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FROM THE RELIGIO MEDICI."

147

principle of motion and rest, but that straight and regular line, that settled and constant course the wisdom of God hath ordained the actions of His creatures, according to their several kinds. To make a revolution every day is the nature of the sun, because of that necessary course which God hath ordained it, from which it cannot swerve but by a faculty from that voice which first did give it motion. Now this course of nature God seldom alters or perverts; but, like an excellent artist, hath so contrived His work that, with the self-same instrument, without a new creation, He may effect his obscurest designs. I call the effects of nature the works of God, whose hand and instrument she only is; and therefore, to ascribe His actions unto her is to devolve the honour of the principal agent upon the instrument; which if with reason we may do, then let our hammers rise up and boast they have built our houses, and our pens receive the honour of our writings. I hold there is a general beauty in the works of God, and therefore no deformity in any kind of species or creature whatsoever. i cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms; and having passed that general visitation of God, who saw that all that He had made was good, that is, conformable to His will, which abhors deformity, and is the will of order and beauty. There is no deformity but in monstrosity; wherein, notwithstanding, there is a kind of beauty; nature so ingeniously contriving the irregular parts, as they become sometimes more remarkable than the principal fabric. To speak yet more narrowly, there was never anything ugly or misshapen, but the chaos; wherein, notwithstanding, to speak strictly, there was no deformity, because no form; nor was it yet impregnate by the voice of God. Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of His providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.

Books. (Part i., sections 23, 24.)-Men's works have an age, like themselves, and though they outlive their authors, yet have they a stint and period to their duration. The Scripture only is a work toc hard for the teeth of time, and cannot perish but in the general flames, when all things shall confess their ashes. I have heard some, with deep sighs, lament the lost lines of Cicero; others, with as many groans, deplore the combustion of the Library of Alexandria; for my own part, I think there be too many in the world, and could with patience behold the urn and ashes of the Vatican,1 could I, with a few others, recover the perished leaves of Solomon.2 I would not omit a copy of Enoch's pillars,3 had they many nearer

The library of the Vatican at Rome, which was in Sir Thomas's days the most valuable in Europe, as indeed in some respects it still is.

2 It says in 1 Kings that Solomon wrote five thousand proverbs, and one thousand and five songs, most of which are of course lost.

3 According to Josephus, Enoch, informed by Adam that the world was to be twice

authors than Josephus, or did not relish somewhat of the fable. Some men have written more than others have spoken. Pineda 1 quotes more authors in one work than are necessary in a whole world. Of those three great inventions in Germany, there are two which are not without their incommodities. 'Tis not a melancholy wish of my own, but the desires of better heads, that there were a general synod, not to unite the incompatible difference of religion, but for the benefit of learning, to reduce it, as it lay at first, in a few and solid authors, and to condemn to the fire those swarms and millions of rhapsodies, begotten only to distract and abuse the weaker judgments of scholars, and to maintain the trade and mystery of typographers.

Man's body. (Part i., sections 36, 37.)-In our study of anatomy, there is a mass of mysterious philosophy, and such as reduced the very heathens to divinity; yet amongst all those rare discoveries and curious pieces I find in the fabric of man, I do not so much content myself, as in that I find not-that is, no organ or instrument for the rational soul; for in the brain, which we term the seat of reason, there is not anything of moment more than I can discover in the cranny of a beast; and this is a sensible and no inconsiderable argument of the inorganity of the soul, at least in that sense we usually receive it. Thus we are men, and we know not how; there is something in us that can be without us, and will be after us; though it is strange that it hath no history what it was before us, nor cannot tell how it entered in us.

Now, for these walls of flesh wherein the soul doth seem to be immured before the resurrection, it is nothing but an elemental composition, and a fabric that must fall to ashes. "All flesh is grass," is not only metaphorically but literally true; for all those creatures we behold are but the herbs of the field digested into flesh in them, or more remotely carnified in ourselves. Nay, further, we are what we all abhor, man-eaters and cannibals, devourers not only of men but of ourselves, and that not in an allegory, but a positive truth; for all this mass of flesh which we behold came in at our mouths; this frame we look upon hath been upon our trenchers; in brief, we have devoured ourselves.

Of the end of the world.-(Part i., sections 45, 46.)-I believe the world grows near its end; yet it is neither old nor decayed, nor will ever perish upon the ruins of its own principles. As the work of creation was above nature, so is its adversary, annihilation, without which the world hath not its end, but its mutation. Now, what force should be able to consume it thus far without the breath of God, which is the truest consuming flame, my philosophy cannot destroyed, once by water and once by fire, erected two pillars,-one of stone, against the water, the other of brick, against the fire; and on these engraved all the knowledge of his time; and thus the flood did not sweep away all the knowledge of mankind.

1 In one work he quotes one thousand and forty authors.

2 Gunpowder, printing, and the compass, of which the first two are those which have occasioned "incommodities."

3 Browne here uses the equivalent Latin word utinam.

FROM THE HYDRIOTAPEIA.

149

inform me. Some believe there went not a minute to the world's creation, nor shall there go to its destruction. Those six days, so punctually described, make not to them one moment, but rather seem to manifest the method and idea of that great work in the intellect of God than the manner how He proceeded in its operation.

