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all extravagantly, but according to their several domineering passions for the effect of the wine, does but remove dissimulation, and take from them the sight of the deformity of their passions. For, I believe, the most sober men, when they walk alone without care and employment of the mind, would be unwilling the vanity and extravagance of their thoughts at that time should be publicly seen; which is a confession, that passions unguided, are for the most part mere madness.

The opinions of the world, both in ancient and later ages, concerning the cause of madness, have been two. Some deriving them from the passions; some, from demons, or spirits, either good or bad, which they thought might enter into a man, possess him, and move his organs in such strange and uncouth manner, as madmen used to do. The former sort therefore, called such men, madmen: but the latter, called them sometimes "demoniacs," that is, possessed with spirits; sometimes enur gumeni, that is, agitated or moved with spirits; and now in Italy they are called, not only pazzi, madmen; but also spiritati, men possessed.

There was once a great conflux of people in Abdera, a city of the Greeks, at the acting of the tragedy of "Andromeda," upon an extreme hot day; whereupon, a great many of the spectators falling into fevers, had this accident from the heat, and from the tragedy together, that they did nothing but pronounce iambics, with the names of Perseus and Andromeda; which, together with the fever, was cured by the coming on of winter; and this madness was thought to proceed from the passion imprinted by the tragedy. Likewise there reigned a fit of madness in another Grecian city, which seized only the young maidens; and caused many of them to hang themselves. This was by most then thought an act of the devil. But one that suspected, that contempt of life in them, might proceed from some passion