s a cold and moist humour, begotten of the colder part
of the chylus (or white juice coming out of the meat digested in the
stomach,) in the liver; his office is to nourish and moisten the members of
the body, which as the tongue are moved, that they be not over dry.

Choler, is hot and dry, bitter, begotten of the hotter parts of the chylus,
and gathered to the gall: it helps the natural heat and senses, and serves
to the expelling of excrements.

_Melancholy_.] Melancholy, cold and dry, thick, black, and sour, begotten
of the more feculent part of nourishment, and purged from the spleen, is a
bridle to the other two hot humours, blood and choler, preserving them in
the blood, and nourishing the bones. These four humours have some analogy
with the four elements, and to the four ages in man.

_Serum, Sweat, Tears_.] To these humours you may add serum, which is the
matter of urine, and those excrementitious humours of the third concoction,
sweat and tears.

_Spirits_.] Spirit is a most subtle vapour, which is expressed from the
blood, and the instrument of the soul, to perform all his actions; a common
tie or medium between the body and the soul, as some will have it; or as
[956]Paracelsus, a fourth soul of itself. Melancthon holds the fountain of
those spirits to be the heart, begotten there; and afterward conveyed to
the brain, they take another nature to them. Of these spirits there be
three kinds, according to the three principal parts, brain, heart, liver;
natural, vital, animal. The natural are begotten in the liver, and thence
dispersed through the veins, to perform those natural actions. The vital
spirits are made in the heart of the natural, which by the arteries are
transported to all the other parts: if the spirits cease, then life
ceaseth, as in a syncope or swooning. The animal spirits formed of the
vital, brought up to the brain, and diffused by the nerves, to the
subordinate members, give sense and motion to them all.

SUBSECT. III.--_Similar Parts_.

_Similar Parts_] Containing parts, by reason of their more solid substance,
are either homogeneal or heterogeneal, similar or dissimilar; so Aristotle
divides them, _lib. 1, cap. 1, de Hist. Animal._; Laurentius, _cap. 20,
lib. 1._ Similar, or homogeneal, are such as, if they be divided, are still
severed into parts of the same nature, as water into water. Of these some
be spermatical, some fleshy or carnal. [957]Spermatical are such as are
immediately