Francis Bacon

“ And it is elegantly added, that Proserpine was ravished whilst she gathered narcissus flowers, which have their name from numbedness or stupefaction; for the spirit we speak of is in the fittest disposition to be embraced by terrestrial matter when it begins to coagulate, or grow torpid as it were.
It is an honour justly attributed to Proserpine, and not to any other wife of the gods, that of being the lady or mistress of her husband, because this spirit performs all its operations in the subterraneal regions, whilst Pluto, or the earth, remains stupid, or as it were ignorant of them. ”

“ Yet Proserpine still continues and dwells below, after the manner excellently described in the condition betwixt Jupiter and Ceres. For first, it is certain that there are two ways of detaining the spirit, in solid and terrestrial matter, - the one by condensation or obstruction, which is mere violence and imprisonment; the other by administering a proper alignment, which in spontaneous and free. For after the included spirit begins to feed and nourish itself; it is not in a hurry to fly off, but remains as it were fixed in its own earth. ”

“ The allegory of the remedies against the Sirens is not difficult, but very wise and noble: it proposes, in effect, three remedies, as well against subtile as violent mischiefs, two drawn from philosophy and one from religion.
The first means of escaping is to resist the earliest temptation in the beginning, and diligently avoid and cut off all occasions that may solicit or sway the mind; and this is well represented by shutting up the ears, a kind of remedy to be necessarily used with mean and vulgar minds, such as the retinue of Ulysses. ”

“ We are certain, from numerous figures and expressions of the ancients, that they judged the conservation, and in some degree the renovation, of natural bodies to be no desperate or impossible thing, but rather abstruse and out of the common road than wholly impracticable. ”

“ But nobler spirits may converse, even in the midst of pleasures, if the mind be well guarded with constancy and resolution. And thus some delight to make a severe trial of their own virtue, and thoroughly acquaint themselves with the folly and madness of pleasures, without complying or being wholly given up to them ”

“ This spirit is conceived as ravished, or snatched up by the earth, because it can no way be detained, when it has time and opportunity to fly off, but is only wrought together and fixed by sudden intermixture and comminution, in the same manner as if one should endeavour to mix air with water, which cannot otherwise be done than by a quick and rapid agitation, that joins them together in froth whilst the air is thus caught up by the water. ”

“ The attempt of Theseus and Perithous to bring Proserpine away, denotes that the more subtile spirits, which descend in many bodies to the earth, may frequently be unable to drink in, unite with themselves, and carry off the subterraneous spirit, but on the contrary be coagulated by it, and rise no more, so as to increase the inhabitants and add to the dominion of Proserpine. ”

“ EXPLANATION. - This fable seems to regard natural philosophy, and searches deep into that rich and fruitful virtue and supply in subterraneous bodies, from whence all the things upon the earth's surface spring, and into which they again relapse and return. By Proserpine the ancients denoted that ethereal spirit shut up and detained within the earth, here represented by Pluto, the spirit being separated from the superior globe, according to the expression of the poet. ”

“ But that particular of the bones stretching like white cliffs along the shores, and appearing afar off, contains a more subtile allegory, and denotes that the examples of others' calamity and misfortunes, though ever so manifest and apparent, a have yet but little force to deter the corrupt nature of man from pleasures. ”

“ Sir Isaac Newton, in particular, suspects that the earth receives its vivifying spirit from the comets. And the philosophical chemists and astrologers have spun the thought into many fantastical distinctions and varieties. ”