PRIOR QUESTION

Essential Principles of the Human Body.

Just as any science nowhere lingers more than in prefixing for itself and proving its own principles, so the same seems to happen to medical science if one does not know to which of the many diverse philosophical sects one should adhere in one's mind. For all the opinions of authors published up to this point, as far as we know, concerning the essential principles of the human body, diverge into 8 principal ones, like sentences devised by great minds, which easily surpass all others by the weight of the reasons on which they rely. 1. The opinion of the ancient Atomists, namely Empedocles, Democritus, Epicurus, and other heathens, who wanted the principles of our body to be atoms existing from eternity and thus uncreated, infinite, etc. 2. The opinion of other philosophers, likewise ancients, who established that besides matter, there exists a universal form, a substance as if absolute, informing all bodies, which was hailed as the soul or spirit of the world. 3. The opinion of the ancient Chemists, who said that chemical principles were the essential principles of natural bodies. 4. The opinion of Aristotle and his Peripatetic followers, who assert that the human body is essentially composed of its primary matter and substantial form, namely the rational soul. 5. The opinion of the Chemists of the later period and the moderns, who, besides the Aristotelian primary matter and the spiritual soul, establish another material one, which is subject to that, while in the meantime they compose the body essentially or integrally with chemical principles. 6. The opinion of the Modern Atomists, and specifically Gassendi, who, besides an interminable space (which they feel is not the matter itself, as the Cartesians think, but the place of matter, and indeed an extended substance, but everywhere permeable, penetrable, immobile, and absolutely immaterial, or by its own nature void of all matter), establish the simplest matter, which they want to be atoms produced in time, and thus created,