PHILTER. 



PIKEXIX. 



;' 



Hint's man question proposed for solution in the 

 reason was. " are metaphysics possible I " or, are synthetic 

 fodnMota < priori possible f judgment*, or proposition*, that is the 

 troth of which is not learned from experience, and which also are not 

 Maul/ analytical, or judgments in which the predicate barely unfolds 

 the subject. Thus " all body Is extended," is an analytical judgment : 

 all men are mortal," U synthetical indeed, but than it is posferiori, 

 being founded on experience : but, " every change must have a cause," 

 Is synthetical A pnvri. being universal and nooeesary, and founded io 

 an"*"*; but " pure understanding and reason.* Now all such axioms, 

 conceptions, and principles as are A priori, being enumerated, are 

 regarded by those who make a distinction between positive and 

 negative philosophy, as forming a negative philosophy, or as drawing 

 the ground for a positive constructive system. Kant held out the 

 of such a system, a* a superstructure to be erected by 



himself on the baaia of the ' Kritik : ' auch a system of pure speculative 

 reaaon I hope " to furnish myself, under the title, Metaphysio of 

 Nature ; which shall have far richer matter than this Kritik, though 

 the Utter waa necessary, first to exhibit the sources and conditions of 

 its possibility, and to cleanse and level a soil altogether overgrown with 

 weeds." (' Kritik : ' Vorrede.) Such a system would have been, in 

 the German phrase, a positive philosophy : but the Transcendental 

 Criticism professes only to examine and secure the foundation mi 

 which, the author says, " every future metaphysio" must be built, and 

 U, relatively to such supposed system, merely negative. 



The Positive Philosophy that Kant and the German metaphysicians 

 only contemplated was at length propounded by M. August Comte, in 

 his ' four* de Philosophic Positive,' in 1830-1842, and his ' Diacours sur 

 1'Ensemble du Positivisme,' 1848. According to his system the human 

 mind has passed through certain stages: the tkeuloyical, in which 

 supernatural agencies are necessary ; the nutaphyiical, in which super- 

 natural aids are dismissed, and their place supplied by abstract ideas. 

 These stages he deems incorrect, and holds that the mind DOW arrives 

 at the last and highest stage the poritire, in which it grasp* all that 

 can be known with certainty, such as scientific truths, and holds that 

 in other more complex subjects, such as Biology and Sociology (social 

 science), definite laws prevail which may be ultimately discovered 

 by strict observation and deduction, and that nothing is to be 

 believed that cannot be proved. [COMTE, in Bioo. Div.] 



PHILTKK (SM'ATJXJK, philtmm), was a potion given among the 

 Greeks and Romans to excite love. It is doubtful of what these 

 potions were composed, but their operation was violent and dangerous, 

 often depriving those who drank them of their reason. (Ovid, ' Ar. 

 Amst.,' ii. 106.) Lucretius is said to have died from drinking a potion 

 of this kind : and the madness of Caligula is attributed by some to a 

 similar potion, which was given him by his wife Ceesonia. (Suet., 

 ' Cal.,' 50 ; Juv., vi. 615, 616.) The most powerful love potions were 

 prepared by the Thessalians, whence Juvenal speaks (vi 610) of Thessala 

 philtra. 



I'll LOGISTICATED AIR. An obsolete name for NITROGEN. 



PHLOGISTON, an hypothetical substance, by supposing the exist- 

 ence of which Stahl [STAHL, in Bioo. Div.] explained the phenomena 

 of combustion. He imagined that by combination with phlogiston a 

 body was rendered combustible, and that its disengagement occasioned 

 combustion, and after its evolution there remained either on acid or 

 an earth : thus sulphur was by this theory supposed to be composed 

 of phlogiston and sulphuric acid ; and lead, of the calx of lead and 

 phlogiston, *o. 



