hold of English literature, but was welcomed in France in the amatory works of Parny (1753–1814), in those of Chênedollé (1769–1833), and of Millevoye (1782–1816). The melancholy and sentimental elegies of the last named are the typical examples of this class of poetry in French literature. Lamartine must be included among the elegists, and his famous “Le Lac” is as eminent an elegy in French as Gray’s “Country Churchyard” is in English. The elegy has flourished in Portugal, partly because it was cultivated with great success by Camoens, the most illustrious of the Portuguese poets. In Italian, Chiabrera and Filicaia are named among the leading national elegists. In German literature, the notion of elegy as a poem of lamentation does not exist. The famous Roman Elegies of Goethe imitate in form and theme those of Ovid; they are not even plaintive in character.
Elegiac Verse has commonly been adopted by German poets for their elegies, but by English poets never. Schiller defines this kind of verse, which consists of a distich of which the first line is a hexameter and the second a pentameter, in the following pretty illustration:—
| “In the hexameter rises the fountain’s silvery column. In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.” |
The word “elegy,” in English, is one which is frequently used very incorrectly; it should be remembered that it must be mournful, meditative and short without being ejaculatory. Thus Tennyson’s In Memoriam is excluded by its length; it may at best be treated as a collection of elegies. Wordsworth’s Lucy, on the other hand, is a dirge; this is too brief a burst of emotion to be styled an elegy. Lycidas and Adonais remain the two unapproachable types of what a personal elegy ought to be in English. (E. G.)
ELEMENT (Lat. elementum), an ultimate component of anything,
hence a fundamental principle. Elementum was used
in Latin to translate the Greek στοιχεῖον (that which stands
in a στοῖχος, or row), and is a word of obscure origin and
etymology. The root of Lat. alere, to nourish, has been suggested,
thus making it a doublet of alimentum, that which supports
life; another explanation is that the word represents
LMN., the first three letters of the second part of the alphabet,
a parallel use to that of ABC. Apart from its application in
chemistry, which is treated below, the word is used of the
rudiments or principia of any science or subject, as in Euclid’s
Elements of Geometry, or in the “beggarly elements” (τὰπτωχὰ στοιχεῖα, of St Paul in Gal. iv. 9); in mathematics, of a fundamental
concept involved in an investigation, as the “elements”
of a determinant; and in electricity, of a galvanic (or voltaic)
“element” in an electric cell (see Battery: Electric). In
astronomy, “element” is used of any one of the numerical or
geometrical data by which the course of a varying phenomenon is
computed; it is applied especially to orbital motion and eclipses.
The “elements of an orbit” are the six data by which the position
of a moving body in its orbit at any time may be determined.
The “elements of an eclipse” express and determine the motion
of the centre of the shadow-axis, and are the data necessary
to compute the phenomena of an eclipse during its whole course,
as seen at any place. In architecture the term “element”
is applied to the outline of the design of a Decorated window, on
which the centres for the tracery are found. These centres
will all be found to fall on points which, in some way or other,
will be equimultiples of parts of the openings.
Like all other scientific concepts, that of an element has changed its meaning many times in many ways during the development of science. Owing to their very small amount of real chemical knowledge, the generalizations of the ancients were necessarily rather superficial, Ancient ideas. and could not stand in the face of the increasing development of practical chemistry. Nevertheless we find the concept of an element as “a substance from which all bodies are made or derived” held at the very beginning of occidental philosophy. Thales regarded “water” as the element of all things; his followers accepted his idea of a primordial substance as the basis of all bodies, but they endeavoured to determine some other general element or elements, like “fire” or “spirit,” or “love” and “hatred,” or “fire,” “water,” “air” and “earth.” We find in this development an exact parallelism to the manner in which scientific ideas generally arise, develop and change. They are created to point out the common part in a variety of observed phenomena, in order to get some leading light in the chaos of events. At first almost any idea will do, if only it promises some comprehensive arrangement of the facts; afterwards, the inconsistencies of the first trial make themselves felt; the first idea is then changed to meet better the new requirements. For a shorter or longer time the facts and ideas may remain in accord, but the uninterrupted increase of empirical knowledge involves sooner or later new fundamental alterations of the general idea, and in this way there is a never-ceasing process of adaptation of the ideas to the facts. As facts are unchangeable by themselves, the adaptation can be only one-sided; the ideas are compelled to change according to the facts. We must therefore educate ourselves to regard the ideas or theories as the changing part of science, and keep ourselves ready to accept even the most fundamental revision of current theories.
The first step in the development of the idea of elements was to recognize that a single principle would not prove sufficient to cover the manifoldness of facts. Empedocles therefore conceived a double or binary elementary principle; and Aristotle developed this idea a stage further, stating two sets of binary antagonistic principles, namely “dry-wet” and “hot-cold.” The Aristotelian or peripatetic elements, which played such a great rôle in the whole medieval philosophy, are the representatives of the several binary combinations of these fundamental properties, “fire” being hot and dry, “air” hot and wet, “water” cold and wet, “earth” cold and dry. According to the amount of these properties found in any body, these elements were regarded as having taken part in forming this body. Concerning the reason why only these properties were regarded as fundamental, we know nothing. They seem to be taken at random rather than carefully selected; they relate only to the sense of touch, and not to vision or any other sense, possibly because deceptions in the sense of touch were regarded as non-existent, while the other senses were apparently not so trustworthy. At any rate, the Aristotelian elements soon proved to be rather inadequate to meet the requirements of the increasing chemical knowledge; other properties had therefore to be selected to represent the general behaviour of chemical substances, and in this case we find them already much more “chemical” in the modern sense.
Among the various substances recognized by the chemists, certain classes or groups readily distinguished themselves. First the metals, by their lustre, their heaviness, and a number of other common properties. According to the general principle of selecting a single substance Elements of the alchemists. as a representative of the group, the metallic properties were represented by “mercury.” The theoreticians of the middle ages were rather careful to point out that common mercury (the liquid metal of to-day) was not at all to be identified with “philosophical” mercury, the last being simply the principle of metallic behaviour. In the same way combustibility was represented by “sulphur,” solubility by “salt,” and occasionally the chemically indifferent or refractory character by “earth.” According to the subsistence and preponderance of these properties in different bodies, these were regarded as containing the corresponding elements; conversely, just as experience teaches the chemist every day that by proper treatment the properties of given bodies may be changed in the most various ways, the observed changes of properties were ascribed to the gain or loss of the corresponding elements. According to this theory, which accounted rather well for a large number of facts, there was no fundamental objection against trying to endow base metals with the properties of the precious ones; to make artificial gold was a task quite similar to the modern problem of, e.g. making artificial quinine. The realization that there is a certain natural law preventing such changes is of much later date. It is therefore
