34-(4) MINERAL PHYSIOLOGY. 



'mineralogy, geology, botany, zoology, or anthropology ; 

 in other words, in some department of the physical 

 universe which we call Nature. 



All such knowledge was by Aristotle included under 

 the head of Physics, which, in its wider sense, means the 

 science treating of the properties and the processes of 

 physical or natural things ; the study of which, in his 

 scheme, preceded Metaphysics. It will aid us in our 

 present survey if we learn what is the true significance 

 of the word physics, and its derivatives physical, physi- 

 ology, etc. The Greek word from which we have made 

 physic and its plural physics comes from the substantive 

 physis, which itself is derived from a verb signifying to 

 grow, and means the act or process of growing. This 

 is illustrated by the Greek word phyton from the same 

 root, which was used to designate a plant, or in a sec- 

 ondary sense, a child or living creature. Hence the 

 term phytology, meaning the science of plants. The 

 word physics thus signifies primarily, — growing or living 

 things. 



The Ureek physis was correctly rendered by the Latin 

 natura (nature), which also means birth or development. 

 The whole material world was thus understood by the 

 ancient Greek philosophers as something perpetually 

 growing, becoming or being born, and the conception 

 underlying this view is that of incessant movement, 

 birth and growth, followed necessarily by death and 

 decay, which is the law of all material things. Nothing 

 in the universe is stationary or stagnant; everything is 

 undergoing a process of change more or less rapid. This 

 is the meaning of the movement or tiux of all things, 

 taught by Heraclitus. Not only the organic world, but 

 the solid crust of the earth, which is to most of us the 

 type of stability, is subject to constant mutation. A 

 growing plant is still to us, as to the -Greek of old, 

 the best type of a physical or natural object, for the 

 words are synonymous. The adjective natural still 

 keeps its meaning as designating that which is accord- 

 ing to the regular process of things; and although we 

 have come to use the word nature in a secondary sense 

 for the essential qualities or characters alike of a material 

 object and a concept, as when we speak of the nature of 

 things, or of man's moral nature, the use of these terms 



