Chapter XIX. How the Virtues of Things Are to Be Tried and Found Out, Which Are in Them Specially, or in Any One Individual by Way of Special Gift

The Philosophy of Natural Magic, by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, L. W. de Laurence ed. [1913], at sacred-texts.com

p. 85

CHAPTER XIX.

How the Virtues of Things Are to Be Tried and Found Out, Which Are in Them Specially, or in Any One Individual by Way of Special Gift.

Moreover, thou must consider that the Virtues of things are in some things according to the Species, as boldness and courage in a lion and cock, fearfulness in a hare or lamb, ravenousness in a wolf, treachery and deceitfulness in a fox, flattery in a dog, covetousness in a crow and jackdaw, pride in a horse, anger in a tiger and boar, sadness and melancholy in a cat, lust in a sparrow, and so of the rest. For the greatest part of Natural Virtues doth follow the Species. Yet some are in things Individually; as there be some men which do so wonderfully abhor the sight of a cat that they cannot look upon her without quaking; which fear, it is manifest, is not in them, as they are men. And Avicen tells of a man that lived in his time, whom all poisonous things did shun, all of them dying which did by chance bite him, he himself not being hurt; and Albertus reports that in a city of the Ubians he saw a wench who would catch spiders to eat them, and being much pleased with such a kind of meat, was wonderfully nourished therewith. So is boldness in a wanton, and fearfulness in a thief. And upon this account it is that philosophers say that any particular thing that never was sick is good against any manner of sickness; therefore they say that a bone of a dead man, who never had a fever, being laid upon the patient, frees him of his quartan. There are also many singular virtues infused into particular things by Celestial bodies, as we have shewed before.