Vital and Physical Motion. ri J 



down from the ancients began to be materially modified, 

 and to take the forms belonging to modern times. 



With Paracelsus, Von Helmontheld that the Archaeus 

 and its underlings were the agents in all vital manifesta- 

 tions, but he also thought for himself a little, for to him 

 belongs the credit, if credit it be, of being the first to, 

 maintain that the living body had powers of a specific 

 character altogether different frorn, those belonging to 

 inanimate nature. 



Accepting the doctrine that there was one law for 

 animate and another for inanimate nature, Stahl went 

 further, and maintained that matter is essentially and ; 

 necessarily passive and inert, and that all its active 

 properties or powers are derived from a specific and 

 immaterial animating principle imparted to it : a prin- 

 ciple to which he gave the name of anima.. The body, 

 he held, as body, has no power to move itself. All vital, 

 motion is the result of animation. The physical powers 

 of matter, which have only free play after death, are in 

 every way opposed to, and controlled by, the anima, 

 of which he further says, as the followers of Hippocrates 

 said of nature, that " it does without teaching and 

 without consideration what it ought to do ; " a remark 

 which makes it evident that the anima of Stahl is not 

 to be confounded with the conscious personal Archaeus 

 of Paracelsus and Von Helmont. 



What Stahl explained in this way, Hoffmann, who 

 took the next noticeable step in advance, explained on 

 the hypothesis of nervous influence, or nerve-fluid, what- 

 ever that may mean. By this influence or fluid, accord- 

 ing to him, the moving fibres have a certain power of 

 action, or tone, which may be increased or diminished. 

 If increased unduly, spasm is the result : if decreased, 

 atony. 



