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:” 

       “Through such a train of words if I should run,
        The day would sooner than the tale be done:” 

but according to my promise, I will descend to particulars.  This melancholy extends itself not to men only, but even to vegetals and sensibles.  I speak not of those creatures which are saturnine, melancholy by nature, as lead, and such like minerals, or those plants, rue, cypress, &c. and hellebore itself, of which [468]Agrippa treats, fishes, birds, and beasts, hares, conies, dormice, &c., owls, bats, nightbirds, but that artificial, which is perceived in them all.  Remove a plant, it will pine away, which is especially perceived in date trees, as you may read at large in Constantine’s husbandry, that antipathy betwixt the vine and the cabbage, vine and oil.  Put a bird in a cage, he will die for sullenness, or a beast in a pen, or take his young ones or companions from him, and see what effect it will cause.  But who perceives not these common passions of sensible creatures, fear, sorrow, &c.  Of all other, dogs are most subject to this malady, insomuch some hold they dream as men do, and through violence of melancholy run mad; I could relate many stories of dogs that have died for grief, and pined away for loss of their masters, but they are common in every [469]author.