Tuesday, April 26, 2005

File 1.06

Subsec. 2.
Of the Force of Imagination
What Imagination is, I have sufficiently declared in my Digression of the Anatomie of the Soule. I will only now point at the wonderfull effects and power of it; which, as it is eminent in all, so most especially rageth in melancholy persons, in keeping the species of objects so long, mistaking, amplifying them by continuall and strong meditation, untill at length it produceth in some parties reall effects, causeth this and many other maladies.
R. Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 250

Subsec. 15.
Love of Learning, or overmuch Study. With a Digression of the Misery of Schollers, and why the Muses are Melancholy.
Because they cannot ride an horse, which every Clowne can doe; salute and court a Gentlewoman, carve at table, cringe and make congies, which every common swasher can doe [...]
Or if they be docile, yet all mens wills are not answerable to their wits, they can apprehend, but will not take paines; they are either seduced by bad companions and so spend their time to their friends griefe and their owne undoings.
Ibid., 305; 308