XXXvVi INTRODUCTION

trine of his century. " There was said to be an Ethiopian animal
whose looks could kill. He does not reject the tradition of this
monster, the catablepha (in Pliny, catoblepas), for he could
explain its fatal gift by the spiritus, (spirits'. 'The theory of
a vital air renewed by respiration, the zreDua, in the blood
and semen, dates from the Alexandrian school of medicine; the
(animal spirits' were in the nervous system and controlled
motion, the senses, etc. In Corþagion, Fracastorius uses the
word spiritus without qualification, though in his De Anima
he speaks of the 'vital spirits'. He regards them as a sort of
gaseous fluid "whose parts are not discrete, like atoms, but
more continuous, like a sort of cloud". They are controlled
by the anima, soul, whose seat is the heart, but they are not
themselves animate. ^*When the heart is in difficulty, they
move thither unconsciously, to bring aid'. Every image,
(species or simulacrum), emitted or peeled off like a shell by
every object, is either pleasing to and welcomed by the anima,
or unpleasing and rejected as antipathetic.' Now the unpleas—
ing species ejaculated from the eye of the catablepha "puts to
flight the spirits and the natural heat", and death results.*
In Contagion, he says that certain very acute germs are analo—
gous with the spirits and peculiarly fatal; and germs may adhere
to the spirits and be carried by them.3

: There follows either dilatation to receive, or constriction, to
reject, which affects all the organs by a general consensus, the nature
of which he describes in Sympathy, p. 97. 'The latter is what he
ealls in Contagion, passim, spiritual antipathy.

a Thus he accounts for the 'evil eye' that can fascinate or bewitch,
Greek, G4c«avor», Latin, fascinum; see Sympathy, p. 130: '*Not
all men have this power, but only those whose humors and spirits
are so abnormal that they may be ealled poisons".  The collision
of the evil image with the spiriflus that proceed from the retina,
takes place in front of the eye.

s From the extinct doctrine of the spirits, the 'pneumatic theory',
there still survive the phrases "animal', **high^! and *low spirits';
but few who use such phrases could now explain what they mean.
Cp. *Her spirits retired inward, her cheeks grew pale", quoted by
Oxford Dict; Spirit, from Pop. Tales Germ. 1791; and Cowper, To
Mary, '"Thy spirits have a fainter flow'; still closer to the usage
of Fracastorius is Cary, Trans. of Dante, Paradiso XXVI. 70:
*With the eye's spirit running forth to meet the ray'. Burton,
Anatomy of Melancholy, has some interesting passages on the
spirits and their connection with the soul and phantasy etc.: I
the vital Spirits cease, then life ceases, as in a syncope" . .. they