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On magic<br />
readily to where the seed is sown’. 29 As a result, like the proper seed being<br />
sown in the proper field, good and evil spirits and the beginnings of consciousness<br />
are born from a proper mixture and combination of specific<br />
hearts or brains or animal spirits, and conversely, improper mixtures produce<br />
disturbances. These results are mutual: certain souls bring certain<br />
bodies into existence, and certain bodies bring certain souls into existence,<br />
in accordance with what are called the substantial and the specific<br />
difference and subsistence.<br />
When two spirits approach and come near to each other, either because<br />
of an accidental combination or because of objects attached to the body,<br />
then the dominance of a raging spirit can be removed safely and methodically.<br />
This is done either by incantations, that is, by rhetorical and friendly<br />
and curing persuasions which restore the besieged spirit; or by the expulsion<br />
and evacuation of noxious material with purgative medicines; or<br />
by foods and a happy, sunny atmosphere which are agreeable to human<br />
life, and which introduce better matter for the spirit; or by soothing and<br />
moderating the harmful materials which sometimes enter into the mix.<br />
As a result, the spirit alone does not produce these living animal operations,<br />
nor does the body do this without the spirit. Rather, for these things<br />
to occur, whether they be good or bad, or in accord with or in opposition<br />
to the nature of the species, what is required is both a material principle<br />
and a formal or efficient cause of the needed type. Further, it is reasonable<br />
to say that a simple purgation of humours and a simple diet are adequate<br />
to cure disturbed images and to free the internal senses which are bound<br />
in this way.<br />
However, from this, one cannot accept the conclusion drawn by a most<br />
stupid and dull-witted medical man in his book De occultis naturae miraculis<br />
30 (On the Hidden Miracles of Nature), which presents more nonsense<br />
than words and sentences can describe. He concludes that spirits are the<br />
same thing as humours because the expulsion and evacuation of humours<br />
also expels and evacuates these spirits with their marvellously independent<br />
and structured powers. In this way, with equal justice, one could say that,<br />
because the excellence of the soul forces it to leave the body and be many<br />
souls in succession, he should think that the soul, itself, is a humour or<br />
excrement. Or if he himself were to decide to abandon his house and country<br />
because a shortage of food and water made him ignorant of medicine<br />
and of the obvious colours and sounds of nature, we should conclude that<br />
29 Virgil, Georgics, I, 54. 30 Levinus Lemnius, De miraculis occultis naturae (Anterpiae, 1559).<br />
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