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reason, which is abhorrent even from human constancy; therefore, if most dreams are either forgotten or neglected, either God knows not this, or he sends dreams to no purpose; but neither of these can be true of God: we must therefore acknowledge that nothing is signified to us in dreams from God." This is his first reason; we have already seen the second; here follows the third.* "Jam verò quis dicere audeat, vera omnia esse somnia? Aliquot somnia vera inquit Ennius, sed omnia non est necesse. Quæ est tandem ista distinctio? quæ vera, quæ falsa habet? et si vera à deo mittuntur, falsa unde nascuntur? nam si ea quoque divina, quid inconstantius deo? quid inscitius autem est, quam mentes mortalium falsis, et mendacibus visis concitare? sin vera visa divina sunt: falsa autem, et inania humana: quæ est ista designandi licentia, ut hoc deus, hoc natura fecerit potius, quam aut omnia deus, quod negatis, aut omnia natura? ---- And now who will venture to say that all dreams are true? Some dreams, Ennius tells us, must necessarily be true, but not all. What distinction is this? and how shall we know which are true, which are false? and if the true are sent by God, whence proceed the false? for if they likewise are divine, can any thing be more inconstant than the Deity? and what can be more ignorant than to stir up the minds of men by false and lying visions? But if true dreams are divine, and the false and empty, human, what liberty is this of distinguishing and saying, that God does this and nature that, rather than that all is done by God alone, which you deny, or by nature alone?" He proposes a fourth, founded upon the obscurity of dreams, which has been already considered, but let us consider it a little better. "There is no one," says he, "who has sufficient capacity to expound dreams aright; if therefore, the gods speak to us in this way, it will be as if the Car* Cicero de Divinat. cap. lxi, lxii.

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thaginians should harangue the senate of Rome in their own language, and bring no interpreter with them. "Vide igitur, ne etiam si divinationem tibi esse concessero, quod nunquam faciam, neminem tamen divinum reperire possimus. Qualis autem ista mens est deorum si neque ca nobis significant in somniis, quæ ipsi per nos intelligamus: neque ea, quorum interpretes habere possimus? similes enim sunt dii, si ea nobis objiciunt, quorum nec scientiam neque explanatorem habeamus, tanquam si Poeni, aut Hispani in senatu nostro loquerentur sine interprete. Jam verò quò pertinent obscuritates, et ænigmata somniorum? intelligi enim à nobis dii velle debebant ea, quæ nostra causa nos monerent.* -But supposing I should grant you that there is such a thing as divination, which I never will, perhaps even this may not lead us to a Divine Being. For what kind of mind is that of the gods, if they neither signify those things to us in dreams, which we may of ourselves understand, nor those of which we can find interpreters? for if the Gods throw such things before us, as we have neither knowledge nor interpreter of, it is the same thing as if the Carthaginians or Spaniards should speak in our senate without an interpreter. Besides, to what purpose serves the obscure and enigmatical nature of dreams? for the Gods ought to desire that we should understand those things, which they admonish us of for our own sakes." -Art. MAJUS.

EARS.

(Men who moved them.)

Ir is pretended that Hercules could move his ears, which phenomenon is very rare. The journal of the Academiæ Naturæ curiosorum speaks of a maid who

* Cicero de Divinat. cap. lxiv.

