OF COACHES

It is very easy to verify, that great authors, when they write of causes, not only make use of those they think to be the true causes, but also of those they believe not to be so, provided they have in them some beauty and invention:  they speak true and usefully enough, if it be ingeniously.  We cannot make ourselves sure of the supreme cause, and therefore crowd a great many together, to see if it may not accidentally be amongst them: 

               “Namque unam dicere causam
          Non satis est, verum plures, unde una tamen sit.”

     [Lucretius, vi. 704.—­The sense is in the preceding passage.]

Do you ask me, whence comes the custom of blessing those who sneeze?  We break wind three several ways; that which sallies from below is too filthy; that which breaks out from the mouth carries with it some reproach of gluttony; the third is sneezing, which, because it proceeds from the head and is without offence, we give it this civil reception:  do not laugh at this distinction; they say ’tis Aristotle’s.

I think I have seen in Plutarch’ (who of all the authors I know, is he who has best mixed art with nature, and judgment with knowledge), his giving as a reason for the, rising of the stomach in those who are at sea, that it is occasioned by fear; having first found out some reason by which he proves that fear may produce such an effect.  I, who am very subject to it, know well that this cause concerns not me; and I know it, not by argument, but by necessary experience.  Without instancing what has been told me, that the same thing often happens in beasts, especially hogs, who are out of all apprehension of danger; and what an acquaintance of mine told me of himself, that though very subject to it, the disposition to vomit has three or four times gone off him, being very afraid in a violent storm, as it happened to that ancient: 

          “Pejus vexabar, quam ut periculum mihi succurreret;”

          ["I was too ill to think of danger.” (Or the reverse:)
          “I was too frightened to be ill.”—­Seneca, Ep., 53. 2]

I was never afraid upon the water, nor indeed in any other peril (and I have had enough before my eyes that would have sufficed, if death be one), so as to be astounded to lose my judgment.  Fear springs sometimes as much from want of judgment as from want of courage.  All the dangers I have been in I have looked upon without winking, with an open, sound, and entire sight; and, indeed, a man must have courage to fear.  It formerly served me better than other help, so to order and regulate my retreat, that it was, if not without fear, nevertheless without affright and astonishment; it was agitated, indeed, but not amazed or stupefied.  Great souls go yet much farther, and present to us flights, not only steady and temperate, but moreover lofty.  Let us make a relation of that which Alcibiades reports of Socrates,