[332] Ἡ ὔλη ἄποιος. Galen, de Element. ex Hippocrat.
[333] The eternity of matter is a doctrine which was maintained by all the ancient philosophers and by several of the Christian fathers of the church, but is generally rejected by our modern divines as being, in their opinion, contradictory to Revelation. But were it really so, it would hardly have found an advocate in the learned and pious author of “Paradise Lost.” That such was truly his opinion can now admit of no doubt, from what he states on the subject in his treatise on Christianity, published some years ago by the present Archbishop of Canterbury; and the same might have been inferred from more than one passage in his great poem. The Jewish philosopher, Philo, seems to admit the eternity of matter, although he denies the eternity of the world. (On the Creation.)
[334] “There are varieties,” says Strabo, “of the watery element; for this kind is saltish, and that sweet, and fit for drink; and others again poisonous, salutary, deadly, cold, and hot.”—Geograph., xvii., 1. See also Aristot., Meteorol.
[335] Aristotle inquires whether the atmosphere be a single substance or many, and if many, of how many it consists. (Meteorol., i., 3.) I may be allowed to remark in this place, that Galen’s ideas regarding respiration are wonderfully accurate, and not very different from those now entertained by the profession. Thus he compares the process of respiration to combustion, and says it produces the same change upon atmospheric air. He further agrees with modern physiologists in considering it as the vital operation by which the innate (or animal) heat is preserved. (De Respiratione.) Compare this treatise with Baron Cuvier’s admirable section on Respiration and observe on how many points these two great physiologists agree. (Leçons d’Anatom. Compar., 26.)
[336] Timæus.
[337] De Igne.
[338] De Partibus Animalium, ii., 2. His great commentator, Averrhoes the Arabian, states this distinction very correctly. See Cantic. Avicennæ, tr. v.
[339] Lucan’s Pharsalia, i., 157, 606.
[340] De Carnibus. (See the preceding section.) In like manner Phornutus says, “our souls are fire.” (De Nature Deorum, ap. Gale’s Opuscula Mythologica, p. 142.) Such is also said to have been the doctrine of Hippocrates and Democritus. See Macrobius (Somnium Scipionis, i., 14); and Nemesius (de Nat. Hominis). In the Hippocratic treatise De Septimadibus, which M. Littré has discovered in Latin, the essence of the soul is held to be heat. (Ed. Littré, i., p. 391.)
[341] De Partibus Animalium, ii., 7.