moved her ears. Republic of Letters, giving an extract of this journal, observed that there was not reason to doubt of this particular, after what the abbot de Marolles attests of the philosopher Crassot, in the thirty-second page of his Memoirs. "He had a great resemblance," says he, "to those pictures of the Cynic philosophers, which are to be found in the cabinets of the curious, being slovenly like them, with a long and bushy beard, and hair ill combed. He had one thing very particular, and which I never observed in any one else, which was, that he could move his ears backwards and forwards when he would, without touching them." Peter Messie relates, in the twenty-fourth chapter of his first part, that St Austin saw a man, who not only moved his ears as he pleased, but also his hair, without any motion of his hands or head. Give me leave to add some other passages relating to this. I begin with a pretty long one of Casaubon. “This is quite contrary to the common nature of men, to whom alone of all animals (unless we should except apes) God has given ears which have no self motion. (For what Martial writes of the son of one Cinna, who had long ears, which moved like those of asses, is undoubtedly rather a poetical invention than a true story). However Eustathius tells us of a certain priest who moved his ears. I have been informed likewise by men worthy of credit, that the ears of a certain learned man were plainly seen to move, when, passing through the confines of Savoy, he understood that he was in hazard of being burnt alive by the magistrates, upon a report that he was then flying from Toulouse into Italy, on account of his having been guilty of a heinous sin." Since Casaubon doth not doubt of the truth of Eustathius's report, nor of what was told him of the learned man that escaped from Toulouse, why doth he doubt of the story of Cinna's child, in the thirty-ninth epigram of the sixth book of Martial? He would have

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less doubted of it, if he had taken notice of what St Austin says in the twenty-fourth chapter of the fourteenth book, De Civitate Dei: "sunt qui et aures moveant vel singulas vel ambas simul.-There are some people who move their ears, either singly, or both together;" but also of what Vesalius attests. That great anatomist affirms that he saw at Padua, two men whose ears moved. He elsewhere explains the cause of this motion. "Interdum," says he, "quibusdam raris fibris carnalis membrana quam carnosam vocamus super aures augetur, et modice auri proximam cutem et ipsam quoque aurem motu agit arbitrario.Sometimes, by means of certain delicate fibres, the fleshy membrane, which we call the carnosa, is enlarged above the ears, and gives a gentle arbitrary motion to the skin next to the ear, and even to the ear itself." Du Laurent affirms that he has seen people that caused their ears to move. Valverdus saw the same thing in a Spaniard at Rome. Procopius compares Justinian to an ass, not only because of his dullness and stupidity, but also with respect to his moveable ears, which occasioned his being called in a full theatre yavdave, (which is to say, word for word, Mr Ass) by those of the green faction, or the Prasini, which he was an enemy to. I have read these words in La Mothe le Vayer, who cites the 36th page of Procopius's Secret History. Art. HERCULES.

ELIJAH.

ELIJAH, one of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament, lived under the reign of Ahab. His true history is to be found in scripture: to which I refer my readers, and shall content myself with relating some apocryphal stories of him. There was a common tradition among the Jews, that he was the same with Phineas, the son of Eleazar the high-priest, and that the prophet, who lived among men sometimes under the name of Phineas, sometimes under the

name of Elias, was not a man but an angel. St Epiphanius relates one thing which is as incredible as these, I mean the vision of Sobac, the father of Elias. As soon as his wife was delivered, he thought he saw men clothed in white, who saluted the new born child, covered him over with fire, and made him swallow the flame. These are the swaddling clothes in which they wrapped the little Elijah.. This is the milk with which they nourished him. Sobac went up to Jerusalem to consult the oracle, and was told what the vision signified. They assured him that his son should inhabit in light, and that he should judge Israel with fire and sword. This agrees pretty well with that revengeful spirit, which animated Elijah on some occasions, as when he destroyed the priests of Baal, and called for fire from Heaven upon the king's soldiers. The enemies of toleration do not love to be told that Jesus Christ has abolished this spirit: such an information is an uneasy lesson to them, and they would willingly say to whomsoever puts them in mind of it, as Felix said to Paul,-" go thy way for the present, when a convenient time comes, we will call for thee again." I do not wonder that they cannot endure to be deprived of the authority of such an example as this; for what can be more strongly urged in favour of massacres out of zeal for religion, than the conduct of Elijah. A man, who had no character in the state, no political authority, no right to make use of the sword, a man, whose office was only to prophecy, assembles all the prophets of Baal, who were 450, and the prophets of the groves to the number of 400, who had the honour to eat at the queen's table; he convinces them by a miracle, that they worshipped a false God, and immediately orders them to be seized, and care to be taken that none escaped. He commands them all to be killed, without condescending so much as to ask king Ahab, who was present, if it were his will to have it so, and without

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