ke case: or as he that looketh
through a piece of red glass, judgeth everything he sees to be red; corrupt
vapours mounting from the body to the head, and distilling again from
thence to the eyes, when they have mingled themselves with the watery
crystal which receiveth the shadows of things to be seen, make all things
appear of the same colour, which remains in the humour that overspreads our
sight, as to melancholy men all is black, to phlegmatic all white, &c. Or
else as before the organs corrupt by a corrupt phantasy, as Lemnius, _lib.
1. cap. 16._ well quotes, [2699]"cause a great agitation of spirits, and
humours, which wander to and fro in all the creeks of the brain, and cause
such apparitions before their eyes." One thinks he reads something written
in the moon, as Pythagoras is said to have done of old, another smells
brimstone, hears Cerberus bark: Orestes now mad supposed he saw the furies
tormenting him, and his mother still ready to run upon him,

[2700] "O mater obsecro noli me persequi
His furiis, aspectu anguineis, horribilibus,
Ecce ecce me invadunt, in me jam ruunt;"

but Electra told him thus raving in his mad fit, he saw no such sights at
all, it was but his crazed imagination.

[2701] "Quiesce, quiesce miser in linteis tuis,
Non cernis etenim quae videre te putas."

So Pentheus (in Bacchis Euripidis) saw two suns, two Thebes, his brain
alone was troubled. Sickness is an ordinary cause of such sights. Cardan,
_subtil. 8._ _Mens aegra laboribus et jejuniis fracta, facit eos videre,
audire_, &c. And, Osiander beheld strange visions, and Alexander ab
Alexandro both, in their sickness, which he relates _de rerum varietat.
lib. 8. cap. 44._ Albategnius that noble Arabian, on his death-bed, saw a
ship ascending and descending, which Fracastorius records of his friend
Baptista Tirrianus. Weak sight and a vain persuasion withal, may effect as
much, and second causes concurring, as an oar in water makes a refraction,
and seems bigger, bended double, &c. The thickness of the air may cause
such effects, or any object not well-discerned in the dark, fear and
phantasy will suspect to be a ghost, a devil, &c. [2702]_Quod nimis miseri
timent, hoc facile credunt_, we are apt to believe, and mistake in such
cases. Marcellus Donatus, _lib. 2. cap. 1._ brings in a story out of
Aristotle, of one Antepharon which likely saw, wheresoever he was, his own
image in the air, as in a glass. Vitellio