in the doctrine of metempsychosis. Mons. L. Errera points out that this primitive, co-ordinated, hierarchized doctrine—meet subject for the poet's art—is the basis of all ancient mythologies.
The Animism of Stahl.—Modern animism was much more narrow in scope. It was a medical theory—i.e. almost exclusive to man. Stahl had adopted it in a kind of reaction against the exaggerations of the mechanical school of his time. According to him, the life of the body is due to the intelligent and reasoning soul. It governs the corporeal substance and directs it towards an assigned end. The organs are its instruments. It acts on them directly, without intermediaries. It makes the heart beat, the muscles contract, the glands secrete, and all the organs perform their functions. Nay more, it is itself the architectonic soul, which has constructed and which maintains the body which it rules. It is the mens agitat molem of Virgil.
It is remarkable that these ideas, so excessively and exaggeratedly spiritualistic, should have been brought forward by a chemist and a physician, while ideas completely opposed to these were admitted by philosophers like Descartes and Leibniz, who were decided believers in the spirituality of the soul. Stahl had been Professor of Medicine at the University of Halle, physician to the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and later to the King of Prussia. He left an important medical and chemical work, both theoretical and practical. He is the author of the celebrated theory of phlogiston, which held its ground in chemistry up to the time of Lavoisier. He died about 1734.
Animism survived him for some time, maintained by the zeal of a few faithful disciples. But after the
