Vir bonus et sapiens, qualem vix repperit unum
Millibus e multis hominum consultus Apollo.
A wise, a good man in a million,
Apollo consulted could scarce find one.
A man is a miracle of himself, but Trismegistus adds, Maximum miraculum homo sapiens, a wise man is a wonder: multi Thirsigeri, pauci Bacchi.
Alexander when he was presented with that rich and costly casket of king Darius, and every man advised him what to put in it, he reserved it to keep Homer's works, as the most precious jewel of human wit, and yet [452] Scaliger upbraids Homer's muse, Nutricem insanae sapientiae, a nursery of madness, [453]impudent as a court lady, that blushes at nothing. Jacobus Mycillus, Gilbertus Cognatus, Erasmus, and almost all posterity admire Lucian's luxuriant wit, yet Scaliger rejects him in his censure, and calls him the Cerberus of the muses. Socrates, whom all the world so much magnified, is by Lactantius and Theodoret condemned for a fool. Plutarch extols Seneca's wit beyond all the Greeks, nulli secundus, yet [454] Seneca saith of himself, “when I would solace myself with a fool, I reflect upon myself, and there I have him.” Cardan, in his Sixteenth Book of Subtleties, reckons up twelve supereminent, acute philosophers, for worth, subtlety, and wisdom: Archimedes, Galen, Vitruvius, Architas Tarentinus, Euclid, Geber, that first inventor of Algebra, Alkindus the Mathematician, both Arabians, with others. But his triumviri terrarum far beyond the rest, are Ptolomaeus, Plotinus, Hippocrates. Scaliger exercitat. 224, scoffs at this censure of his, calls some of them carpenters and mechanicians, he makes Galen fimbriam Hippocratis, a skirt of Hippocrates: and the said [455]Cardan himself elsewhere condemns both Galen and Hippocrates for tediousness, obscurity, confusion. Paracelsus will have them both mere idiots, infants in physic and philosophy. Scaliger and Cardan admire Suisset the Calculator, qui pene modum excessit humani ingenii, and yet [456]Lod. Vives calls them nugas Suisseticas: and Cardan, opposite to himself in another place, contemns those ancients in respect of times present, [457]Majoresque nostros ad presentes collatos juste pueros appellari. In conclusion, the said [458]Cardan and Saint Bernard will admit none into this catalogue of wise men, [459]but only prophets and apostles; how they esteem themselves, you have heard before. We are worldly-wise, admire ourselves, and seek for applause: but hear Saint [460]Bernard, quanto magis foras es sapiens, tanto magis intus stultus efficeris, &c. in omnibus es prudens, circa teipsum insipiens: the more wise thou art to others, the more fool to thyself. I may not deny but that there is some folly approved, a divine fury, a holy madness, even a spiritual drunkenness in the saints of God themselves; sanctum insanium Bernard calls it (though not as blaspheming [461]Vorstius, would infer it as a passion incident to God himself, but) familiar to good men, as that of Paul, 2 Cor. “he was a fool,” &c. and Rom. ix. he wisheth himself to be anathematised for them. Such is that drunkenness which Ficinus speaks of, when the soul is elevated and ravished with a divine taste of that heavenly nectar, which poets deciphered by the sacrifice of Dionysius, and in this sense with the poet, [462]insanire lubet, as Austin exhorts us, ad ebrietatem se quisque paret, let's all be mad and [463]drunk. But we commonly mistake, and go beyond our commission, we reel to the opposite part, [464]we are not capable of it, [465]and as he said of the Greeks, Vos Graeci semper pueri, vos Britanni, Galli, Germani, Itali, &c. you are a company of fools.
Proceed now a partibus ad totum, or from the whole to parts, and you shall find no other issue, the parts shall be sufficiently dilated in this following Preface. The whole must needs follow by a sorites or induction. Every multitude is mad, [466]bellua multorum capitum, (a many-headed beast), precipitate and rash without judgment, stultum animal, a roaring rout. [467]Roger Bacon proves it out of Aristotle, Vulgus dividi in oppositum contra sapientes, quod vulgo videtur verum, falsum est; that which the commonalty accounts true, is most part false, they are still opposite to wise men, but all the world is of this humour (vulgus), and thou thyself art de vulgo, one of the commonalty; and he, and he, and so are all the rest; and therefore, as Phocion concludes, to be approved in nought you say or do, mere idiots and asses. Begin then where you will, go backward or forward, choose out of the whole pack, wink and choose, you shall find them all alike, “never a barrel better herring.”
Copernicus, Atlas his successor, is of opinion, the earth is a planet, moves and shines to others, as the moon doth to us. Digges, Gilbert, Keplerus, Origanus, and others, defend this hypothesis of his in sober sadness, and that the moon is inhabited: if it be so that the earth is a moon, then are we also giddy, vertiginous and lunatic within this sublunary maze.
I could produce such arguments till dark night: if you should hear the rest,
Ante diem clauso component vesper Olimpo: