I have long fought after this opportunity of doing juftice to a fociety of men for whom I have a peculiar honour, and whofe opinions, as well as practices, have been extremely mifreprefented and traduced by the malice or ignorance of their adverfaries. For I think it one of the greatest and best of human actions, to remove prejudices, and place things in their trueft and faireft light; which I therefore boldly undertake without any regards of my own, befide the confcience, the honour, and the thanks..

A digreffion concerning the original, the use and improvement of madness in a commonwealth.

OR fall it any ways detract from the juft reputa

NOR

tion are owing to fuch an author as I have defcribed Jack to be; a perfon whofe intellectuals were overturned, and his brain fhaken out of its natural pofition; which we commonly fuppofe to be a diftemper, and call by the name of madness or phrenzy. For if we take a furvey of the greatest actions that have been performed in the world under the influences of fingle men ; which are, "the establishment of new empires by conqueft; the ad "vance and progrefs of new fchemes in philofophy; " and the contriving, as well as the propagating of new "religions;" we fhall find the authors of them all to have been perfons whofe natural reafon hath admitted great. revolutions, from their diet, their education, the prevalency of fome certain temper, together with the particular influence of air and climate. Befides, there is fomething individual in human minds, that eafily kindles at the accidental approach and collifion of certain circumstances, which, tho' of paltry and mean appearance, do often flame out into the greateft emergencies of life. For great turns are not always given by ftrong hands, but by lucky adaption, and at proper feafons.

And it is of no import where the fire was kindled, if the vapour has once got up into the brain. For the upper region of man is furnished like the middle region of the air; the materials are formed from caufes of the wideft difference, yet produce at laft the fame fubftance and effect. Mifts arife from the earth, fteams from dunghills, exhalations from the fea, and fmoke from fire; yet all clouds are the fame in compofition, as well as confequences; and the fumes iffuing from a jakes will furnish as comely and useful a vapour, as incenfe from an altar. Thus far, I fuppofe, will easily be granted me; and then it will follow, that as the face of nature never produces rain, but when it is over-cast and disturbed; fo human understanding, feated in the brain, must be troubled and overspread by vapours afcending from the lower faculties, to water the invention, and render it fruitful. Now, altho' these vapours (as it hath been already faid) are of as various original as thofe of the skies; yet the crops they produce differ both in kind and degree, merely according to the foil. I will produce two inftances to prove and explain what I am now advancing.

A certain great Prince raised a mighty army, filled his coffers with infinite treafures, provided an invincible fleet; and all this, without giving the leaft part of his defign to his greatest minifters, or his nearest favourites. Immediately the whole world was alarmed; the neighbouring crowns in trembling expectations towards what point the form would burft; the fmall politicians every where forming profound conjectures. Some believed he had laid a fcheme for univerfal monarchy: others, after much infight, determined the matter to be a project for pulling down the Pope, and setting up the reformed religion, which had once been his own. Some again, of a deeper fagacity, fent him into Afia, to fubdue the Turk, and recover Palestine. In the midft of all these projects and preparations, a certain State-furgeon †, gathering the nature of the disease by these symptoms, attempted the cure; at one blow performed the operation, broke the bag,

*This was Harry the Great of France.

Ravillac, who ftabbed Henry the Great in his coach.

bag, and out flew the vapour. Nor did any thing want to render it a compleat remedy, only that the Prince unfortunately happened to die in the performance. Now, is the reader exceeding curious to learn from whence this vapour took its rife, which had fo long fet the nations at a gaze! what fecret wheel, what hidden fpring, could put into motion fo wonderful an engine? It was afterwards difcovered, that the movement of this whole machine had been directed by an abfent female, whofe eyes had raised a protuberancy, and, before emiflion, fhe was removed into an enemy's country. What should an unhappy prince do in fuch ticklish circumftances as thefe He tried in vain the poet's never-failing receipt of corpora quæque: For,

Idque petit corpus mens unde eft faucia amore;
Unde feritur, eo tendit, geftitque coire.

Lucr.

HAVING to no purpose used all peaceable endeavours, the collected part of the semen, raised and inflamed, became a duft, converted to choler, turned head upon the fpinal duct, and afcended to the brain. The very fame principle that influences a bully to break the windows of a whore who has jilted hin, naturally ftirs up a great prince to raise mighty armies, and dream of nothing but fieges, battles, and victories.

Cunnus teterrimi belli
-Caufa.

