of nature; where actives aptly conjoined to disposed
passives will under any master produce their effects. Thus, I think at
first a great part of philosophy was witchcraft, which being afterward
derived to one another, proved but philosophy, and was indeed no more
but the honest effects of nature: what invented by us is philosophy,
learned from him is magic. We do surely owe the discovery of many
secrets to the discovery of good and bad angels. I could never pass that
sentence of Paracelsus without an asterisk or annotation: "Ascendens
astrum multa revelat quaerentibus magnalia naturae, i.e., opera Dei." I do
think that many mysteries ascribed to our own inventions have been the
courteous revelations of spirits,--for those noble essences in heaven
bear a friendly regard unto their fellow natures on earth; and therefore
believe that those many prodigies and ominous prognostics which forerun
the ruins of States, princes, and private persons are the charitable
premonitions of good angels, which more careless inquiries term but the
effects of chance and nature.

Now, besides these particular and divided spirits there may be (for
aught I know) an universal and common spirit to the whole world. It was
the opinion of Plato, and it is yet of the Hermetical philosophers: if
there be a common nature that unites and ties the scattered and divided
individuals into one species, why may there not be one that unites them
all? However, I am sure there is a common spirit that plays within us,
yet makes no part of us: and that is the Spirit of God, the fire and
scintillation of that noble and mighty essence which is the life and
radical heat of spirits and those essences that know not the virtue of
the sun; a fire quite contrary to the fire of hell: this is that gentle
heat that brooded on the waters, and in six days hatched the world; this
is that irradiation that dispels the mists of hell, the clouds of
horror, fear, sorrow, despair; and preserves the region of the mind in
serenity: whosoever feels not the warm gale and gentle ventilation of
this spirit (though I feel his pulse) I dare not say he lives; for truly
without this, to me there is no heat under the tropic; nor any light,
though I dwelt in the body of the sun.

I believe that the whole frame of a beast doth perish, and is left in
the same state after death as before it was materialled unto life: that
the souls of men know neither contrary nor corruption; that they subsist
b