troubled with the horror of his rash act, it was not hard for him,
slumbering in the cold, to dream of that which most affrighted him;
which fear, as by degrees it made him wake, so also it must needs make
the apparition by degrees to vanish: and having no assurance that he
slept, he could have no cause to think it a dream, or anything but a
vision. And this is no very rare accident: for even they that be
perfectly awake, if they be timorous and superstitious, possessed with
fearful tales, and alone in the dark, are subject to the like fancies,
and believe they see spirits and dead men's ghosts walking in
churchyards; whereas it is either their fancy only, or else the
knavery of such persons as make use of such superstitious fear to pass
disguised in the night to places they would not be known to haunt.

  From this ignorance of how to distinguish dreams, and other strong
fancies, from vision and sense, did arise the greatest part of the
religion of the Gentiles in time past, that worshipped satyrs,
fauns, nymphs, and the like; and nowadays the opinion that rude people
have of fairies, ghosts, and goblins, and of the power of witches.
For, as for witches, I think not that their witchcraft is any real
power, but yet that they are justly punished for the false belief they
have that they can do such mischief, joined with their purpose to do
it if they can, their trade being nearer to a new religion than to a
craft or science. And for fairies, and walking ghosts, the opinion
of them has, I think, been on purpose either taught, or not
confuted, to keep in credit the use of exorcism, of crosses, of holy
water, and other such inventions of ghostly men. Nevertheless, there
is no doubt but God can make unnatural apparitions: but that He does
it so often as men need to fear such things more than they fear the
stay, or change, of the course of Nature, which he also can stay,
and change, is no point of Christian faith. But evil men, under
pretext that God can do anything, are so bold as to say anything
when it serves their turn, though they think it untrue; it is the part
of a wise man to believe them no further than right reason makes
that which they say appear credible. If this superstitious fear of
spirits were taken away, and with it prognostics from dreams, false
prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which crafty
ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be would be
much more fitted than they are for civil obedience.

  And this ought to be the work of the schools, but they rather
nourish such doctrine. For (not knowing what imagination, or the
senses are) what they receive, they teach: some saying that
imaginations rise of themselves, and have no cause; others that they
rise most commonly from the will; and that good thoughts are blown
(inspired) into a man by God, and evil thoughts, by the Devil; or that
good thoughts are poured (infused) into a man by God, and evil ones by
the Devil. Some say the senses receive the species of things, and
deliver them to the common sense; and the common sense delivers them
over to the fancy, and the fancy to the memory, and the memory to
the judgement, like handing of things from one to another, with many
words making nothing understood.

  The imagination that is raised in man (or any other creature
endued with the faculty of imagining) by words, or other voluntary
signs, is that we generally call understanding, and is common to man
and beast. For a dog by custom will understand the call or the
rating of his master; and so will many other beasts. That
understanding which is peculiar to man is the understanding not only
his will, but his conceptions and thoughts, by the sequel and
contexture of the names of things into affirmations, negations, and
other forms of speech: and of this kind of understanding I shall speak
hereafter.

                             CHAPTER III

             OF THE CONSEQUENCE OR TRAIN OF IMAGINATIONS

  BY CONSEQUENCE, or train of thoughts, I understand that succession
of one thought to another which is called, to distinguish it from
discourse in words, mental discourse.

  When a man thinketh on anything whatsoever, his next thought after
is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to
every thought succeeds indifferently. But as we have no imagination,
whereof we have not formerly had sense, in whole or in parts; so we
have no transition from one imagination to another, whereof we never
had the like before in our senses. The reason whereof is this. All
fancies are motions within us, relics of those made in the sense;
and those motions that immediately succeeded one another in the
sense continue also together after sense: in so much as the former
coming again to take place and be predominant, the latter followeth,
by coherence of the matter moved, in such manner as water upon a plain
table is drawn which way any one part of it is guided by the finger.
But because in sense, to one and the same thing perceived, sometimes
one thing, sometimes another, succeedeth, it comes to pass in time
that in the imagining of anything, there is no certainty what we shall
imagine next; only this is certain, it shall be something that
succeeded the same before, at one time or another.

  This train of thoughts, or mental discourse, is of two sorts. The
first is unguided, without design, and inconstant; wherein there is no
passionate thought to govern and direct those that follow to itself as
the end and scope of some desire, or other passion; in which case
the thoughts are said to wander, and seem impertinent one to
another, as in a dream. Such are commonly the thoughts of men that are
not only without company, but also without care of anything; though
even then their thoughts are as busy as at other times, but without
harmony; as the sound which a lute out of tune would yield to any man;
or in tune, to one that could not play. And yet in this wild ranging
of the mind, a man may oft-times perceive the way of it, and the