What reason we should rather fondly deem
Them principles of things, than things from them?
For they alternately are changed and show
Each other’s figure and their nature too.”[329]
The following passage will show the opinions of Democritus, the contemporary and friend of Hippocrates, from whom Epicurus took his system of physics.[330] “He taught that the atoms are infinite in magnitude and number, that they revolve in all space, and that thus they formed the compound bodies fire, water, air, earth; for that even these are composed from the atoms, which are impassive and unchangeable owing to their hardness.”[331]
These extracts prove clearly that the great philosophers of antiquity stand acquitted of having held the erroneous opinions generally ascribed to them respecting the elements of things, and that nothing can be farther from the truth than the account of the Peripatetic doctrines given by Dr. Watson. Instead of maintaining, as he carelessly represents, that “earth, air, fire, and water are distinct, uncompounded, immutable principles;” they taught, on the contrary, as we have shown, that all the elements are modifications of one common substance called the primary matter, and consequently they held, like himself, that “the elements are different magnitudes, figures, and arrangements of particles of matter of the same kind.” This primary matter they demonstrated to be devoid of all quality and form, but susceptible of all forms and qualities.[332] In the language of the Peripatetics, it is everything in capacity, but nothing in actuality. They held that there are two original principles, both increate and indestructible; the one matter, the universal passive principle[333]—the material from which all things are formed; and the other, the efficient cause by which all things are made:—that the one is possessed of universal privation, and the other of universal energy:—that it is the one which impresses, and the other which receives the forms of all things. They maintained that the original materials out of which all objects in the universe are composed being the same, bodies owe their characteristic qualities not to their substance, but to their form. The elements, then, according to the notions of the ancient philosophers, are the first matter arranged into certain distinguishing forms by the efficient cause. That form with which solidity is associated they call earth, under which they ranged all metals, stones, and the like, for all these they held to be allied to one another in nature, as well as in the form under which they are presented to our senses. The next arrangement of created substances is that which constitutes fluidity, and is called water, under which term they comprehended not only the native element, but every other modification of matter which assumes a similar form, namely, all juices of vegetables and fluids of animals.[334] Some of their earliest speculators in philosophy maintained that all the materials which compose the universe existed at one time in this form; and it is curious to reflect that modern geology has reproduced nearly the same doctrine. The third form of matter, as presented to our sense of touch, is air, under which the ancient philosophers comprehended all matter in an aërial state, such as water converted into vapor, and what are now called gases. Whether or not they believed the atmosphere which surrounds this earth to be a homogeneous substance, in nowise affects the general principles of their philosophy; for it is the same thing, as far as regards their classification, whether they held that the atmosphere consists of one or of several distinct combinations of the primary matter with form. As they were well aware that several distinct modifications of matter are comprehended under each of the other elements, it can hardly be doubted that they inferred the like of air; and, indeed, it is quite apparent from the works of Galen that he knew very well that some kinds of air are favorable, and others unfavorable to respiration and combustion.[335] But those phenomena which we ascribe to oxygen gas, they, without doubt, would have attributed to the operations of some modification of the element fire. By fire, they meant matter in its extreme state of tenuity and refinement. Of this elementary principle, Plato[336] and Theophrastus[337] have enumerated many varieties, and have speculated regarding their nature with great precision and acuteness. The ancient philosophers believed that fire is universally diffused through the universe, being sometimes in a sensible, and sometimes in a latent state; or, as Aristotle expressed it, heat exists sometimes in capacity, and sometimes in energy.[338] They attributed the phenomena of lightning to an unequal distribution of this elemental fire.[339] This is the element with which they supposed life to be most intimately connected; and, indeed, some of them would appear to have considered fire as the very essence of the soul. “I am of opinion,” says the author of one of the Hippocratic treatises, “that what we call heat is immortal, and understands, sees, and hears all things that are or will be.”[340] This doctrine, which, to say the least of it, is not very judiciously expressed in this passage, is thus corrected by the great master of logic and philosophy: “Some,” says Aristotle, “improperly call fire or some such power the soul; but it would be better to say that the soul subsists in such a body, because heat is, of all bodies, the one most obedient to the operations of the soul; for to nourish and move are the operations of the soul, and these she performs by the instrumentality of this power (or quality?). To say that the soul is fire, is as if one were to call a saw or a wimble the artisan or his art, because his work is accomplished in co-operation with these instruments. From this it appears why animals stand in need of heat.”[341] And in like manner he says, in another of his works: “Some are of opinion that the nature of fire is plainly the cause of nourishment and of growth; for it appears to be the only body or element which nourishes and increases itself. Wherefore one might suppose that it is this that operates both in plants and in animals. Yet it is but the co-cause (συνάιτιον); for it is not, properly speaking, the cause, but rather the soul. For the increase of fire is indeterminate in so far as it is supplied with fuel. But of natural substances there is a certain limit and reason (λόγος) of magnitude and increase. This belongs to the soul rather than to fire, to the reason rather than to the matter.”[342]
From these observations, coupled with the information supplied in the preceding extracts, it will be perceived that, although there be, at first sight, a great discrepancy among physical doctrines of the ancient philosophers, they differed, in fact, much less than they would appear to do, only that some of them expressed themselves more scientifically than others in handling the subject of the elements. Thus, although Thales seems to hold water, and Anaximander air, and Heraclitus fire, to be original principles, we have every reason to believe that, as Galen says (l. c.), even they had an idea that these are not simple substances, but merely modifications of one unformed principle, the first matter, from which they conceived that all bodies in the universe are constructed. Contrary, then, to what is very generally supposed, it would appear that there was at bottom no very great difference of opinion between the philosophers of the Ionic school and those of the other sects, namely, the Pythagoreans, Platonists, Peripatetics, Stoics, and Epicureans; and further, that, from the earliest dawn of philosophy, down to the time when it fell into neglect and came to be misunderstood, the physical doctrines of the philosophers underwent but little variation.
