NATURAL HISTORY. 



CENTURY X. 



Experiments in consort touching transmission and influx 

 of immateriate virtues, and the force of imagination. 



THE philosophy of Pythagoras (which was full 

 of superstition) did first plant a monstrous imagina 

 tion ; which afterwards was, by the school of Plato 

 and others, watered and nourished. It was, that 

 the world was one entire perfect living creature; 

 insomuch as Apollonius of Tyana, a Pythagorean 

 prophet, affirmed that the ebbing and flowing of the 

 sea was the respiration of the world, drawing in 

 water as breath, and putting it forth again. 1 They 

 went on and inferred, that if the world were a living 

 creature, it had a soul and spirit ; which also they 

 held, calling it spiritus mundi, the spirit or soul of 

 the world : by which they did not intend God (for 

 they did admit of a deity besides), but only the soul 

 or essential form of the universe. This foundation 

 being laid, they might build upon it what they 



1 Philostratus, Vit. Apollon. v. 1. 



