132 Van Helmont and the Rise [lect. 



By ' Bias ' he meant, so far as can be ascertained, the same 

 thing as the archceus of Paracelsus. It is true he uses the 

 word archceus, as if he meant by it something different from 

 Bias, but he often seems to use the one or the other indifferently. 

 In any case he believed as did Paracelsus in an invisible spiritual 

 or at least immaterial agency or energy which directed and 

 governed material processes and changes. He speaks of a Bias 

 meteoron which governs the heavens, and of a Bias humanum 

 which presides over and determines all the functions of the 

 human body. The events of the human body according to him 

 as according to Paracelsus are governed by an archceus, or rather 

 by a hierarchy of minor archcei, all subject to and minist rants 

 of the chief archceus. There is a Bias motivum presiding over 

 movements, and a Bias alterativum presiding over what we now 

 call metabolic changes ; and the Bias motivum is dual, for there 

 is a Bias which presides over voluntary and a Bias which 

 presides over natural movements. And there are other special 

 kinds of Bias. 



But if by Bias van Helmont shews himself something not 

 very different from a Paracelsus redivivus, by Gas he clearly 

 disentangles himself from all the mystic Paracelsean lore, and 

 earns for himself the title of the first of modern chemists, and 

 at the same time the first of chemical physiologists. 



By Gas he clearly meant, and by the introduction of the 

 new term indicates his appreciation of the discovery of, what 

 we now call carbonic acid gas, or carbon dioxide ; and as we 

 shall see the development of a great deal of chemistry, and 

 especially of the chemistry of living beings, has turned on 

 the nature and properties of gases. 



It was in relation to this gas that he parts company with 

 Paracelsus. He argues that Paracelsus was wholly wrong in 

 maintaining that sulphur, mercury, and salt were the three 

 elements. There are he contends two elements only, air, that 

 is to say the natural atmosphere, and water. He spends much 

 time in proving that air and water can never be changed, the 

 one into the other, that they are distinct and never convertible, 

 that the vapour of water is something wholly different from 

 real air. 



