omes in little by little, it is congealed by the fibres and produces
internal cold and shuddering. But when it enters with more of a flood
it overcomes the fibres by its heat and reaches the spinal marrow, and
burning up the cables of the soul sets her free from the body. When on
the other hand the body, though wasted, still holds out, then the bile
is expelled, like an exile from a factious state, causing associating
diarrhoeas and dysenteries and similar disorders. The body which is
diseased from the effects of fire is in a continual fever; when air is
the agent, the fever is quotidian; when water, the fever intermits a
day; when earth, which is the most sluggish element, the fever intermits
three days and is with difficulty shaken off.

Of mental disorders there are two sorts, one madness, the other
ignorance, and they may be justly attributed to disease. Excessive
pleasures or pains are among the greatest diseases, and deprive men of
their senses. When the seed about the spinal marrow is too abundant, the
body has too great pleasures and pains; and during a great part of his
life he who is the subject of them is more or less mad. He is
often thought bad, but this is a mistake; for the truth is that the
intemperance of lust is due to the fluidity of the marrow produced by
the loose consistency of the bones. And this is true of vice in
general, which is commonly regarded as disgraceful, whereas it is really
involuntary and arises from a bad habit of the body and evil education.
In like manner the soul is often made vicious by the influence of bodily
pain; the briny phlegm and other bitter and bilious humours wander over
the body and find no exit, but are compressed within, and mingle their
own vapours with the motions of the soul, and are carried to the
three places of the soul, creating infinite varieties of trouble and
melancholy, of rashness and cowardice, of forgetfulness and stupidity.
When men are in this evil plight of body, and evil forms of government
and evil discourses are superadded, and there is no education to save
them, they are corrupted through two causes; but of neither of them are
they really the authors. For the planters are to blame rather than the
plants, the educators and not the educated. Still, we should endeavour
to attain virtue and avoid vice; but this is part of another subject.

Enough of disease--I have now to speak of the means by which the mind
and body are to be preserved, a higher th