iardize of
company; yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the
action, and apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits
thereof. Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I
would never study but in my dreams, and this time also would I choose
for my devotions; but our grosser memories have then so little hold of
our abstracted understandings that they forget the story, and can only
relate to our awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that that hath
passed. Aristotle, who hath written a singular tract of sleep, hath not,
methinks, thoroughly defined it; nor yet Galen, though he seem to have
corrected it: for those noctambuloes and night-walkers, though in their
sleep do yet enjoy the action of their senses; we must therefore say
that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of
Morpheus; and that those abstracted and ecstatic souls do walk about in
their own corps, as spirits with the bodies they assume, wherein they
seem to hear, see, and feel, though indeed the organs are destitute of
sense, and their natures of those faculties that should inform them.
Thus it is observed that men sometimes, upon the hour of their
departure, do speak and reason above themselves. For then the soul,
beginning to be freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to reason
like herself, and to discourse in a strain above mortality.

FROM 'CHRISTIAN MORALS'

When thou lookest upon the imperfections of others, allow one eye for
what is laudable in them, and the balance they have from some
excellency, which may render them considerable. While we look with fear
or hatred upon the teeth of the viper, we may behold his eye with love.
In venomous natures something may be amiable: poisons afford
anti-poisons: nothing is totally or altogether uselessly bad. Notable
virtues are sometimes dashed with notorious vices, and in some vicious
tempers have been found illustrious acts of virtue, which makes such
observable worth in some actions of King Demetrius, Antonius, and Ahab,
as are not to be found in the same kind in Aristides, Numa, or David.
Constancy, generosity, clemency, and liberality have been highly
conspicuous in some persons not marked out in other concerns for example
or imitation. But since goodness is exemplary in all, if others have not
our virtues, let us not be wanting in theirs; nor, scorning them for
their vices whereof we are free, be condemned by their virtues wherein