rent in terrible and dolorous things, as also
in timorous and valiant individuals.

BOOK V

CHAPTER I. OF DIVINATION.

Plato and the Stoics introduce divination as a godlike enthusiasm, the
soul itself being of a divine constitution, and this prophetic faculty
being inspiration, or an illapse of the divine knowledge into man; and
so likewise they account for interpretation by dreams. And these same
allow many divisions of the art of divination. Xenophanes and Epicurus
utterly refuse any such art of foretelling future contingencies.
Pythagoras rejects all manner of divination which is by sacrifices.
Aristotle and Dicaearchus admit only these two kinds of it, a fury by a
divine inspiration, and dreams; they deny the immortality of the soul,
yet they affirm that the mind of man hath a participation of something
that is divine.

CHAPTER II. WHENCE DREAMS DO ARISE.

Democritus says that dreams are formed by the illapse of adventitious
representations. Strato, that the irrational part of the soul in sleep
becoming more sensible is moved by the rational part of it. Herophilus,
that dreams which are caused by divine instinct have a necessary cause;
but dreams which have their origin from a natural cause arise from
the soul's forming within itself the images of those things which are
convenient for it, and which will happen; those dreams which are of a
constitution mixed of both these have their origin from the fortuitous
appulse of images, as when we see those things which please us; thus
it happens many times to those persons who in their sleep imagine they
embrace their mistresses.

CHAPTER III. OF THE NATURE OF GENERATIVE SEED.

Aristotle says, that seed is that thing which contains in itself a power
of moving, whereby it is enabled to produce a being like unto that from
whence it was emitted. Pythagoras, that seed is the sediment of that
which nourisheth us, the froth of the purest blood, of the same nature
of the blood and marrow of our bodies. Alcmaeon, that it is part of the
brain. Plato, that it is the deflux of the spinal marrow. Epicurus,
that it is a fragment torn from the body and soul. Democritus, that it
proceeds from all the parts of the body, and chiefly from the principal
parts, as the tissues and muscles.

CHAPTER IV. WHETHER THE SPERM BE A BODY.

Leucippus and Zeno say, that it is a body and a fragment of the
soul. Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, that the spermatic faculty is