cur, with violent passions, by which the brain and fantasy
are troubled and eclipsed. [2661]Fracastorius, _lib. 2. de intellect_,
"will have cold to be the cause of fear and sorrow; for such as are cold
are ill-disposed to mirth, dull, and heavy, by nature solitary, silent; and
not for any inward darkness (as physicians think) for many melancholy men
dare boldly be, continue, and walk in the dark, and delight in it:" _solum
frigidi timidi_: if they be hot, they are merry; and the more hot, the more
furious, and void of fear, as we see in madmen; but this reason holds not,
for then no melancholy, proceeding from choler adust, should fear.
[2662]Averroes scoffs at Galen for his reasons, and brings five arguments
to repel them: so doth Herc. de Saxonia, _Tract. de Melanch. cap. 3._
assigning other causes, which are copiously censured and confuted by
Aelianus Montaltus, _cap. 5 and 6._ Lod. Mercatus _de Inter. morb. cur.
lib. 1. cap. 17._ Altomarus, _cap. 7. de mel._ Guianerius, _tract. 15. c.
1._ Bright _cap. 37._ Laurentius, _cap. 5._ Valesius, _med. cont. lib. 5,
con. 1._ [2663]"Distemperature," they conclude, "makes black juice,
blackness obscures the spirits, the spirits obscured, cause fear and
sorrow." Laurentius, _cap. 13._ supposeth these black fumes offend
specially the diaphragma or midriff, and so _per consequens_ the mind,
which is obscured as [2664]the sun by a cloud. To this opinion of Galen,
almost all the Greeks and Arabians subscribe, the Latins new and old,
_internae, tenebrae offuscant animum, ut externae nocent pueris_, as
children are affrighted in the dark, so are melancholy men at all times,
[2665]as having the inward cause with them, and still carrying it about.
Which black vapours, whether they proceed from the black blood about the
heart, as T. W. Jes. thinks in his treatise of the passions of the mind, or
stomach, spleen, midriff, or all the misaffected parts together, it boots
not, they keep the mind in a perpetual dungeon, and oppress it with
continual fears, anxieties, sorrows, &c. It is an ordinary thing for such
as are sound to laugh at this dejected pusillanimity, and those other
symptoms of melancholy, to make themselves merry with them, and to wonder
at such, as toys and trifles, which may be resisted and withstood, if they
will themselves: but let him that so wonders, consider with himself, that
if a man should tell him on a sudden, some of his especial friends were
dead, could he choose bu