SECTION I.

a) The first lines of Ethics by the distinguished Hollmann, §. 64. 67 ff.

§. 1.

If we were to devote our efforts to investigating the phenomena of nature more deeply and scrutinizing them from every side, before we wish to attempt an explanation of them, any science would certainly be much less a witness to human ignorance. But such is the propensity in human judgment to drag to its own forum that which is solely a matter of the senses, that a multitude of the most diverse opinions must be refuted before the truth of one can be proven. The case for the doctrine of temperaments is similar. Ancient philosophers and physicians, though otherwise most excellent observers of nature, did not, it seems to me, observe the very diversity of the human body and mind with sufficient clarity when they were already attempting to inquire into its cause. Their successors, not yet agreeing on the matter itself, now adopt the ancient doctrine of temperament, now reject it, and now deny temperament itself a. But a brief history of this doctrine up to our own times seems by no means inappropriate for an overview of the whole subject.

b) History of the Human Understanding by the distinguished Floegel, 2nd ed., p. 158.

c) See the book On the Nature of Man, which exists among the Hippocratic writings (works edited by Foesius, Geneva, 1657, folio, p. 229, and elsewhere). Galen, On the Elements, Book II, ch. 2; On Black Bile, ch. 2.

§. 2.

That fabulous opinion, which claimed that humans were fashioned by the Gods from various elements, does not lack probability as the origin of the ancient doctrine of temperament b. With the four elements accepted, the ancients formed for themselves the idea of so-called primary qualities, namely hot, cold, dry, and moist, from whose various mixing, just like so many other phenomena of nature, they deduced the diversity of the four bodily fluids—as they assumed—and thereby the cause of temperament itself c.

d) See Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals, Book I, ch. 1 ff.; Problems, Section XXX.

e) I. B. van Helmont, The Passive Deception and Ignorance of the Humoral Schools (in his works, Part II, Lyon, 1667, folio). Menz, Philosophical Meditations on Temperament, Leipzig, 1712. Boerhaave, Medical Lectures, Haller's edition, Göttingen, 1745, p. 340 ff. The immortal Haller, Elements of Physiology of the Human Body, Lausanne, 1760, Vol. II, p. 146.

Philosophers used the same reasoning in explaining the diverse faculties of the soul d, and thus this doctrine, now indeed soundly refuted e, passed to the Arabs, the Romans, and late posterity adhering to them.