NATURAL HISTORY. 



CENTURY X. 



Experiments in consort touching the 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 imagination, 

 which afterwards was, by the school of Plato and 

 others, watered and nourished. It was, that the 

 world was one entire perfect living creature ; inso 

 much as Apollonius of Tyana, a Pythagorean pro 

 phet, 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. 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 would ; for in a living creature, though 

 never so great, as for example, in a great whale, the 

 sense and the effects of any one part of the body 