At this period, however, oxygen had not been discovered, and 

 although Jean Key had shmvn that metals by burning increased in 

 weight, and Hooke and Mayow had attributed combustion to the 

 presence of the air in which it occurs, yet the doctrine proposed by 

 Stahl maintained its ground for about half a century. Soon after the 

 discovery of oxygen gas by Dr. Priestley, the experiments which others 

 had made on the calcination of the metals were repeated with great 

 accuracy by Lavoisier ; the consequence was, that the phlogistic theory 

 gave way to the antiphlogistic ; for the combustion, which hod been 

 attributed to the extrication of phlogiston, was known in all common 

 ease* to be derived from the absorption of oxygen, and this explained 

 the increase of weight which bodies acquired by combustion, whereas 

 on the phlogistic theory they ought to have suffered a diminution by 

 theprooes*. 



PHLOHETIC ACID. [PiiLomzm.] 



I'llI.nUKTIN. [PiiLomzM.l 



rHLoltlD/.IX. [PHLOBUU.] 



nil.uid/.KIX. [PHbOBum.] 



I'HI.OKI/.IN (C n H,JO m + 4 Aq.) PUorUan, a peculiar vegetable 

 matter which exist* in the bark of the trunk and roots of the apple, 

 pear, cherry, and plum trees. According to Stess it is most readily 

 obtained, and in large quantity, by treating either the fresh or driud 

 ronto of the apple-tree with weak alcohol at the temperature of about 

 ISO* Kahr. When the digestion ha* been continued for some hours, 

 the. clear solution is to be poured off, and the alcohol distilled ; the 

 residual liquor on cooling deposit* phlorixin, which is to be rendered 

 colourless by animal charcoal. 



Phloruin, when deposited from a saturated solution, ha* the form of 

 silky tufts ; but when obtained by the slow cooling of a dilute solu- 

 tion, it i* in long flat brilliant needles. The taste of phlorWn is rather 



bitter, followed with slight sweetness ; it is scarcely soluble in cold 

 water, but boiling water dissolve* it in large quantity ; alcohol uid 

 py rosy lie spirit also readily take it up, and at uli temperatures ; 

 even when boiling, dissolves only traces of it, though, when mixed 

 with alcohol, it dissolves it very well ; it has no action on vegetable 

 colours. 



Phlorixin Is by various processes, described by 1C. Stasa, converted 

 into iMoriuin (C.^^.O, ), pUurttin (QJLAA, PUuroytitei* 

 (O..H.O. + 4 Aq.), K U Jt(C n a, 0^,pUanHeaeid (C^H.JNO )O 10 t) ; 

 for an account of these, we refer to his memoir contained in tl 

 vol. of ' Annales des Chimie et de Physique.' 



PHLOBOGLUOIH. [PHLOBIXIX] 



I'll l.t Dins K. (C,,H,.0,) A yellow oil obtained by the dry distil- 

 lation of camphorate of lime. It emits an odour like peppermint. 



PHOCBN1O ACID. [VALKKUNIO ACID.] 



PHOCENIN. Synonymous with VALKBIK. 



1'IKENIX (owil), one of the most renowned of the fabulous 

 monsters of antiquity, defined by the Arabians to be a " creature whose 

 name is known, its body unknown." (Richardson's 'Arabic and 

 Persian Diet') The earliest author who mentions it is Hesiod (ap 

 Plut, ' De Defectu Orao.,' cap. 11 ; and ap. 1'lin., Hist Nat ,' lib vii. 

 cap. 49), who merely says that it lives nine times as long as a crow 

 The first detailed description and history that we meet with U in 

 Herodotus, whose words on that account deserve to be quoted at 

 length. " There is also," says he, in his account of Egypt (lib. ii.. cap. 

