ow not
things necessary, by error we know them falsely. Ignorance is a privation,
error a positive act. From ignorance comes vice, from error heresy, &c. But
make how many kinds you will, divide and subdivide, few men are free, or
that do not impinge on some one kind or other. [227]_Sic plerumque agitat
stultos inscitia_, as he that examines his own and other men's actions
shall find.

[228]Charon in Lucian, as he wittily feigns, was conducted by Mercury to
such a place, where he might see all the world at once; after he had
sufficiently viewed, and looked about, Mercury would needs know of him what
he had observed: He told him that he saw a vast multitude and a
promiscuous, their habitations like molehills, the men as emmets, "he could
discern cities like so many hives of bees, wherein every bee had a sting,
and they did nought else but sting one another, some domineering like
hornets bigger than the rest, some like filching wasps, others as drones."
Over their heads were hovering a confused company of perturbations, hope,
fear, anger, avarice, ignorance, &c., and a multitude of diseases hanging,
which they still pulled on their pates. Some were brawling, some fighting,
riding, running, _sollicite ambientes, callide litigantes_ for toys and
trifles, and such momentary things, Their towns and provinces mere
factions, rich against poor, poor against rich, nobles against artificers,
they against nobles, and so the rest. In conclusion, he condemned them all
for madmen, fools, idiots, asses, _O stulti, quaenam haec est amentia_? O
fools, O madmen, he exclaims, _insana studia, insani labores_, &c. Mad
endeavours, mad actions, mad, mad, mad, [229]_O saeclum insipiens et
infacetum_, a giddy-headed age. Heraclitus the philosopher, out of a
serious meditation of men's lives, fell a weeping, and with continual tears
bewailed their misery, madness, and folly. Democritus on the other side,
burst out a laughing, their whole life seemed to him so ridiculous, and he
was so far carried with this ironical passion, that the citizens of Abdera
took him to be mad, and sent therefore ambassadors to Hippocrates, the
physician, that he would exercise his skill upon him. But the story is set
down at large by Hippocrates, in his epistle to Damogetus, which because it
is not impertinent to this discourse, I will insert verbatim almost as it
is delivered by Hippocrates himself, with all the circumstances belonging
unto it.

When Hippocrates was