angry, waspish, displeased with every thing, “suspicious of all, wayward, covetous, hard” (saith Tully,) “self-willed, superstitious, self-conceited, braggers and admirers of themselves,” as [1305]Balthazar Castilio hath truly noted of them. [1306]This natural infirmity is most eminent in old women, and such as are poor, solitary, live in most base esteem and beggary, or such as are witches; insomuch that Wierus, Baptista Porta, Ulricus Molitor, Edwicus, do refer all that witches are said to do, to imagination alone, and this humour of melancholy.  And whereas it is controverted, whether they can bewitch cattle to death, ride in the air upon a cowl-staff out of a chimney-top, transform themselves into cats, dogs, &c., translate bodies from place to place, meet in companies, and dance, as they do, or have carnal copulation with the devil, they ascribe all to this redundant melancholy, which domineers in them, to [1307] somniferous potions, and natural causes, the devil’s policy. Non laedunt omnino (saith Wierus) aut quid mirum faciunt, (de Lamiis, lib. 3. cap. 36), ut putatur, solam vitiatam habent phantasiam; they do no such wonders at all, only their [1308]brains are crazed. [1309]"They think they are witches, and can do hurt, but do not.”  But this opinion Bodine, Erastus, Danaeus, Scribanius, Sebastian Michaelis, Campanella de Sensu rerum, lib. 4. cap. 9. [1310]Dandinus the Jesuit, lib. 2. de Animae explode; [1311]Cicogna confutes at large.  That witches are melancholy, they deny not, but not out of corrupt phantasy alone, so to delude themselves and others, or to produce such effects.

SUBSECT.  VI.—­Parents a cause by Propagation.

That other inward inbred cause of Melancholy is our temperature, in whole or part, which we receive from our parents, which [1312]Fernelius calls Praeter naturam, or unnatural, it being an hereditary disease; for as he justifies [1313]_Quale parentum maxime patris semen obtigerit, tales evadunt similares spermaticaeque paries, quocunque etiam morbo Pater quum generat tenetur, cum semine transfert, in Prolem_; such as the temperature of the father is, such is the son’s, and look what disease the father had when he begot him, his son will have after him; [1314]"and is as well inheritor of his infirmities, as of his lands.  And where the complexion and constitution of the father is corrupt, there ([1315]saith Roger Bacon) the complexion and constitution of the son must needs be corrupt, and so the corruption is derived from the father to the son.”  Now this doth not so much appear in the composition of the body, according to that of Hippocrates, [1316]"in habit, proportion, scars, and other lineaments; but in manners and conditions of the mind,” Et patrum in natos abeunt cum semine mores.