Now seeing I have in effect tried it, I have no doubt but I have hitherto made a right judgment; for first, being in a swoon, I laboured to rip open the buttons of my doublet with my nails, for my sword was gone; and yet I felt nothing in my imagination that hurt me; for we have many motions in us that do not proceed from our direction;

“Semianimesque micant digiti, ferrumque retractant;”

["Half-dead fingers grope about, and grasp again the sword.” 
—­AEneid, x. 396.]

so falling people extend their arms before them by a natural impulse, which prompts our limbs to offices and motions without any commission from our reason.

         “Falciferos memorant currus abscindere membra . . . 
          Ut tremere in terra videatur ab artubus id quod
          Decidit abscissum; cum mens tamen atque hominis vis
          Mobilitate mali, non quit sentire dolorem.”

["They relate that scythe-bearing chariots mow off limbs, so that they quiver on the ground; and yet the mind of him from whom the limb is taken by the swiftness of the blow feels no pain.”  —­Lucretius, iii. 642.]

My stomach was so oppressed with the coagulated blood, that my hands moved to that part, of their own voluntary motion, as they frequently do to the part that itches, without being directed by our will.  There are several animals, and even men, in whom one may perceive the muscles to stir and tremble after they are dead.  Every one experimentally knows that there are some members which grow stiff and flag without his leave.  Now, those passions which only touch the outward bark of us, cannot be said to be ours:  to make them so, there must be a concurrence of the whole man; and the pains which are felt by the hand or the foot while we are sleeping, are none of ours.

As I drew near my own house, where the alarm of my fall was already got before me, and my family were come out to meet me, with the hubbub usual in such cases, not only did I make some little answer to some questions which were asked me; but they moreover tell me, that I was sufficiently collected to order them to bring a horse to my wife whom on the road, I saw struggling and tiring herself which is hilly and rugged.  This should seem to proceed from a soul its functions; but it was nothing so with me.  I knew not what I said or did, and they were nothing but idle thoughts in the clouds, that were stirred up by the senses of the eyes and ears, and proceeded not from me.  I knew not for all that, whence I came or whither I went, neither was I capable to weigh and consider what was said to me:  these were light effects, that the senses produced of themselves as of custom; what the soul contributed was in a dream, lightly touched, licked and bedewed by the soft impression of the senses.  Notwithstanding, my condition was, in truth, very easy and quiet; I had no affliction upon me, either for others or myself; it was an extreme