An enquiry into the opinions, ancient and modern, concerning life and organization / by John Barclay, M.D.

  • Barclay, John, 1758-1826.
Date:
1822
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An enquiry into the opinions, ancient and modern, concerning life and organization / by John Barclay, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    that the globular forms of his atoms, on being in- corporated, produced heat and life; Heraclitus, that as the soul of the universe was a vapour or exhalation from the moist elements % so the souls of animals were vapours or exhalations from their own bodies, or from without. Of those who believed the soul to be incorpo- real, some asserted that it was a substance, and im- mortal, while others believ^ed that it was neither. Thales was the first who maintained that it was al- ways in motion, and itself the origin of that mo- tion ; Pythagoras, in the language of allegory, that it was a self-moving monad or number ; Plato, a substance conceivable only by the understanding, and moving according to harmony and number ; Aristotle that it was the first entelecheia ^ or, as ^ Avadvfji^iagig sx ruv iry^uv. E'jlsXsx^ia. Nemesiiis, in supposing that Aristotle did not attach the notion of a substance to the word smXsp^j/a, has drawn his conchision from that logical and abstract defini- tion which he has given in the first chapter of his second book concerning the soul (Opera Omnia, torn, i, p. 630, edit. Du V'al. Paris. 1629, 2 torn, fol.) ; but he should have recollected, that this definition is, in the very next chapter, followed by a physi- cal definition, and that there is a dilFerence between a logical and a physical definition. For, observes Aristotle, dia<pemlu; 5' av o^igatlo 6 <pv(fmg re xa/ diaXixlmog. (Ibid. p. 6l8.) In calhng the soul an entelecheia, both Cicero and Lucretius obviously ap- pear to have understood him as speaking of a fifth essence, or a quintura genus, a fifth element, distinct from any of the oiher four ; an element of which the soul is composed, but an element, at the same time, without a name, a vacans nomine, in the lan- guage of Cicero (Quasst. Tuscul. lib. i. § 10.) or a nominis ex- B 8