command our bodies, which as another [1627]"Proteus, or a chameleon, can
take all shapes; and is of such force (as Ficinus adds), that it can work
upon others, as well as ourselves." How can otherwise blear eyes in one man
cause the like affection in another? Why doth one man's yawning [1628]make
another yawn? One man's pissing provoke a second many times to do the like?
Why doth scraping of trenchers offend a third, or hacking of files? Why
doth a carcass bleed when the murderer is brought before it, some weeks
after the murder hath been done? Why do witches and old women fascinate and
bewitch children: but as Wierus, Paracelsus, Cardan, Mizaldus, Valleriola,
Caesar Vanninus, Campanella, and many philosophers think, the forcible
imagination of the one party moves and alters the spirits of the other. Nay
more, they can cause and cure not only diseases, maladies, and several
infirmities, by this means, as Avicenna, _de anim. l. 4. sect. 4_,
supposeth in parties remote, but move bodies from their places, cause
thunder, lightning, tempests, which opinion Alkindus, Paracelsus, and some
others, approve of. So that I may certainly conclude this strong conceit or
imagination is _astrum hominis_, and the rudder of this our ship, which
reason should steer, but, overborne by phantasy, cannot manage, and so
suffers itself, and this whole vessel of ours to be overruled, and often
overturned. Read more of this in Wierus, _l. 3. de Lamiis, c. 8, 9, 10._
Franciscus Valesius, _med. controv. l. 5. cont. 6._ Marcellus Donatus, _l.
2. c. 1. de hist. med. mirabil_. Levinus Lemnius, _de occult. nat. mir. l.
1. c. 12._ Cardan, _l. 18. de rerum var_. Corn. Agrippa, _de occult.
plilos. cap. 64, 65._ Camerarius, _1 cent. cap. 54. horarum subcis_.
Nymannus, _morat. de Imag_. Laurentius, and him that is _instar omnium_,
Fienus, a famous physician of Antwerp, that wrote three books _de viribus
imaginationis_. I have thus far digressed, because this imagination is the
medium deferens of passions, by whose means they work and produce many
times prodigious effects: and as the phantasy is more or less intended or
remitted, and their humours disposed, so do perturbations move, more or