st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

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1 82 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
middle of a sentence. The definition given
is that he is a rational animal, liable to death, and
capable of intelligence and knowledge."
His bodily
nature consists of four elements :
blood, phlegm,
yellow bile, and black bile. 1 The seats of these
humours are then described, and the effects observed
from the preponderance of one or other of them.
of man
Traces of these opinions, as we are aware, sur
vive in our own language. When we speak of a
man as sanguine, choleric, melancholy, or phleg
matic, we are of course embodying the old ideas
expressed by those words; just as, when we
describe a person as humorous, or humoursome, or
of a good or bad temper (that is, blending or com
bination of these humours), we are unconsciously
employing terms of ancient medical science. An
account of the noblest part of man s body, the head,
is then begun. But the text is in such a mutilated
condition that it is not easy to extract much meaning
1
In the "De Fide Orthodoxa," ii. 12, the same distribution
is made, with an additional comparison of them to the four
cosmical elements. The black bile answers to earth, as being
dry and cold ; the phlegm to water, which is cold and moist ;
the blood to air, which is warm and moist ;
and the yellow
bile to fire, which is hot and dry. The four seasons, it will be
remembered, were also made analogous to them, as also the four
periods of human life. Besides Chaucer s Doctour of Phisike,
who
(
Knew the cause of every maladie,
Were it of cold, or hote, or moiste, or drie,
And wher engendred, and of what humour,"
Burton maybe cited as illustrating this subject :
Melancholy" (ed. 1861), p. 93.
"Anatomy of