LXXVI. The second capital error committed in making experimental
observations, and which is more common than the first, is that of
mistaking for the cause, something that intervenes by accident, and is
neither cause nor effect. There is scarce any sick person, who does
not fancy he knows what has been the cause of his disorder, which he
generally imputes to something particular that he has done, or some
alteration he has made in his way of living a little before he was seized
with his distemper; although the thing to which he imputes it, bears no
allusion to, nor any proportion with the disorder that afflicts him. The
having eaten an olive more than it was usual for him to eat, or having
fasted a quarter of an hour longer than his usual time, or having drunk
two spoonfulls more than common, or abated twenty yards of his ordinary
walking, together with some other particulars, that are equally trifling
and insignificant with those we have mentioned; but notwithstanding the
futility of these observations, he is apt to impute to such causes the
disorder he labours under, without reflecting, that this machine of ours,
from the weakness of its own texture, is sufficiently exposed to its
breaks, ebbings and flowings. The humours of the body, even when the
influence of all external causes, and every thing that depends on our
own free will, are regulated with perfect uniformity, are nevertheless
exposed to various alterations. The heterogeneous nature of them as they
respect one another, and also considered with respect to every particle
of each of them separately, must necessarily conduce to their being in
different states. If those superstitious spirits, who are such idolaters
of their health, that with respect to their own regimen they would weigh
even atoms, would well consider this, they would free themselves from the
continual anxiety in which they live, and which is more pernicious to
them, than those very indispositions they are so terrified at, and which
they are at so much pains to escape.
LXXVII. But the most common accusation of all, is that which charges the
weather as the cause of our disorders. He who commits no excesses, and
cannot assign any other cause for his being out of order, lays the blame
upon the weather, and even he who does commit them, to avoid criminating
himself, lays the blame on the weather also; which be it hot, moist,
dry, variable, or settled, people are never at a loss to find out some
pretence whereon to ground the accusation. If in July, as is customary
at that season, we find it very hot, we say the heat is the cause of our
disorders; but if the weather at that time happens to be more benign and
temperate than usual, they still lay the blame upon it, alledging that
such a temperature of air is not natural to the season. The same sort of
charge is brought against the cold in winter, whether it is intense or
moderate. If at that time of the year, the weather is variable, there is
scarce any one who does not find fault with it; neither is it exempted
from blame if it is settled, for then they say that change of weather
is indispensably necessary to our constitutions; and that any kind of
weather which lasts a long while is hostile to them; that long cold
occasions constipations, long heat dissolves and weakens us, long wet
suffocates us, and that long drought burns us up and consumes us.
LXXVIII. I have often remarked, that all our misfortunes are imputed to
two common enemies: our spiritual ones to the Devil, and our bodily ones
to the weather. There is scarce any one, who, in order to extenuate his
own guilt, does not say, he was tempted by the Devil to commit the crime
he has been guilty of. He is as irrational who thinks, that if there
was no Devil to tempt us, we should never sin, as he is who thinks,
that if the weather was regulated in a most perfect form and order, we
should never be sick. Within ourselves, and in the very essence of our
being, lies the origin of all our ills, both spiritual and temporal; and
our nature is swayed by its own weight, towards both the one and the
other evil; although we can never be led into the first without our own
consent; but the other species, may frequently be brought on us against
our will.