INTRODUCTION xliii

servant had hidden it in a certain place, and there it was found.
Fracastorius carefully explains that all such dreams are due to
the state of mind of the dreamer; in these two dreams nothing
occurred that could not have been foretold as probable.  His
reasoning reminds one of the analysis of popular superstitions
in his Sympathy. Certain passages on the illusions that result
from taking drugs, and several pages on melancholia, to which
he says the most distinguished Italians and Spanish are peculiar—
ly prone, have a medical interest. Burton, for his Anatomy/ of
Melancholy, had evidently read this dialogue. When Fracas—
torius discusses, in Sympathy, the difficulty of explaining the
psychological process involved in wonder, laughter, etc., he says
(Ch. XX) that he has written on this in the De IntelWectione;
and in the same work, at the end of Ch. XXIII, he says that the
De Intellec«ione has been written but 'is not yet published,
since it still needs careful revision''. 'This shows that the
dialogue was written, or in hand, before 1546.

De Anima

The third Dialogue, Fracastorius sive de Anima, is a discourse
on the soul delivered to the same company by Fracastorius.
It was a theme that must be handled with the greatest caution.
TThe arguments for the soul's immortality are accordingly Chris—
tian, and scrupulously orthodox, though Aristotle is often quoted.
In an Interlude, a boy who has from time to time lightened the
weariness of the interlocutors, sings to his harp the legend of
Cupid and Psyche with a Christian interpretation. 'The dis—
course, which sometimes takes the form of a dialogue, is a good
example of the constant efforts of writers of the type of Fracas—
torius to reconcile their Aristotelianism with the doctrines of
the Church. 'Thank God my Dialogues are finished'", he
writes to Rannusio in 1541. But he had left the De Animæa
unfinished and, perhaps shrank from risking publication in his
lifetime. After his death they were included by Rannusio,
the editor, in his Opera Omnia, 1555. 'They are written in the
Ciceronian Latin of the humanists, and are naturally in a very

 

is extant also a poem by A. M. Visdomius, who says that he is afflict—
ed with tabes, and implores Fracastorius to leave his herbs on the
hill, or conversations with Turrianus, or his refutation of ancient
errors, and come and cure his friend.