 71), " another sacred bird, the name of which is the phoenix ; I have 

 not myself seen it except in a picture, for it seldom visits them, only 

 (as the people of Helinpolu say) every five hundred years. And they 

 say that he only comes when his sire dies. And he is, if he is like bis 

 picture, of size and shape u follows : part of his plumage is gold- 

 coloured, and part crimson ; and he is for the most part very like to 

 the eagle in outline and bulk. And this bird, they say, devises as 

 follows, but they say what is to me beyond belief : that setting out 

 from Arabia, he brings his sire to the temple of the sun ; that he 

 covers him with myrrh, and buries him in the temple of the mm ; and 

 that he covers him thus : first he forms an egg of myrrh as large as he 

 is able to bear, and afterwards tries,whther he can carry it ; ami 

 he has mode the trial, upon this he hollows out the egg, and puts his 

 sire into it, and covers with other myrrh that part of the egg where he 

 had made the hole and put in his sire ; and when his sire lies inside, 

 the weight [of the egg] is the same [as it was before it was hollowed 

 out], and having covered him up, he conveys him to Egypt into the 

 temple of the sun. Such are the tilings which they say this bird 

 performs." Such is the story as told in Herodotus, and it is sub- 

 stantially the same as what was afterwards, though with various 

 embellishments, repeated and believed for more than a thousand year*. 

 It would be tedious and listless to quote the words of each author 

 who forms the link in the chain : it will be sufficient to mention that 

 between the times of Herodotus and Tacitus, the fable of the ' i'hnuniz ' 

 is told more or less fully and circumstantially by numerous classical 

 writers. Of these writers perhaps the only passage curious enough to 

 be particularly noticed is that in Lampridius, who tells us that Helioga- 

 balus promised his guests a phoenix for supper; he was, however, 

 obliged to be content with a dish of the tongues of phcenicopters (or 

 flamingoes). 



But it is not only in heathen authors that this fable is to be found ; 

 it is mentioned and believed by the Jewish rabbinical writers, and by 

 the early fathers of the Christian church. The very words of several 

 of these writers may be seen in Bochart (luca eit.) ; but the only 

 rabbinical addition to the story worth noticing is preserved by Rabbi 

 Osoia in his ' Berescith Rabba,' cap. 19 (ap. Bochart loco fit.}, who say* 

 that the reason why the pluenix lives so long, and is in a manner 

 exempt from death, is because it was the only animal that did not eat 

 of the forbidden fruit in Paradise. A somewhat similar bird seems to 

 have been known to the Arabians under the name of A nta. Mr. Lane, 

 in the notes to his translation of the ' Tales of a Thousand and 

 One Nights ' (ch. 30, note 22), tells us, on the authority of Kaswini, 

 that the anka is the greatest of birds ; that it carries off the elephant 

 as a kite carries off the mouse ; that, in consequence of its carrying off 

 a bride, God, at the prayer of a prophet named Handhalah, banished it 

 to an Uland in the circumambient ocean, un visited by men, under the 

 equinoctial line ; that it lives one thousand and seven hundred yean ; 

 and that when the young anka has grown up, if it be a female, 

 the old female bird burns herself ; and if a male, the old mole bird 

 does so. 



Many of the early fathers believed the story so firmly that they did 

 not hesitate to bring it forward as a proof of the ream rcction ; and 

 that, not as an arynmnttitm ad Imminent, when disputing with heathens, 

 but seriously, and in writings addressed to converts to Christianity. 

 St. Clement is the first who uses this argument (loco tit.), in which he 

 is followed by St. Cyril and Tertullion (lucit at.), and Kpiphaniu* 

 ('Anoor.; sec. 84, p. 80). The passage in St. Cyril (which also 

 contains two or three additional embellishments) will serve as a 

 specimen. " God knew men's unbelief," says he (in Mr. Church's 

 translation, Oxford, 1838), "and provided for this purpose a bird 

 called a phoenix. This bird, as Clement writes, and as many more 

 relate, the only one of its race, going to the land of the Egyptians at 

 revolutions of five hundred yean, shows forth the resurrection ; and 



