art our speeches in the daytime cause our fantasy to work upon the
like in our sleep," which Ennius writes of Homer: _Et canis in somnis
leporis vestigia latrat_: as a dog dreams of a hare, so do men on such
subjects they thought on last.

[3395] "Somnia quae mentes ludunt volitantibus umbris,
Nec delubra deum, nec ab aethere numina mittunt,
Sed sibi quisque facit," &c.

For that cause when Ptolemy, king of Egypt, had posed the seventy
interpreters in order, and asked the nineteenth man what would make one
sleep quietly in the night, he told him, [3396]"the best way was to have
divine and celestial meditations, and to use honest actions in the daytime.
[3397]Lod. Vives wonders how schoolmen could sleep quietly, and were not
terrified in the night, or walk in the dark, they had such monstrous
questions, and thought of such terrible matters all day long." They had
need, amongst the rest, to sacrifice to god Morpheus, whom [3398]
Philostratus paints in a white and black coat, with a horn and ivory box
full of dreams, of the same colours, to signify good and bad. If you will
know how to interpret them, read Artemidorus, Sambucus and Cardan; but how
to help them, [3399]I must refer you to a more convenient place.

MEMB. VI.

SUBSECT. I.--_Perturbations of the mind rectified. From himself, by
resisting to the utmost, confessing his grief to a friend, &c._

Whosoever he is that shall hope to cure this malady in himself or any
other, must first rectify these passions and perturbations of the mind: the
chiefest cure consists in them. A quiet mind is that _voluptas_, or _summum
bonum_ of Epicurus, _non dolere, curis vacare, animo tranquillo esse_, not
to grieve, but to want cares, and have a quiet soul, is the only pleasure
of the world, as Seneca truly recites his opinion, not that of eating and
drinking, which injurious Aristotle maliciously puts upon him, and for
which he is still mistaken, _male audit et vapulat_, slandered without a
cause, and lashed by all posterity. [3400]"Fear and sorrow, therefore, are
especially to be avoided, and the mind to be mitigated with mirth,
constancy, good hope; vain terror, bad objects are to be removed, and all
such persons in whose companies they be not well pleased." Gualter Bruel.
Fernelius, _consil. 43._ Mercurialis, _consil. 6._ Piso, Jacchinus, _cap.
15. in 9. Rhasis_, Capivaccius, Hildesheim, &c., all inculcate this as an
especial means of their cure, that their