46 FABLE OF CUPID. 



and, whilst it tends toward things more distant, falls back 

 upon those that are nearer. For when, through its own 

 limited capacity, it is accustomed to be most affected by 

 those things which occur familiarly to it, and which can 

 enter and strike&quot; the mind suddenly ; it comes to pass that 

 when it stretches itself toward those things which, accord 

 ing to experience, are for the most part universal, and 

 nevertheless is unwilling to rest satisfied, then, as if desi 

 rous of something more within the reach of its know 

 ledge, it turns itself to those things which have most 

 effected or allured it, and imagines them to be more causa 

 tive and palpable than those universals. Therefore it has 

 been now laid down that the first essence of things, or 

 Cupid, is without a cause. 



We have now to inquire into the mode of this thing which 

 is uncaused : and the mode of it is likewise very obscure, 

 which indeed the fable elegantly hints in Cupid being 

 hatched beneath the brooding wing of night. So at least 

 the Inspired Philosopher saith, &quot; God hath made all things 

 beautiful in their seasons : He hath also set the world in their 

 heart, yet so that no man can find out the work that God 

 maketh from the beginning unto the end.&quot; For the great 

 law of essence and nature which cuts and runs through the 

 vicissitudes of things (which law seems to be described in the 

 compass of the words &quot;the work which God wrought from the 

 beginning even to the end&quot;), the power lodged by God in 

 the primitive particles, from the multiplication of which the 

 whole variety of things might spring forth and be composed, 

 may indeed just strike, but cannot enter deeply the mind 

 of man. But that saying concerning the egg of night is 

 very aptly referred to those proofs by means of which our 

 Cupid is brought to light. For those proofs which are 

 concluded by means of affirmatives, seem to be the offspring 

 of light ; those which are concluded by means of negatives 

 and exclusions, may be called the offspring of darkness 

 and night: and Cupid is in truth the egg sprung from 

 night; for all the knowledge we can gather respecting him 

 comes by the way of negatives and exclusions. But a 

 proof gathered by exclusions has still some degree of igno 

 rance in it, and is a kind of night as to that which is in 

 cluded in it: whence Democritus admirably remarked that 

 the atoms or seeds and their properties were like nothing 

 that falls under the observation of sense, and held them to 

 be of a dark and secret nature. He therefore pronounced 

 of them, &quot; They are neither like fire, nor any other thing, the 

 body of which is perceptible by sense, or open to the touch.&quot; 



