furnishing the zibeta occidentalis[1], and gathering there into a tumour, left the rest of the world for that time in peace. Of such mighty consequence it is, where those exhalations fix; and of so little, from whence they proceed. The same spirits, which, in their superiour progress, would conquer a kingdom, descending upon the anus, conclude in a fistula.
Let us next examine the great introducers of new schemes in philosophy, and search till we can find, from what faculty of the soul, the disposition arises in mortal man, of taking it into his head to advance new systems, with such an eager zeal, in things agreed on all hands impossible to be known: from what seeds this disposition springs, and to what quality of human nature, these grand innovators have been indebted, for their number of disciples. Because it is plain, that several of the chief among them, both ancient and modern, were usually mistaken by their adversaries, and indeed by all, except their own followers, to have been persons crazed, or out of their wits; having generally proceeded, in the common course of their words and actions, by a method very different from the vulgar dictates of unrefined reason; agreeing for the most part in their several models, with their present undoubted successors in the academy of modern Bedlam; whose merits and principles I shall farther examine in due place. Of this kind were Epicurus, Diogenes,
- ↑ Paracelsus, who was so famous for chymistry, tried an experiment upon human excrement, to make a perfume of it; which, when he had brought to perfection, he called zibeta occidentalis, or western civet, the back parts of man (according to his division mentioned by the author, page 153,) being the west.
