As I was telling Lee Durkee, Robert Burton talks about aliens a lot in THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. He believes that other planets are certainly inhabited (all the other known planets in 1621, and the moon, too!). (By the way, I should apologize to Lee because he loaned me a book about a scandalous poisoning during the reign of King James I and I haven't been able to pick it up yet, what with all these other books I'm reading plus THE DECAMERON, which I recently picked up again. [I don't want to offend any scholars, but THE DECAMERON is really easy to pick up again.] As Peter Ackroyd notes, the poison was allegedly conveyed in "tarts and jellies" that the sweet-toothed victim loved so well.) Burton thinks that "those two green children which Nubrigensis speaks of in his time that fell from Heaven" are probably aliens. Just do a little "internet" research and you will find that Burton is talking about the "Green Children of Woolpit." Do it yourself! I'm not going to do it for you. Burton wonders: "But who shall dwell in these vast bodies, Earths, Worlds, if they be inhabited? rational creatures? as Kepler demands, or have they souls to be saved? or do they inhabit a better part of the world than we do? Are we or they Lords of the World?"
Tuesday, August 04, 2015
Lords of the World
As I was telling Lee Durkee, Robert Burton talks about aliens a lot in THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. He believes that other planets are certainly inhabited (all the other known planets in 1621, and the moon, too!). (By the way, I should apologize to Lee because he loaned me a book about a scandalous poisoning during the reign of King James I and I haven't been able to pick it up yet, what with all these other books I'm reading plus THE DECAMERON, which I recently picked up again. [I don't want to offend any scholars, but THE DECAMERON is really easy to pick up again.] As Peter Ackroyd notes, the poison was allegedly conveyed in "tarts and jellies" that the sweet-toothed victim loved so well.) Burton thinks that "those two green children which Nubrigensis speaks of in his time that fell from Heaven" are probably aliens. Just do a little "internet" research and you will find that Burton is talking about the "Green Children of Woolpit." Do it yourself! I'm not going to do it for you. Burton wonders: "But who shall dwell in these vast bodies, Earths, Worlds, if they be inhabited? rational creatures? as Kepler demands, or have they souls to be saved? or do they inhabit a better part of the world than we do? Are we or they Lords of the World?"