From the elements, then, constructed in the manner now explained, out of the primary matter, the ancient philosophers taught that all the secondary bodies in the universe are formed, and as they maintained the transmutability of the elements into one another, so, in like manner, they did not hesitate to proclaim it as a great general truth “that all things are convertible into all things.”[343] The possibility, then, of such permutations will not, I presume, be questioned by any one who has formed correct ideas of the powers of the Great First Cause, and the capacities of the first subject, Matter, and that such permutations do actually take place in the course of Nature may be inferred from many phenomena of daily occurrence in the vegetable and animal world. It cannot have escaped the most careless observation what changes the great pabulum, water, undergoes in the process of vegetation—how it is converted into various woods, and barks, and leaves, and flowers, all of which are resolvable, by the process of decay, into air, or reducible into earth. It is also well known that, although a more unfrequent occurrence, all the solid parts of a tree may undergo a mutation into rock, that is to say, may become petrified. But it is in the higher classes of animals that these changes of simple matter admit of the greatest variety. Let us contemplate for a moment some of the most remarkable mutations which any article of food (as, for example, flour-bread), which has been presented to the stomach, is destined to undergo in the animal frame. We know that the vital powers of the stomach will convert the starch, of which it principally consists, into a fluid state, that is to say, into what is called first chyme, and afterwards, when it has undergone some further change, is denominated chyle by the physiologists. Having been thus changed, it passes, by a process about the nature of which physiologists are still strangely divided in opinion, into certain vessels; and then, in some manner still less understood, it is converted into a fluid sui generis, called blood, abounding in globules of a singular construction, all fabricated, no doubt, from the food, but, by some occult process, which has hitherto defied the skillful manipulation of the chemist, and the accurate observation of the microscopist, to explain in any satisfactory manner.[344] And so complete is the transformation that scarcely one particle of the original food can be detected in the new product by all the vaunted tests of modern science. But blood is soon after converted into many other fluid and solid substances—into bones, cartilages, muscles, and vessels, and into bile, mucus, and other recrementitious matters, all differing greatly from one another, both in their appearances and in their properties.[345] And when all the component parts of the animal frame are constructed, and each seems to have acquired a determinate structure, should the vital actions by which they are formed become deranged, we may see the fair fabric undergo the most wonderful mutations, so that arteries are converted into bones, and bones into flesh and jelly.[346] So many and so extraordinary are the changes which a simple alimentary substance may undergo in the animal frame! And if we admit, with the ancient philosophers, that every such substance is resolvable into one or more of the elements, and that all the elements are but different modifications of one common matter, how wonderful a thing must Form be, since it imparts such varied appearances and qualities to one common substratum?
In detailing these opinions of the ancient philosophers, it is not my present business to determine whether they be true or not; my task is fulfilled, if I have given a distinct and faithful exposition of them, so that their real import and meaning may be readily comprehended by the medical reader. I may be allowed to remark, however, that, strange although that Protean being, the primary matter, may appear to be to such men of science as are not disposed to recognize the existence of any substance which cannot be subjected to their senses, and who refuse to admit the legitimacy of every process of analysis, but what is conducted in the laboratory of the chemist, opinions similar to those of the ancient philosophers have been held by some of the most profound thinkers and distinguished experimentalists of modern times. Thus Lord Bacon, the reputed father of the inductive philosophy, appears to admit all the tenets of the ancients regarding the first matter, which, like them, he considers to have been embodied in the Homeric fable of Proteus.[347] He says, in reference to it, “that under the person of Proteus is signified Matter, the most ancient of all things, next to the Deity; that the herd of Proteus was nothing else than the ordinary species of animals, plants, and metals, into which matter appears to diffuse, and, as it were, to consume itself; so that, after it has formed and finished those several species, (its task being, in a manner, complete,) it appears to sleep and be at rest, nor to labor at, attempt, or prepare any species farther.”[348] That learned and accomplished scholar, Mr. Harris, in his work on “Philosophical Arrangements,” writes thus on the subject we are now treating of: “Here, then, we have an idea (such as it is) of that singular being, the Primary Matter, a Being which those philosophers who are immerged in sensible subjects know not well how to admit, though they cannot well do without it; a Being which flies the perception of every sense, and which is at best, even to the intellect, but a negative object, no otherwise comprehensible than either by analogy or abstraction.