provinces are melancholy, cities and families, all creatures, vegetal,
sensible, and rational, that all sorts, sects, ages, conditions, are out of
tune, as in Cebes' table, _omnes errorem bibunt_, before they come into the
world, they are intoxicated by error's cup, from the highest to the lowest
have need of physic, and those particular actions in [177]Seneca, where
father and son prove one another mad, may be general; Porcius Latro shall
plead against us all. For indeed who is not a fool, melancholy, mad?--[178]
_Qui nil molitur inepte_, who is not brain-sick? Folly, melancholy,
madness, are but one disease, _Delirium_ is a common name to all.
Alexander, Gordonius, Jason Pratensis, Savanarola, Guianerius, Montaltus,
confound them as differing _secundum magis et minus_; so doth David, Psal.
xxxvii. 5. "I said unto the fools, deal not so madly," and 'twas an old
Stoical paradox, _omnes stultos insanire_, [179]all fools are mad, though
some madder than others. And who is not a fool, who is free from
melancholy? Who is not touched more or less in habit or disposition? If in
disposition, "ill dispositions beget habits, if they persevere," saith
[180]Plutarch, habits either are, or turn to diseases. 'Tis the same which
Tully maintains in the second of his Tusculans, _omnium insipientum animi
in morbo sunt, et perturbatorum_, fools are sick, and all that are troubled
in mind: for what is sickness, but as [181]Gregory Tholosanus defines it,
"A dissolution or perturbation of the bodily league, which health
combines:" and who is not sick, or ill-disposed? in whom doth not passion,
anger, envy, discontent, fear and sorrow reign? Who labours not of this
disease? Give me but a little leave, and you shall see by what testimonies,
confessions, arguments, I will evince it, that most men are mad, that they
had as much need to go a pilgrimage to the Anticyrae (as in [182]Strabo's
time they did) as in our days they run to Compostella, our Lady of Sichem,
or Lauretta, to seek for help; that it is like to be as prosperous a voyage
as that of Guiana, and that there is much more need of hellebore than of
tobacco.