durst not sit in the dark, nisi aliquo assidente, saith [1669]Suetonius, Nunquam tenebris exigilavit. And 'tis strange what women and children will conceive
