inconsistent between invariable law and endlessly varying phenomena, and
that it is a more noble view of the government of this world to impute
its order to a penetrating primitive wisdom, which could foresee
consequences throughout a future eternity, and provide for them in the
original plan at the outset, than to invoke the perpetual intervention
of an ever-acting spiritual agency for the purpose of warding off
misfortunes that might happen, and setting things to rights. Chemistry
furnishes us with a striking example--an example very opportune in the
case we are considering--of the doctrine of Diogenes of Apollonia, that
the air is actually a spiritual being; for, on the discovery of several
of the gases by the earlier experimenters, they were not only regarded
as of a spiritual nature, but actually received the name under which
they pass to this day, gheist or gas, from a belief that they were
ghosts. If a labourer descended into a well and was suffocated, as if
struck dead by some invisible hand; if a lamp lowered down burnt for a
few moments with a lurid flame, and was then extinguished; if, in a coal
mine, when the unwary workman exposed a light, on a sudden the place was
filled with flashing flames and thundering explosions, tearing down the
rocks and destroying every living thing in the way, often, too, without
leaving on the dead any marks of violence; what better explanation could
be given of such catastrophes than to impute them to some supernatural
agent? Nor was there any want, in those times, of well-authenticated
stories of unearthly faces and forms seen in such solitudes.

[Sidenote: Origin of psychology.]

The modification made by Diogenes in the theory of Anaximenes, by
converting it from a physical into a psychological system, is important,
as marking the beginning of the special philosophy of Greece. The
investigation of the intellectual development of the universe led the
Greeks to the study of the intellect itself. In his special doctrine,
Diogenes imputed the changeability of the air to its mobility; a
property in which he thought it excelled all other substances, because
it is among the rarest or thinnest of the elements. It is, however, said
by some, who are disposed to transcendentalize his doctrine, that he did
not mean the common atmospheric air, but something more attenuated and
warm; and since, in its purest state, it constitutes the most perfect
intellect, inferior degrees of reason must b