404 INTRODUCTORY LECTURES. 



think appeared first, and for a long time after was the prevailing 

 system in Germany. 



The chief and leading principle of this system is, that the ra- 

 tional soul of man governs the whole economy of his body. At 

 all times physicians have observed, that the animal economy 

 has in itself a power or condition, by which, in many instances, 

 it resists the injuries which threaten it ; and by which it also, on 

 many occasions, corrects or removes the disorders induced or 

 arising in it. This power physicians very anciently attribut- 

 ed, under a vague idea, to an agent in the system, which they 

 called NATURE ; and the language of a vis conservatrioo et me- 

 dicatrix naturae, has continued in the schools of medicine from 

 the most ancient times to the present. (Physiology CXX.) 



Numberless phenomena lead to the notion of a primary mov- 

 ing power in the animal economy. We perceive that in the 

 Timaeus of Plato notice is taken of an anima presiding over 

 the functions of the material part of our bodies, and even Hip- 

 pocrates marked TO ivo^w or impetum faciens, in his sys- 

 tem. The operation of this power is so often suited to the ob- 

 viating of injuries and correcting the deviations of the system, 

 that it is no wonder if men supposed it to be directed by some 

 intelligence. Hence the notion of a sensitive soul among the 

 philosophers of the last age. Van Helmont supposed an intel- 

 ligent Archaeus, governing many of the functions of the body ; 

 Dolaeus, making use of a singular jargon, proposed his Micro- 

 cosmetor, and Wepfer a Prccses systematis nervosi, all on the 

 same footing. But Dr. Stahl went beyond them all, referring the 

 government of the body directly and entirely to the rational 

 soul ; and by this he established the notion of a complete intel- 

 ligence and absolute power in the soul with respect to the body. 



Dr. Stahl has explicitly founded his system on the supposi- 

 tion, that the power of nature, so much talked of, is entirely in 

 the rational soul. He supposes, that, upon many occasions, the 

 soul acts independently of the state of the body ; and that, with- 

 out any physical necessity arising from that state, the soul, 

 purely in consequence of its intelligence, perceiving the ten- 

 dency of noxious powers threatening, or of disorders anywise 

 arising in the system, immediately excites such motions in the 



