io8 Bacon 



do exceed. So likewise the ordinances in the ceremonial 

 law, interdicting the eating of the blood and the fat, dis 

 tinguishing between beasts clean and unclean for meat, are 

 many and strict. Nay the faith itself being clear and 

 serene from all clouds of ceremony, yet retaineth the use of 

 fastings, abstinences, and other macerations and humilia 

 tions of the body, as things real, and not figurative. The 

 root and life of all of which prescripts is, besides the cere 

 mony, the consideration of that dependency which the affec 

 tions of the mind are submitted unto upon the state and 

 disposition of the body. And if any man of weak judgment 

 do conceive that this suffering of the mind from the body 

 doth either question the immortality, or derogate from the 

 sovereignty of the soul, he may be taught in easy instances 

 that the infant in the mother s womb is compatible with 

 the mother and yet separable ; l and the most absolute 

 monarch is sometimes led by his servants and yet without 

 subjection. As for the reciprocal knowledge, which is the 

 operation of the conceits and passions of the mind upon the 

 body, we see all wise physicians, in the prescriptions of their 

 regiments to their patients, do ever consider accidentia 

 animi as of great force to further or hinder remedies or 

 recoveries: and more especially it is an inquiry of great 

 depth and worth concerning imagination, how and how far 

 it altereth the body proper of the imaginant. For although 

 it hath a manifest power to hurt, it followeth not it hath the 

 same degree of power to help; no more than a man can 

 conclude, that because there be pestilent airs able suddenly 

 to kill a man in health, therefore there should be sovereign 

 airs able suddenly to cure a man in sickness. But the 

 inquisition of this part is of great use, though it needeth, as 

 Socrates said, a Delian diver, 2 being difficult and profound. 

 But unto all this knowledge de communi vinculo, of the con 

 cordances between the mind and the body, that part of 

 inquiry is most necessary, which considereth of the seats 

 and domiciles which the several faculties of the mind do 

 take and occupate in the organs of the body ; which know 

 ledge hath been attempted, and is controverted, and 



1 Qui simul cum matris affectibus compatitur, et tamen e corpore 

 matris suo tempore excluditur. De Augm. 



2 Diog. Laert. ii. 22. Socrates speaks of a work of Heraclitus 

 which Euripides had lent him: &quot; Delio quopiam natatore indiget.&quot; 



