v] of Chemical Physiology. 131 



shewed the tenour of the thoughts among which he lived. It 

 is more than probable that he might have met Descartes, or 

 have read his Discours de la Methode published in 1637. 

 And he must have been aware of the discovery of the lacteals 

 by Aselli in 1622. 



The things of science were very different in the first quarter 

 of the seventeenth from what they were in the first quarter of 

 the sixteenth century, in which Paracelsus lived. And much of 

 the new learning had sunk deep into van Helmont's mind. 

 Yet for all that it was Paracelsus above all others who seems 

 to have influenced his thoughts. As you read his Ortus Medicince 

 you are struck by the fact that while he rarely if ever mentions 

 the great names of which I have spoken, Vesalius and the 

 rest, the name of Paracelsus, and the mention of Paracelsus' 

 views occur again and again ; moreover the main doctrines which 

 he develops are Paracelsus' doctrines in a new dress. 



Yet at the same time it must be confessed that as we read 

 van Helmont we seem to see two men, two intellects of very 

 different kinds. 



On the one hand we see a patient, careful, exact observer, a 

 child of the new philosophy, one who has entered fully into the 

 spirit of the new physics, who watches, measures and weighs, 

 who takes advantage of the aid of instruments of exact research, 

 who reaches a conclusion by means of accurate quantitative 

 estimations. On the other hand we see a mystic, speculative 

 dreamer, a philosopher in the old sense of the word, one weaving 

 a fantastic scheme of the powers and forces ruling the universe, 

 calling in the aid of invisible supernatural agencies to explain 

 the occurrence of natural phenomena. And throughout the 

 whole of his writings is seen the continued endeavour to weave 

 his exact chemical physical knowledge and his spiritualistic 

 views into a consistent whole. Again and again he refers to 

 instances of the former as proofs or illustrations of the latter. 



These two sides of van Helmont's character are not unfitly 

 indicated by the two words Gas and Bias, ' two new terms ' he 

 himself says, " introduced by me because a knowledge of them 

 (i.e. of the things which they indicate) was hidden from the 

 ancients." 



9—2 



