PARACELSUS AND VAN HELMONT. 489 



Amidst the revolutions of empire, religion, and 

 philosophy, that followed the decline of Grecian 

 and Roman civilization, the establishment of 

 Christianity, and the rapid diffusion of Mahomet- 

 anism after the 6th century, the doctrines of the 

 ancients in regard to the agency of fire as the 

 ruling principle of nature, seems to have shared 

 the same fate as that of the heathen mythology. 5 * 

 It is true that Harvey represents what he termed 

 calidum innatum as the immediate cause of vitality 

 in the blood, and of the heart's action. But so 

 vague were his views of its nature and laws, that 

 he describes it as something different from solar 

 heat, or that of combustion ; and sometimes 

 called it the natura naturans, or the facultas 

 vegetativa. (De Generatione, p. 170.) 



The truth is, that nearly all the great writers of 

 this epoch recognized the existence of an active 

 principle in nature, as the cause of motion and 

 organization, to which they gave different names ; 

 but without identifying it with any known agent. 

 The Archeus of Paracelsus and Van Helmont 

 was only another name for the irvp Nospov of Py- 

 thagoras, Heraclitus, and Hippocrates ; for they 

 maintained that it was diffused throughout all 



* Had knowledge continued to advance from the time of 

 Cicero, Seneca, and Galen, until that of Bacon, Galileo, and 

 Harvey, as it did from the epoch of Pythagoras, Hippocrates, 

 Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Galen, the physical and moral con- 

 dition of mankind would probably have been elevated as far 

 above what it now is, as the civilization of modern Europe has 

 surpassed that of the New Zealanders* 



