2)omain of Physiology. 235 



century, employed the word (in French physique) with the 

 same signification ; and it was subsequently used by Locke in 

 a still more comprehensive sense. He writes of " The know- 

 ledge of things as they are in their own proper beings, their 

 constitutions, properties, and operations; whereby I mean not 

 only matter and body, but spirits also, which have their proper 

 natures, constitutions, and operations, as well as bodies. This, 

 in a little more enlarged sense of the word, I call c^vcn/cr}, or 

 natural philosophy"*. 



§ 5. We have seen that in Latin the words physic and phy- 

 siology were used synonymously. That they were thus under- 

 stood by English writers is apparent from the ' Universal 

 English Dictionary ' of Edward Phillips (sixth edition, 1706), 

 where Physiology is defined as "a discourse on natural things; 

 physics or natural philosophy ; being either general, that 

 relates to the affections or properties of matter, or else special 

 and particular, which considers matter as formed or distin- 

 guished into such and such species." Cotgrave, a lexicogra- 

 pher of the seventeenth century, in his ' French and English 

 Dictionary,' also defines Physiologie as a a reasoning, dispu- 

 ting, or searching-out of the nature of things," a definition 

 which is cited by Charles Richardson in his ' English Dictio- 

 nary,' under Physiology. 



§ 6. It was to those who occupied themselves with abstract 

 or general physiology (as defined by Phillips) that the Greeks 

 gave the name of physiologists, first applied to the philoso- 

 phers of the Ionian school, who sought to derive all things 

 from one or more material elements, and thus had a physical 

 basis for their system of the universe, as distinguished from 

 the school of Pythagoras, whose system was based on numbers 

 and forms. Of Empedocles, the author of a didactic poem on 

 Nature, in which we first find enunciated the doctrine of the 

 four elements (fire, air, earth, and water), Aristotle, in his 

 Poetics, makes the criticism that he was more of a physiolo- 

 gist than a poet. Humboldt repeatedly employs the word 

 physiology and its derivatives in the same general sense. 

 Thus, he writes of " the natural philosophy of the Ionian phy- 

 siologists " (Physiologien), which " was devoted to the funda- 

 mental ground of origin, and the metamorphoses oi one sole 

 element;" of the " physiological fancies of the Ionian school," 

 and of the teachings of Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, " in the 

 latter period of development of the Ionian physiology "f. Of 

 Anaxagoras it may be observed that his views marked a great 

 advance over those of his predecessors, and that he merited 



* i Human Understanding',' book vii. c. 21. 



t Cosmos, Otte's translation, Harper's ed. ii. p. 108, and iii. p, 11. 

 T2 



