y,
of an aerial quality, a pneumatical, and of a fourth quality which hath
no name, but it contains the virtue of the sense. Heraclitus, that the
soul of the world is the exhalation which proceeds from the moist
parts of it; but the soul of animals, arising from exhalations that are
exterior and from those that are within them, is homogeneous to it.
CHAPTER IV. OF THE PARTS OF THE SOUL.
Plato and Pythagoras, according to their first account, distribute the
soul into two parts, the rational and irrational. By a more accurate and
strict account the soul is branched into three parts; they divide the
unreasonable part into the concupiscible and the irascible. The Stoics
say the soul is constituted of eight parts; five of which are the
senses, hearing, seeing, tasting, touching, smelling, the sixth is
the faculty of speaking, the seventh of generating, the eighth of
commanding; this is the principal of all, by which all the other are
guided and ordered in their proper organs, as we see the eight arms of a
polypus aptly disposed. Democritus and Epicurus divide the soul into two
parts, the one rational, which bath its residence in the breast, and the
irrational, which is diffused through the whole structure of the body.
Democritus, that the quality of the soul is communicated to everything,
yea, to the dead corpses; for they are partakers of heat and some sense,
when the most of both is expired out of them.
CHAPTER V. WHAT IS THE PRINCIPAL PART OF THE SOUL, AND IN WHAT PART OF
THE BODY IT RESIDES.
Plato and Democritus place its residence in the whole head. Strato,
in that part of the forehead where the eyebrows are separated.
Erasiatratus, in the Epikranis, or membrane which involves the brain.
Herophilus, in that sinus of the brain which is the basis of it.
Parmenides, in the breast; which opinion is embraced by Epicurus. The
Stoics are generally of this opinion, that the seat of the soul is
throughout the heart, or in the spirit about it. Diogenes, in the
arterial ventricle of the heart, which is also full of vital spirit.
Empedocles, in the mass of the blood. There are that say it is in the
neck of the heart, others in the pericardium, others in the midriff.
Certain of the Neoterics, that the seat of the soul is extended from
the head to the diaphragm. Pythagoras, that the animal part of the soul
resides in the heart, the intellectual in the head.
CHAPTER VI. OF THE MOTION OF THE SOUL.
Plato believe
|