Religio Medici [44]
well intended endeavours. I am not only ashamed but heartily sorry, that, besides death, there are diseases incurable; yet not for my own sake or that they be beyond my art, but for the general cause and sake of humanity, whose common cause I apprehend as mine own. And, to speak more generally, those three noble professions which all civil commonwealths do honour, are raised upon the fall of Adam, and are not any way exempt from their infirmities. There are not only diseases incurable in physick, but cases indissolv- able in law, vices incorrigible in divinity. If general councils may err, I do not see why particular courts should be infallible: their perfectest rules are raised upon the erroneous reasons of man, and the laws of one do but condemn the rules of another; as Aristotle oft- times the opinions of his predecessors, because, though agreeable to reason, yet were not consonant to his own rules and the logick of his proper principles. Again,-- to speak nothing of the sin against the Holy Ghost,
* "In qua me non inferior mediocriter esse."--Pro Archia Poeta. whose cure not only, but whose nature is unknown,--I can cure the gout or stone in some, sooner than divinity, pride, or avarice in others. I can cure vices by physick when they remain incurable by divinity, and they shall obey my pills when they contemn their precepts. I boast nothing, but plainly say, we all labour against our own cure; for death is the cure of all diseases. There is no catholicon or universal remedy I know, but this, which though nauseous to queasy stomachs, yet to pre- pared appetites is nectar, and a pleasant potion of im- mortality.
Sect. 10.--For my conversation, it is, like the sun's, with all men, and with a friendly aspect to good and bad. Methinks there is no man bad; and the worst best, that is, while they are kept within the circle of those qualities wherein they are good. There is no man's mind of so discordant and jarring a temper, to which a tuneable disposition may not strike a harmony. Magnae virtutes, nec minora vitia; it is the posy<95> of the best natures, and may be inverted on the worst. There are, in the most depraved and venomous disposi- tions, certain pieces that remain untouched, which by an antiperistasis<96> become more excellent, or by the excellency of their antipathies are able to preserve them- selves from the contagion of their enemy vices, and persist entire beyond the general corruption. For it is also thus in nature: the greatest balsams do lie en- veloped in the bodies of the most powerful corrosives. I say moreover, and I ground upon experience, that poisons contain within themselves their own antidote, and that which preserves them from the venom of them- selves; without which they were not deleterious to others only, but to themselves also. But it is the cor- ruption that I fear within me; not the contagion of commerce without me. 'Tis that unruly regiment within me, that will destroy me; 'tis that I do infect myself; the man without a navel<97> yet lives in me. I feel that original canker corrode and devour me: and therefore, "Defenda me, Dios, de me!" "Lord, deliver me from myself!" is a part of my litany, and the first voice of my retired imaginations. There is no man alone, because every man is a microcosm, and carries the whole world about him. "Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus,"* though it be the apothegm of a wise man is yet true in the mouth of a fool: for indeed, though in a wilderness, a man is never alone; not only because he is with himself, and his own thoughts, but because he is with the devil, who ever consorts with our solitude, and is that unruly rebel that musters up those disordered motions which accompany our sequestered imaginations. And to speak more narrowly, there is no such thing as solitude, nor anything that can be said to be alone, and by itself, but God;--who is his own circle, and can sub- sist by himself; all others, besides their dissimilary and heterogeneous parts, which in a manner multiply their
* "In qua me non inferior mediocriter esse."--Pro Archia Poeta. whose cure not only, but whose nature is unknown,--I can cure the gout or stone in some, sooner than divinity, pride, or avarice in others. I can cure vices by physick when they remain incurable by divinity, and they shall obey my pills when they contemn their precepts. I boast nothing, but plainly say, we all labour against our own cure; for death is the cure of all diseases. There is no catholicon or universal remedy I know, but this, which though nauseous to queasy stomachs, yet to pre- pared appetites is nectar, and a pleasant potion of im- mortality.
Sect. 10.--For my conversation, it is, like the sun's, with all men, and with a friendly aspect to good and bad. Methinks there is no man bad; and the worst best, that is, while they are kept within the circle of those qualities wherein they are good. There is no man's mind of so discordant and jarring a temper, to which a tuneable disposition may not strike a harmony. Magnae virtutes, nec minora vitia; it is the posy<95> of the best natures, and may be inverted on the worst. There are, in the most depraved and venomous disposi- tions, certain pieces that remain untouched, which by an antiperistasis<96> become more excellent, or by the excellency of their antipathies are able to preserve them- selves from the contagion of their enemy vices, and persist entire beyond the general corruption. For it is also thus in nature: the greatest balsams do lie en- veloped in the bodies of the most powerful corrosives. I say moreover, and I ground upon experience, that poisons contain within themselves their own antidote, and that which preserves them from the venom of them- selves; without which they were not deleterious to others only, but to themselves also. But it is the cor- ruption that I fear within me; not the contagion of commerce without me. 'Tis that unruly regiment within me, that will destroy me; 'tis that I do infect myself; the man without a navel<97> yet lives in me. I feel that original canker corrode and devour me: and therefore, "Defenda me, Dios, de me!" "Lord, deliver me from myself!" is a part of my litany, and the first voice of my retired imaginations. There is no man alone, because every man is a microcosm, and carries the whole world about him. "Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus,"* though it be the apothegm of a wise man is yet true in the mouth of a fool: for indeed, though in a wilderness, a man is never alone; not only because he is with himself, and his own thoughts, but because he is with the devil, who ever consorts with our solitude, and is that unruly rebel that musters up those disordered motions which accompany our sequestered imaginations. And to speak more narrowly, there is no such thing as solitude, nor anything that can be said to be alone, and by itself, but God;--who is his own circle, and can sub- sist by himself; all others, besides their dissimilary and heterogeneous parts, which in a manner multiply their