The anatomy of melancholy vvhat it is. VVith all the kindes, causes, symptomes, prognostickes, and seuerall cures of it. In three maine partitions with their seuerall sections, members, and subsections. Philosophically, medicinally, historically, opened and cut vp. By Democritus Iunior. With a satyricall preface, conducing to the following discourse.

SVBSEC. 9. Of the Rationall Soule.

IN the precedent Subsections, I haue anatomised those in∣feriour Faculties of the Soule; the Rationall remaineth, a pleasant, but a doubt full Subiect, as a one termes it, and with the like brevity to be discussed. Many erronious opinions are about the Essence and Originall of it, how it comes into the Body. Some hold that it is ex traduce, as Phil. 1. de Ani∣mâ, Tertullian, Avicenna, and many b late Writers, that one man begets another, Body and Soule: or as a candle from a candle, to be produced from the Seede. c Galen holdes the Soule Crasin esse, to be the Temperature it selfe. The d Pytha∣gorians hold Metempsychosis, and Palingenesia, that Soules go from one body to another, as men into Wolues, Beares, Dogges, Hogges, as they were inclined in their liues. e Luci∣ans Cock was first Euphorbus a Captaine, a Horse, a Man, a Sponge, f Iulian the Apostata, thought Alexanders Soule was descended into his Body. Plato in his Phaedon, for ought I can perceiue, differs not much from this opinion, that it was from God at first, and knew all, but being inclosed in the Bo∣dy, it forgets, & learnes anew, which he cals Reminiscentiam, or recalling, and that it was put into the Body at first for a punishment, and thence it goes into a beasts, & after g 10000 yeares, is to returne into the former body againe. Others de∣ny

the immortality of it, which Pomponatius of Padua deci∣ded out of Aristotle, not long since. Plinius Auunculus cap. 7. lib. 2. & lib. 7. cap. 55. Lucretius lib. 1. Averroes. Others grant the immortality of it, but they make many fabulous fictions in the meane time of it, after the departure from the Body. Like Plato's Elisian Fields, and that Turkie Paradise, the Soules of good men they deisied; the bad saith h Austin, be∣came devils, as they supposed; with many such absurd tenets, which Austin hath confuted, Hierom, and the other Fathers of the Church, which hold, that the Soule is created of no∣thing, and so infused in the Childe or Embrio in his Mothers wombe, six moneths after the i conception, not as those of brutes, which are ex Traduce; and dying with them, vanish into nothing. This Reasonable Soule, which Austin calles a Spirituall substance, mouing it selfe, is defined by Philoso∣phers to be the first substantiall Act of a Naturall, Humane, Organicall Body, by which a man liues, perceiues, and vnder∣stands, freely doing all things, and with election. Out of which Definition we may gather, that this Rationall Soule includes the powers, and performes the duties of the two other, which are contained in it, and all three Faculties make one Soule, which is inorganicall of it selfe, although it be in all parts, & incorporeall, vsing their Organs, and working by them. It is divided into two chiefe parts, differing in office onely, not in Essence. The Vnderstanding, which is the Rationall power apprehending: the Will, which is the Rationall power mouing, to which two, all the other Rationall powers are subiect and reduced.

Notes

• a

  Velcurio. Iucundum & anceps subiectū.
• b

  Goclenius in 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 pag. 302. Bright. in Phis. Scrib. lib. 1. &c.
• c

  Lib. an mores sequantur. &c.
• d

  Read Aeneas Gazeus Dial, of the immortali∣ty of the Soule.
• e

  In Gallo.
• f

  Nicephorus hist. lib. 10. cap. 35.
• g

  Phaedro.
• h

  Bonorum La∣res, malorum ve∣rò larvas & Le mure••
• i

  Some say at 3. dayes, some six weekes, o∣thers other∣wise.