Note 235 — PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. (continued 3)

By Nature, the ancient philosophers understood an immaterial principle diffused through all the works of creation, that is to say, an internal principle of motion and of rest, which presides over the growth and nourishment of all substances. It is well defined by Aristotle in different parts of his works. See De Anima, ii., 4; and Auscultationes Naturales, pluries. That truly learned and ingenious author Bishop Berkeley, in his “Siris,” describes nature as being mind so fuddled with matter as to have lost its consciousness. Probably, the distinction between a material and immaterial principle as the cause of the vital phenomena was not so well understood until after Plato and Aristotle had cultivated mental philosophy with so great success; for, as we shall see in the next section, Hippocrates seems to identify mind with heat, that is to say, he confounds the cause of motion and of change with its first instrument, or co-cause (συνάιτιον).