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THE SECOND BOOKE 283
Ignoratur enim qua sit natura animai,
Nata sit. an contra nascentibus insinuetur,
Et simul intereat nobiscum morte dirempta,
An tenebras orci visat, vastasque lacunas.
An pecudes alias divinitus insinuet se. 1
What the soules nature is, we doe not know :
If it be bred, or put in those are bred,
Whether by death divorst with us it goe,
Or see the darke vast lakes of hell below,
Or into other creatures turne the head.
To Crates and Dicaearchus it seemed that there was
none at all; but that the body stirred thus with and
by a naturall motion : to Plato, that it was a substance
moving of it selfe; to Thales, a Nature without rest; to
Asclepiades, an exercitation of the senses; to Hesiodus
and Anaximander, a thing composed of earth and
water; to Parmenides, of earth and fire; to Empedocles,
of bloud :
Sanguineam vomit ille animam.*
His soule of purple-bloud he vomits out.
To Possidonius, Cleanthes, and Galen, a heat, or hot
complexion :
Igneus est olhs vigor, et catlestis origo: ³
A firy vigor and ceiestiall spring,
In their originall they strangely bring.
To Hyppocrates, a spirit dispersed thorow the body;
to Varro, an air received in at the mouth, heated in
the lungs, tempered in the heart, and dispersed thorow
all parts of the body ; to Zeno, the quintessence of the
foure elements; to Heraclides Ponticus, the light; to
Xenocrates and to the AEgyptians, a moving number;
to the Chaldeans, a vertue without any determinate
forme. Habitum quemdam vitalem corporis esse
Harmoniam Groeci quam dicunt. 4
There of the body is a vitall frame,
The which the Greeks a harmony doe name.
1 LUCR. 1. i. 113. ² VIRG. AEn. 1. ix. 349.
³ lb. vi. 730, 4 LUCR. 1. iii. 100.