Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 247
air, vapours, and exhalations. It was a recognised characteristic
of witches, that they ride through the air generally on
broomsticks, and vanish, but the more poetical idea of their
conversion, at pleasure, into the elements to which they are
made kindred, is, we believe, only to be found in Macbeth.
In the few descriptive words of Macbeth and Banquo 1 the
scientific doctrine of the convertibility of air, vapour, and water
is clearly seen, and with it the poetical and very Baconian
doctrine of the mutual influence of body and spirit. It is by
sympathy that the witches can turn themselves into either form.
Spirits they are, airy, or " pneumatic bodies, which partake
both of an oily and watery substance, and which, being converted
into a pneumatic substance, constitute a body composed, as it
were, of air and flame, and combining the mysterious properties
of both. Now, these bodies," continues Bacon, " are of the
nature of breaths. "
The witches vanish, and Banquo exclaims:
" The earth has hubbies as the water hath,
And these are of them. Whither are they vanished 1 "
Macbeth replies:
" Into the air: and what seemed corporal, melted
As breath, into the wind. "
So, too, he describes to
question the witches
Lady Macbeth how, when he tried to
" They made themselves air, into which they vanished."
There is in this line something singularly weird, supernatural,
and poetic, drawn, as it surely is, and as Bacon tells us that all
great sayings are drawn, from the very centre of the sciences.
The witches, in the first act, appear to be incarnations of air,
in violent agitation or motion ; strong winds, accompanied by
thunder and lightning, such as Bacon describes. In the third
scene two witches, spirits of air, offer to help Hecate by the
gift of a wind. They are more generous than the aerial spirits
mentioned in the Anatomy, who "sett winds," and Hecate
l Macbeth, i. 3, 79-82.