and as whatever is bitter is the primal matter of bile. Although essence may be an abstraction, yet a generic character is clearly assigned to it in the text, and even in recent times recourse has been had to such an assumption in order to explain the difference between the secretions of organs supplied with the same fluids and animated by the same nerves. Thus, it was assumed that there must be for each organ a peculiar essence, a substantia propria (ὑλιχὴ οὐσία), for the fulfilment of its functions as well as the maintenance of its relations and sympathies with the other parts of the system. The text seems to admit of only one essence and one matter to be as the matrix for all things, which is, of course, opposed to the doctrine of elements and the formation of bodies by them; but the hypothesis could treat of them only as primordial entities, however diversified by form their manifestations may be. Aristotle was the first, however, who made form to be the realising principle, to be that which confers upon matter specific character, and constitutes the series of being; and this has been adopted by modern physiologists, as Reil makes form[1] together with variety in the combination of the elements "to be the cause of existing differences in organic bodies and their faculties."
Note 2, p. 58. But bodies, and above all natural bodies.] Living bodies, that is, are broadly distinguished from all others by the innate power of reproducing similar bodies, (similar in a specific sense, that is,) and
- ↑ Müller Handbuch der Phys.I. 27.
