234 Dr. T. Sterry Hunt on the 



generation or growth, and that the adjectives physical and 

 natural, in their origin, imply the results of a formative pro- 

 cess or evolution. The term physis (which we translate by 

 nature), as employed by Aristotle, denotes that which is at 

 once self-producing, self-determined, and uniform in its mode 

 of action. 



§ 2. The substantive physic {4>vancri, physica, physique) 

 has been employed by philosophers since the time of Aristotle 

 to signify the knowledge of all material nature. " Physical 

 science/"' as well defined by Clerk Maxwell at the beginning 

 of his little treatise on Matter and Motion, " is that depart- 

 ment of knowledge which relates to the order of nature, or, in 

 other words, to the regular succession of events. The name 

 of physical science, however, is often applied in a more or less 

 restricted manner, to those branches of science in which the 

 phenomena are of the simplest and most abstract kind, exclu- 

 ding the consideration of the more complex phenomena such 

 as are observed in living beings.*' 



§ 3. To the student of natural phenomena Aristotle gave 

 the names of physikos and physiologos. These words were 

 adopted in the same sense by the Romans, who made use of 

 the substantives pliysicus and physiologia to designate natural 

 philosophers and natural science. Cicero writes of the phy- 

 sicus or physician Anaxagoras, and employs the word physio- 

 logy to denote "the science of natural things," in accordance, 

 as he tells us, with Greek usage*. 



§ 4. The earlier English writers followed the Greek and 

 Latin usage, and employed the substantive physic (or physike) 

 in the same sense as Aristotle. Thus, in the fourteenth cen- 

 tury, Gower defines physic as that part of philosophy which 

 teaches the knowledge of material things, the nature and the 

 circumstances of man, animals, plants, stones, and every thing 

 that has bodily substance f. Descartes, in the seventeenth 



* Cicero, Varr. lib. I. R. R. cap. 40 : " Si sunt seniina in aere, ut ait 

 physicus Anaxagoras." Also De Nat. Deorum, I. 4: " Rationem naturae 

 quain physiologiam Graeci appellant." In the Totius Latinitatis Lexicon 

 of Facciolatus and Forcellinus we find the definition, " Physiologia, scientia 

 quae de naturis rerani disserit, eadem ac Physica." 



t Gower, dividing theoretical philosophy into three parts — Theologia, 

 Physica, and Mathematica, tells us : — 



" Physike is after the seconde, 

 Through which the philosophre hath fonde, 

 To teche sondrie knowlechynges 

 Upon the bodeliches thinges 

 Of man, of beast, of herbe, of stone, 

 Of fish, of fowl, of euerich one 

 That be of bodily substance, 

 The nature and the circumstance." 



Confessio Amantis, book vii. 



