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THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY
to calculate and express the moon's motion: but when all is done, as a supposition, and no
otherwise; not (as he holds) hard, impenetrable, subtile, transparent, &c., or making music, as
Pythagoras maintained of old, and Robert Constantine of late, but still, quiet, liquid, open, &c.
If the heavens then be penetrable, as these men deliver, and no lets, it were not amiss in
this aerial progress, to make wings and fly up, which that Turk in Busbequius made his fellowcitizens
in Constantinople believe he would perform: and some new-fangled wits, methinks,
should some time or other find out: or if that may not be, yet with a Galileo's glass, or
Icaromenippus' wings in Lucian, command the spheres and heavens, and see what is done
amongst them. Whether there be generation and corruption, as some think, by reason of ethereal
comets, that in Cassiopea, 1572, that in Cygno, 1600, that in Sagittarius, 1604, and many like,
which by no means Jul. Caesar la Galla, that Italian philosopher, in his physical disputation with
Galileis de phenomenis in orbe lunæ, cap. 9. will admit: or that they were created ab initio, and
show themselves at set times. and as Helisaeus Roeslin contends, have poles, axle-trees, circles
of their own, and regular motions. For, non pereunt, sed minuuntur et disparent, Blancanus holds
they come and go by fits, casting their tails still from the sun: some of them, as a burning-glass,
projects the sunbeams from it; though not always neither: for sometimes a comet casts his tail
from Venus, as Tycho observes. And as Helisaeus Roeslin of some others, from the moon, with
little stars about them ad stuporem astronomorum; cum multis aliis in cœlo miraculis, all which
argue with those Medicean, Austrian, and Burbonian stars, that the heaven of the planets is
indistinct, pure, and open, in which the planets move certis legibus ac metis. Examine likewise,
An cœlum sit coloratum? Whether the stars be of that bigness, distance, as astronomers relate, so
many in number, 1026, or 1725, as J. Bayerus; or as some Rabbins, 29,000 myriads; or as
Galileo discovers by his glasses, infinite, and that via lactea, a confused light of small stars, like
so many nails in a door: or all in a row, like those 12,000 isles of the Maldives in the Indian
ocean? Whether the least visible star in the eighth sphere be eighteen times bigger than the earth;
and as Tycho calculates, 14,000 semi-diameters distant from it? Whether they be thicker parts of
the orbs, as Aristotle delivers: or so many habitable worlds, as Democritus? Whether they have
light of their own, or from the sun, or give light round, as Patritius discourseth? An æque distent
a centra mundi? Whether light be of their essence; and that light be a substance or an accident?
Whether they be hot by themselves, or by accident cause heat? Whether there be such a
precession of the equinoxes as Copernicus holds, or that the eighth sphere move? An bene
philosophentur, R. Bacon and J. Dee, Aphorism. de multiplicatione specierum? Whether there be
any such images ascending with each degree of the zodiac in the east, as Aliacensis feigns? An
aqua super cœlum? as Patritius and the schoolmen will, a crystalline watery heaven, which is
certainly to be understood of that in the middle region? for otherwise, if at Noah's flood the water
came from thence, it must be above a hundred years falling down to us, as some calculate.
Besides, An terra sit animata? which some so confidently believe, with Orpheus, Hermes,
Averroes, from which all other souls of men, beasts, devils, plants, fishes, &c. are derived, and
into which again, after some revolutions, as Plato in his Timaeus, Plotinus in his Enneades more
largely discuss, they return (see Chalcidius and Bennius, Plato's commentators), as all
philosophical matter, in materiam primam. Keplerus, Patritius, and some other Neoterics, have in
part revived this opinion. And that every star in heaven hath a soul, angel or intelligence to
animate or move it, &c. Or to omit all smaller controversies, as matters of less moment, and
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