ANIMISM. 9 



in the doctrine of metempsychosis. Mons. L. Errera 

 points out that this primitive, co-ordinated, hier- 

 archized doctrine — meet subject for the poet's art — is 

 the basis of all ancient mythologies. 



The Animism of Stahl. — Modern animism was 

 much more narrow in scope. It was a medical theory — 

 ie. almost exclusive to man. Stahl had adopted it 

 in a kind of reaction against the exaggerations of the 

 mechanical school of his time. According to him, the 

 life of the body is due to the intelligent and reason- 

 ing soul. It governs the corporeal substance and 

 directs it towards an assigned end. The organs are 

 its instruments. It acts on them directly, without 

 intermediaries. It makes the heart beat, the muscles 

 contract, the glands secrete, and all the organs per- 

 form their functions. Nay more, it is itself the 

 architectonic soul, which has constructed and which 

 maintains the body which it rules. It is the mens 

 agitat molem of Virgil. 



It is remarkable that these ideas, so excessively 

 and exaggeratedly spiritualistic, should have been 

 brought forward by a chemist and a physician, while 

 ideas completely opposed to these were admitted by 

 philosophers like Descartes and Leibniz, who were 

 decided believers in the spirituality of the soul. Stahl 

 had been Professor of Medicine at the University of 

 Halle, physician to the Duke of Saxe- Weimar, and 

 later to the King of Prussia. He left an important 

 medical and chemical work, both theoretical and 

 practical. He is the author of the celebrated theory 

 of phlogiston, which held its ground in chemistry up 

 to the time of Lavoisier. He died about 1734. 



Animism survived him for some time, maintained 

 by the zeal of a few faithful disciples, But after the 



