132 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [IX. x. 
om, a 
and the like: but the scruples and superstitions of diet 
and other regiment of the body in the sect of the Pytha- 
goreans, in the heresy of the Manichees, and in the law 
of Mahomet, do exceed. So likewise the ordinances in 
the ceremonial law, interdicting the eating of the blood 
and the fat, distinguishing. 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 humiliations of the body, as things real, 
and not figurative. The root and life of all which pre- 
scripts is (besides the ceremony) the consideration of that 
dependency which the affections of the mind are submit- 
ted unto upon the state and disposition of the body. And 
if any man of weak judgement do conceive that this suffer- 
ing 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; 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 acctdentia animi as of 
great force to further or hinder remedies or recoveries: 
and more specially 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 con- 
clude, that because there be pestilent airs, able suddenly to 
kill a man in health, therefore there should be sovereign 
Vee 
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