pours and exhalations, wherewith Heraclitus said, the
Stoics proved, Cicero maintained, they were cherished and alimented. There
would likewise be in such a world no manner of symbolization, alteration,
nor transmutation amongst the elements; for the one will not esteem itself
obliged to the other, as having borrowed nothing at all from it. Earth
then will not become water, water will not be changed into air, of air will
be made no fire, and fire will afford no heat unto the earth; the earth
will produce nothing but monsters, Titans, giants; no rain will descend
upon it, nor light shine thereon; no wind will blow there, nor will there
be in it any summer or harvest. Lucifer will break loose, and issuing
forth of the depth of hell, accompanied with his furies, fiends, and horned
devils, will go about to unnestle and drive out of heaven all the gods, as
well of the greater as of the lesser nations. Such a world without lending
will be no better than a dog-kennel, a place of contention and wrangling,
more unruly and irregular than that of the rector of Paris; a devil of an
hurlyburly, and more disordered confusion than that of the plagues of
Douay. Men will not then salute one another; it will be but lost labour to
expect aid or succour from any, or to cry fire, water, murder, for none
will put to their helping hand. Why? He lent no money, there is nothing
due to him. Nobody is concerned in his burning, in his shipwreck, in his
ruin, or in his death; and that because he hitherto had lent nothing, and
would never thereafter have lent anything. In short, Faith, Hope, and
Charity would be quite banished from such a world--for men are born to
relieve and assist one another; and in their stead should succeed and be
introduced Defiance, Disdain, and Rancour, with the most execrable troop of
all evils, all imprecations, and all miseries. Whereupon you will think,
and that not amiss, that Pandora had there spilt her unlucky bottle. Men
unto men will be wolves, hobthrushers, and goblins (as were Lycaon,
Bellerophon, Nebuchodonosor), plunderers, highway robbers, cutthroats,
rapparees, murderers, poisoners, assassinators, lewd, wicked, malevolent,
pernicious haters, set against everybody, like to Ishmael, Metabus, or
Timon the Athenian, who for that cause was named Misanthropos, in such
sort that it would prove much more easy in nature to have fish entertained
in the air and bullocks fed in the bottom of the ocean, than to sup