3

Now, to determine the day and year of this inevitable time, is not only convincible and statute madness, but also manifest impiety.1 How shall we interpret Elias's six thousand years,2 or imagine the secret communicated to a rabbi which God hath denied unto his angels? It had been an excellent query to have posed the devil of Delphos, and must needs have forced him to some strange amphibology. It hath not only mocked the predictions of sundry astrologers in past ages, but the prophecies of many melancholy heads in these present, who, neither understanding reasonably things past nor present, pretend a knowledge of things to come, heads ordained only to manifest the incredible effects of melancholy, and to fulfil old prophecies rather than be the authors of new.

2. FROM THE HYDRIOTAPHIA.6

7

What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. What time the persons of these ossuaries entered the famous nations of the dead, and slept with princes and counsellors, might admit a wide solution. But who were the proprietaries of these bones, or what bodies these ashes made up, were a question above antiquarism; not to be resolved" by man, nor easily, perhaps, by spirits, except we consult the provincial guardians, or tutelary observators. Had they made as good provision for their names as they have done for their relics, they had not so grossly erred in the art of perpetuation. But to subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration. Vain ashes, which, in the oblivion of names, persons, times, and sexes, have found unto themselves a fruitless continuation, and only arise unto late posterity as emblems of mortal vanities, antidotes against pride, vain-glory, and madding vices. Pagan vain-glories, which thought the world might last for ever, had encouragement for ambition; and, 1 Because Christ says, "Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven."

2 According to the Jewish Rabbis, Elijah is said to have prophesied the destruction of the world after it had existed 6000 years.

3 The oracle of Apollo at Delphi.

4 The use of words capable of two senses, as when Shakspere says,

"The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose."

--which may mean, either the duke is still alive who is to depose Henry, or the duke is still alive who is to be deposed by Henry.

5 Such as,

"In those days shall come liars and false prophets."

6 This treatise was written as a discourse upon some urns found in a field near Norwich.

7 These were the questions which the Emperor Tiberius proposed to the grammarians for their solution.

i. e., bones, the persons to whom the bones found in the urns belonged.

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finding no Atropos1 unto the immortality of their names, were never dampt with the necessity of oblivion. Even old ambitions had the advantages of ours, in the attempts of their vain-glories, who acting early, and before the probable meridian of time, have by this time found great accomplishment of their designs, whereby the ancient heroes have already outlasted their monuments and mechanical preservations. But in this latter scene of time we cannot expect such mummies unto our memories, when ambition may fear the prophecy of Elias, and Charles the Fifth can never hope to live within two Methuselahs of Hector.3

2

4

And, therefore, restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories, unto present considerations, seems a vanity almost out of date, and superannuated piece of folly. We cannot hope to live so long in our names as some have done in their persons. One face of Janus holds no proportion to the other. 'Tis too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of the world are acted, or time may be too short for our designs. To extend our memories by monuments whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. We, whose generations are ordained in this setting part of time, are providentially taken off from such imaginations; and being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the next world, and cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration, which maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that's past a

moment.

There is no antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth all things: our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years ;5 generations pass while some trees stand; and old families last not three oaks. To be read by bare inscriptions like many in Gruter, to hope for eternity by enigmatical epithets or first letters of our names, to be studied by antiquaries, who we were, and have new names given us like many of the mummies, are cold consolations unto the students of perpetuity, even by everlasting languages.

To be content that times to come should only know there was such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a frigid ambition in Cardan." Who cares to subsist like Hippocrates's pa

1 Atropos was one of the Fates, and her duty was to cut the thread of human life; hence the passage means, "finding nothing to prevent their obtaining immortality." 2 Viz., that the world was to last only 6000 years.

3 Because Hector lived two Methuselahs-that is, two thousand years before Charles the Fifth was born.

4 The ancients represented Janus with two faces,-one looking behind, the other before. Sir Thomas means that the period during which the world was likely to exist, was probably very small in comparison with that during which it had already existed.

5 Because other bodies are laid beneath them, and they themselves are moved.

6 i.e., in Gruter's famous collection of inscriptions.

7 A famous Italian physician and astrologer; died 1576.

FROM THE HYDRIOTAPHIA.

151

tients,1 or Achilles's horses in Homer, under naked nominations, without deserts and noble acts, which are the balsam of our memories, the essence and soul of our subsistences? To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history. The Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name, than Herodias with one. who had not rather have been the good thief than Pilate ?

And

But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations, and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon. Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? Without the favour of the everlasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.

Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story before the flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetic, which scarce stands one moment. And since it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes;2 since the brother of death3 daily haunts us with dying mementos, and time, that grows old in itself, bids us hope no long duration; diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation.

A great part of antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their souls,-a good way to continue their memories, while having the advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoy the fame of their past selves, make accumulation of glory unto their last durations. Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were content to recede into the common being, and make one particle of the public soul of all things, which was no more than to return into their unknown and divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet consistences, to attend the return of their souls. But all was vanity, feeding the wind, and folly. The Egyptian mummies which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now con

1 Hippocrates was a famous physician of Cos, in the fourth century B.C.

2 According to the custom of the Jews, who placed a lighted wax candle in a pot of ashes by the corpse. 3 Sleep.

4 i.e., to wait for Browne alludes to the Egyptian practice of embalming, founded on the belief that, if the body was preserved, the soul would again reanimate it.

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