THE other inftance is, what I have read fomewhere in a very antient author, of a mighty King*, who, for the space of above thirty years, amufed himself to take and lose towns; beat armies, and be beaten; drive princes out of their dominions; fright children from their bread and butter; burn, lay wafte, plunder, dragoon, maffacre fubject and ftranger, friend and foe, male and female. 'Tis recorded, that the philofophers of each country were in grave difpute upon caufes natural, moral, and political, to find out where they fhould affign an original folution of this phenomenon. At laft the vapour

This is meant of the prefent French King, Lewis XIV.

OF

or spirit which animated the hero's brain, being in per petual circulation, feized upon that region of human body, fo renowned for furnishing the zibeta occidentalis*; and gathering there into a tumor, left the reft of the world for that time in peace. Of fuch mighty confequence it is, where those exhalations fix; and of fo little, from whence they proceed. The fame fpirits, which, in their fuperior progrefs, would conquer a kingdom, defcending upon the anus, conclude in a fiftula.

LET us next examine the great introducers of new fchemes in philofophy, and fearch till we can find from what faculty of the foul the disposition arifes in mortal man, of taking it into his head to advance new systems, with fuch an eager zeal, in things agreed on all hands impoffible to be known; from what feeds this difpofition fprings, and to what quality of human nature these grand innovators have been indebted for their number of difciples because it is plain, that feveral of the chief among them, both antient and modern, were ufually miftaken by their adverfaries, and indeed by all, except their own followers, to have been perfons crazed, or out of their wits; having generally proceeded in the common course of their words and actions, by a. method very different from the vulgar dictates of unrefined reafon; agreeing, for the most part, in their feveral models, with their pre fent undoubted fucceffors in the Academy of modern Bedlam; (whofe merits and principles I fhall farther examine in due place). Of this kind were Epicurus, Diogenes, Apollonius, Lucretius, Paracelfus, Des Cartes, and others; who, if they were now in the world, tied fast, and separate from their followers, would, in this un diftinguishing age, incur manifeft danger of phlebotomy, and whip, and chain, and dark chambers, and firaw. For what man, in the natural state or course of thinking, did ever conceive it in his power, to reduce the notions of all mankind exactly to the fame length, and breadth,

and

Paracelfus, who was fo famous for chymistry, tried an experiment upon human excrement, to make a perfume of it; which, when he had brought to perfection, he called zibeta occidentalis, or western civet, the back parts of man (according to his divifion mentioned by the author, page 86.) being the west.

and height of his own? Yet this is the firft humble and civil defign of all innovators in the empire of reason. Epicurus modeftly hoped, that, one time or other, a certain fortuitous concourfe of all mens opinions, after perpetual juftlings, the fharp with the fmooth, the light and the heavy, the round and the fquare, would, by certain clinamina, unite in the notions of atoms and void, as these did in the originals of all things. Cartefius reckoned to fee, before he died, the fentiments of all philofophers, like fo many leffer stars in his romantick system, wrapt and drawn within his own vortex. Now, I would gladly be informed, how it is poffible to account for fuch imaginations as these in particular men, without recourse to my phænomenon of vapours, afcending from the lower faculties to overfhadow the brain, and their diftilling into conceptions, for which the narrownes of our mothertongue has not yet affigned any other name befides that of madness or phrenzy. Let us therefore now conjecture how it comes to pass, that none of thefe great prefcribers do ever fail providing themselves and their notions with a number of implicit difciples. And I think the reason is eafy to be affigned; for there is a peculiar Aring in the harmony of human understanding, which, in feveral in dividuals, is exactly of the fame tuning. This if you can dexterously fcrew up to its right key, and then strike gently upon it; whenever you have the good fortune to light among thofe of the fame pitch, they will, by a fecret neceffary fympathy, ftrike exactly at the fame time. And in this one circumftance lies all the fkill or luck of the matter for if you chance to jar the ftring among those who are either above or below your own height; instead of fubfcribing to your doctrine, they will tie you faft, call you mad, and feed you with bread and water. It is therefore a point of the niceft conduct, to diftinguish and adapt this noble talent, with refpect to the differences of perfons and of times. Cicero understood this very well, when writing to a friend in England, with a caution, among other matters, to beware of being cheated by our backney-coachmen, (who, it feems, in those days, were as arrant rafcals as they are now) has these remarkable words: Eft quod gaudeas te in ifta loca venisse, ubi, aliquid