854 OPINIONS OF HIPPOCRATES. 



that an exceedingly subtil and refined spirit, 

 which he terms a^ and Trvew/ia, pervades universal 

 space, guides the sun, moon, and stars in their 

 courses, causes winter and summer, gives life to 

 men and all other animals, (irepi <J>V<TO>V. v. vi.) 

 He also declares expressly, in his Treatise on 

 First Principles, that what the ancients called 

 ac0p, and the Greeks Otp^ov, or heat, is spirit; 

 0yiov 6^1 TO 7rvu/ia. (jrspi Ap^wv. i. vii.) He fur- 

 ther maintains, that in this universal spirit resides 

 motion Kivrjms, life i/^x 7 ^ knowledge vooc, pru- 

 dence ^(Witc, growth, dimunition, change, &c. 

 that a strong but invisible fire silently produces 

 all the operations of the living body, in accord- 

 ance with invariable laws.* (TT^I Aiamjc, B. i. 

 sect, xi.) And it is worthy of special notice, that 

 the Latin word anima, meaning life, soul, and 

 spirit, is only a slight modification of the Greek 

 word avt/iog, which literally signifies wind, or the 

 air in motion. But that it did not denote the 



* With Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Democritus, and 

 Anaxagoras, he also maintained that animal heat is derived from 

 the atmosphere by respiration ; and that it is supplied to the 

 foetus in utero by respiration of the mother. This rational view 

 of the subject was rejected by Aristotle, who asserts that the 

 office of respiration is to diminish the innate heat of the soul in 

 the heart. And although Galen partly adopted this absurd 

 hypothesis, he concludes that the principal object of respiration 

 is to preserve the innate heat by which we live and feel ; while 

 he represents the lungs as a vital lamp, and blood as the oil by 

 which it is kept burning. (De Utilitate Respirationis, lib. i.) 



