[386]To insist in every particular were one of Hercules’ labours, there’s so many ridiculous instances, as motes in the sun. Quantum est in rebus inane? (How much vanity there is in things!) And who can speak of all? Crimine ab uno disce omnes, take this for a taste.

But these are obvious to sense, trivial and well known, easy to be discerned.  How would Democritus have been moved, had he seen [387]the secrets of their hearts?  If every man had a window in his breast, which Momus would have had in Vulcan’s man, or that which Tully so much wished it were written in every man’s forehead, Quid quisque de republica sentiret, what he thought; or that it could be effected in an instant, which Mercury did by Charon in Lucian, by touching of his eyes, to make him discern semel et simul rumores et susurros.

       “Spes hominum caecas, morbos, votumque labores,
        Et passim toto volitantes aethere curas.”

       “Blind hopes and wishes, their thoughts and affairs,
        Whispers and rumours, and those flying cares.”

That he could cubiculorum obductas foras recludere et secreta cordium penetrare, which [388]Cyprian desired, open doors and locks, shoot bolts, as Lucian’s Gallus did with a feather of his tail:  or Gyges’ invisible ring, or some rare perspective glass, or Otacousticon, which would so multiply species, that a man might hear and see all at once (as [389] Martianus Capella’s Jupiter did in a spear which he held in his hand, which did present unto him all that was daily done upon the face of the earth), observe cuckolds’ horns, forgeries of alchemists, the philosopher’s stone, new projectors, &c., and all those works of darkness, foolish vows, hopes, fears and wishes, what a deal of laughter would it have afforded?  He should have seen windmills in one man’s head, an hornet’s nest in another.  Or had he been present with Icaromenippus in Lucian at Jupiter’s whispering place, [390]and heard one pray for rain, another for fair weather; one for his wife’s, another for his father’s death, &c.; “to ask that at God’s hand which they are abashed any man should hear:”  How would he have been confounded?  Would he, think you, or any man else, say that these men were well in their wits? Haec sani esse hominis quis sanus juret Orestes?  Can all the hellebore in the Anticyrae cure these men?  No, sure, [391]"an acre of hellebore will not do it.”

That which is more to be lamented, they are mad like Seneca’s blind woman, and will not acknowledge, or [392]seek for any cure of it, for pauci vident morbum suum, omnes amant.  If our leg or arm offend us, we covet by all means possible to redress it; [393]and if we labour of a bodily disease, we send for a physician; but for the diseases of the mind we take no notice of them:  [394]Lust harrows us on the one side; envy, anger, ambition on the other.  We are torn in pieces by our passions, as so many