The English Novel and the Principle of its DevelopmentLanier, Sidney
History
The English Novel and the Principle of its Development
Lanier, Sidney
English fiction -- History and criticism
This anatomy of Burton's includes the soul, and here are some
particulars of it. "According to Aristotle, the soul is defined to be
emtelecheia, ... the perfection or first act of an organical body
having power of life.... But many doubts arise about the essence,
subject, seat, distinction and subordinate faculties of it.... Some
make one soul; ... others, three.... The common division of the soul
is into three principal faculties--vegetal, sensible and rational."
The soul of man includes all three; for the "sensible includes vegetal
and rational both; which are contained in it (saith Aristotle) _ut
trigonus in tetragono_, as a triangle in a quadrangle.... Paracelsus
will have four souls, adding to the three grand faculties a spiritual
soul: which opinion of his Campanella in his book _De Sensu Rerum_
much labors to demonstrate and prove, because carcases bleed at the
sight of the murderer; with many such arguments." These are not the
wanderings of ignorance; they represent the whole of human knowledge,
and are an epitome made up from Aristotle, Galen, Vesalius,
Fallopius, Wecker, Melancthon, Feruclius, Cicero, Pico Mirandola,
Paracelsus, Campanella, Taurellus, Philip, Flavius, Macrobius, Alhazen
the Arabian, Vittellio, Roger Bacon, Baptista Porta, Cardan, Sambucus,
Pliny, Avicenna, Lucretius, and such another list as makes one weary
with the very names of authorities.
These details of antique science brought face to face with the
weighing of air at Gresham College, and with Sir Isaac Newton,
represent with sufficient sharpness the change from the old reign of
enmity between Nature and man, from the stern ideal of justice to the
later reign of love which embraces in one direction, God, in another,
fellow-man, in another, physical nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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