serviceable to mankind, they made use of several methods. At
certain seasons of the year you might behold the priests amongst
them in vast numbers with their mouths gaping wide against a storm.
At other times were to be seen several hundreds linked together in a
circular chain, with every man a pair of bellows applied to his
neighbour, by which they blew up each other to the shape and size of
a tun; and for that reason with great propriety of speech did
usually call their bodies their vessels {119b}. When, by these and
the like performances, they were grown sufficiently replete, they
would immediately depart, and disembogue for the public good a
plentiful share of their acquirements into their disciples' chaps.
For we must here observe that all learning was esteemed among them
to be compounded from the same principle. Because, first, it is
generally affirmed or confessed that learning puffeth men up; and,
secondly, they proved it by the following syllogism: "Words are but
wind, and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing
but wind." For this reason the philosophers among them did in their
schools deliver to their pupils all their doctrines and opinions by
eructation, wherein they had acquired a wonderful eloquence, and of
incredible variety. But the great characteristic by which their
chief sages were best distinguished was a certain position of
countenance, which gave undoubted intelligence to what degree or
proportion the spirit agitated the inward mass. For after certain
gripings, the wind and vapours issuing forth, having first by their
turbulence and convulsions within caused an earthquake in man's
little world, distorted the mouth, bloated the cheeks, and gave the
eyes a terrible kind of relievo. At which junctures all their
belches were received for sacred, the sourer the better, and
swallowed with infinite consolation by their meagre devotees. And
to render these yet more complete, because the breath of man's life