[50] Spr. v. 308
[51] Ib. v. 314.
[52] Stahl, περὶ φύσεως ἀπαίδευτου.
[53] οὐκ ἐκ διανοίης.
[54] This was of course an obvious problem. Harvey, On Generation Exercise 27, p. 148, teaches, ‘That the egg is not the production of the womb, but of the soul.’
This doctrine of the action of the soul on the body, was accepted by many persons, especially by the iatromathematicians, who could not but feel the insufficiency of their system without some such supplement: such were Cheyne and Mead. In Germany, Stahl’s disciples in physiology were for the most part inconsiderable persons[55]. Several Englishmen who speculated concerning the metaphysics as well as the physiology of Sensation and Motion, inclined to this psychical view, as Porterfield and Whytt. Among the French, Boissier de Sauvages was the most zealous defender of the Stahlian system. Actions, he says[56], which belong to the preservation of life are determined by a moral not a mechanical necessity. They proceed from the soul, but cannot be controlled by it, as the starting from fear, or the trembling at danger. Unzer, a physician at Altona[57], was also a philosophical Stahlian[58].
[55] Spr. v. 339, &c.
[56] Ib. 358.
[57] A.D. 1799
[58] Spr. v. 360.