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THE SECOND BOOKE 295
serve a soule that is her owne, and in her proper
force capable of discourse and deliberation : not serving
to this inconvenience where with a Philosopher, a
soule becommeth the soule of a foole, troubled, vanquished
and lost. Which divers occasions may produce,
as in an over-violent agitation, which by some vehement
passion the soule may beget in her selfe; or a
hurt in some part of the body, or an exhalation from
the stomacke, casting us into some astonishment,
dazling, or giddinesse of the head :
morbts in corpoi ts avius errat
Scepe animus, dementit enim, dehraguefatur,
Inter dumque gravi Letharo fertur in altum
AEternumque soporem, oculis nutuque cadenti. 1
The minde in bodies sicknesse often wandring strayes;
For it enraged raves, and idle talk outbrayes;
Brought by sharpe Lethargy sometime to more than deepe,
While eyes and eye-lids fall into eternall sleepe.
Philosophers have, in mine opinion, but sligfy/tly
harpt upon this string, no more than other of like
consequence. They have ever this dilemma in/their
mouth to comfort our mortall condition: The soule
is either mortall or immortall: if mortal^, she shall
be without paine : if immortall, she shall mend.'
'They never touch the other branch : what if she
empaire and be worse? and leave [the menaces of
future paines to Poets. But thereby?they deal themselves
a good game. These are two omissions which
in their discourses doe often offer themselves unto me.
I come to the first againe: the soule loseth the use of
that Stoicall chiefe felicitie, so constant and so firme.
Our goodly wisdome must necessarily in ithis place
yeelde her selfe and quit her weapons. As for other
matters, they also considered by the vanitie of mans
reason, that the admixture and societie of two so
different parts as is the mortall and the immortall is
inimaginable;
¹ LUCR. 1. iii. 467.