is sense, woe be to him that is so alone. These wretches do frequently
degenerate from men, and of sociable creatures become beasts, monsters,
inhumane, ugly to behold, _Misanthropi_; they do even loathe themselves,
and hate the company of men, as so many Timons, Nebuchadnezzars, by too
much indulging to these pleasing humours, and through their own default. So
that which Mercurialis, _consil. 11_, sometimes expostulated with his
melancholy patient, may be justly applied to every solitary and idle person
in particular. [1565]_Natura de te videtur conqueri posse_, &c. "Nature may
justly complain of thee, that whereas she gave thee a good wholesome
temperature, a sound body, and God hath given thee so divine and excellent
a soul, so many good parts, and profitable gifts, thou hast not only
contemned and rejected, but hast corrupted them, polluted them, overthrown
their temperature, and perverted those gifts with riot, idleness,
solitariness, and many other ways, thou art a traitor to God and nature, an
enemy to thyself and to the world." _Perditio tua ex te_; thou hast lost
thyself wilfully, cast away thyself, "thou thyself art the efficient cause
of thine own misery, by not resisting such vain cogitations, but giving way
unto them."

SUBSECT. VII.--_Sleeping and Waking, Causes_.

What I have formerly said of exercise, I may now repeat of sleep. Nothing
better than moderate sleep, nothing worse than it, if it be in extremes, or
unseasonably used. It is a received opinion, that a melancholy man cannot
sleep overmuch; _Somnus supra modum prodest_, as an only antidote, and
nothing offends them more, or causeth this malady sooner, than waking, yet
in some cases sleep may do more harm than good, in that phlegmatic,
swinish, cold, and sluggish melancholy which Melancthon speaks of, that
thinks of waters, sighing most part, &c. [1566]It dulls the spirits, if
overmuch, and senses; fills the head full of gross humours; causeth
distillations, rheums, great store of excrements in the brain, and all the
other parts, as [1567]Fuchsius speaks of them, that sleep like so many
dormice. Or if it be used in the daytime, upon a full stomach, the body
ill-composed to rest, or after hard meats, it increaseth fearful dreams,
incubus, night walking, crying out, and much unquietness; such sleep
prepares the body, as [1568]one observes, "to many perilous diseases." But,
as I have said, waking overmuch, is both a symptom, and an ordinary cause.