Semantic History I

Milieu and Ambiance: An Essay in Historical Semantics
Author(s): Leo Spitzer

Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Sep., 1942), pp. 1-42
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2103127
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PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

A QuarterlyJournal
1942
SEPTEMBER,
III, No. 1
VOLUME
MILIEU AND AMBIANCE:
AN ESSAY IN HISTORICAL
SEMANTICS'
Everything is the center of a paradise" (Novalis)
In Studia neophilologica XII (Uppsala 1939-40), 91-119, Karl

Michaelsson, the well-known Swedish linguist, has investigated aproblem
of exciting interest for modern times. Taking as his point of departure
the Swedish word stdmning, which, according to Bellessort's work, La
Suede (1910), suggests the idea of an inexpressible harmony between men,
things, and situations, and comparing with it the French neologism
ambiance (more intellectual, and, unlike stdmning, inapplicable to the
6tat dame of a human being), he finds in both these terms an expression
of that modern and anti-Cartesian desire to penetrate "les sombres tunnels
de l'inexprimable." He then points out that (1) air ambiant was a Latinized expression of the savants of the sixteenth century (the translators of
Aristotle; A. Pare, etc.) which paralleled the use of ambire in Pliny and
Seneca (hic ventus circumactus et ambiens locum ... turbo est). He shows
further that (2) the eighteenth-century translations of Newton revived
the use of ambiant (milieu ambiant translating the English ambientmedium):
lair ambiant appears in Rousseau and Lamartine; (3) along with the
numerous modern examples of ambiance (which is attested first with
Edmond de Goncourt), there are also frequent examples of atmosphere
and climat; (4) aria ambiente is found in Italian with Galileo as early as
1656, and the substantive ambiente, attested in the seventeenth century, is
quite frequent in this language (cf. the modern derivative ambientarsi
"to acclimate oneself") and may indeed have contributed to the development of the French cognate; in Spanish, el ambiente is attested since 1692
(Michaelsson fails to note that aire ambienteis to be found as early as 1587
in Virues' epic Monserrate).
Michaelsson's article is well documented and full of subtle suggestions.
It is marred, however, by that failure, characteristic of the otherwise
meritorious work of several linguists in Sweden and elsewhere, to consult
directly the history of ideas turning instead to dictionaries where this
is represented, for the most part, only as petrified sediment. In this
instance, the failure is all the more surprising, as the author had at hand
1 I wish herein to express my thanks to Professors Castro, Cherniss, Dieke, Edelstein, Einarsson, E. Frank, Friedlander, Gurwitsch, Salinas, and Singleton for their
scholarly contributions, and to Dr. Anna Hatcher for her keen criticism.
1
PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEAR-H
all the material necessary to establish at least the later history of ambiance.
And the history of this word cannot be separated from that of medium =
milieu (we have seen that milieu ambiant translates Newton's ambient
medium): at every step Michaelsson is forced to translate ambiance by
"milieu," and yet he makes no reference to the development of this term.
Milieu is now associated in every one's mind with the deterministic
theories of Taine, theories which, spreading throughout Europe, led both
to the adoption of the French word itself in various languages, and to the
establishment of indigenous terms which should serve to represent the
same concept (German Umwelt; Spanish medio; Italian ambiente; English
environment): the concept of an "aggregate of influences or conditions
which shape or determine the being, development, life, or behavior of a
person or a thing." Ever since the publication of his Histoire de la litterature anglaise of Taine, in which the 'milieu'-theory was first advanced,
Taine's debt to the ideas of Montesquieu and of the ancients has been
recognized (e.g. by Sainte-Beuve). But no one, so far as I know, has
recognized the affiliation existing between Taine's word and the word of
the ancients. What was this word?
We find in Greek o rlcpteX'wi ab)p or To 7rEpLExoi', an expression meaning
literally "that which surrounds, encompasses" (from the verb l7rEpt-4XEw),
and used to refer to the all-embracing air, space, sky, atmosphere, climate:
the cosmic "milieu" of man; according to Anaximenes, T&o KOcT/uOV r-ev/a
Kat Arip IrepLEXeL, "the universe is surrounded by spirit and atmosphere."
The idea that atmosphere or climate was active upon the human constitution was well-known to Hippocrates, who thought in terms of the air which
man breathes; in a commentary to Hippocrates' treatise entitled 7r-Epl
spvaews APp67,rov we find the statement: o 8b 'IlrlrOKpAT'77s
/ovXscraU cvl8aTLOETcLLTa Tv t~wu' Ouaa
T To
p rEXlvTos rheas aepOS Kara<TaOEL,

px
which
appears later in a Latin version as "Voluit Hippocrates hoc in loco aeri

nos ambienti corpora comparari." Hans Diller, "Die tberlieferung der
hippokratischenSchrift lrepL a4epwu'vMaTrw rvorwv" (Leipzig, 1932), p. 171,
asserts that the expression a9rp 7'uAs ireptfxwi ("climate")
was preceded by
copat(originally "the seasons"), a term current in Galen (as in Herodotus;

in Hippocrates' lrepl fbadews a4pOp.);Diller dates this
7rlE/ua or 6 abairivevou
"Schlagwort" as a fourth-century development, at the latest. That a9ip
was substituted for the earlier terms, he explains by reference to a development of climatologic speculation from the stage it had reached in Hippocrates (who traces epidemic diseases to vitiated air) to that later stage of
Greek thought when air was conceived as subject to "alterations"(trEpotw'c-Ets):the physiological and psychological qualities of man depend on the
changing "forms" of air: "Damit wird die Luft ... zu einer Substanz,
die die Skala aller mdglichen Erscheinungsfornmenal)lauft, nicht alle diese

Erscheinungsformen abschliesst" (note that the last expression of Diller
itself re-echoes o a47p 7rEptfXWe). According to the Greek atomists, air
represented the space in which the atoms moved; in Demokritos the
Ei&AcO. invade man from the air, which contains atoms of vois and 4Ivxt.
Diogenes of Apollonia related the act of thinking to the degree of dampness
in the air which man breathed. The Peripatetic school was wont to speak
of amip as EvKparos"well-tempered"; this itself suggested KpaUis ("climate":
the climate being the result of the mixture of dryness, richness, warmth,
cold etc.); then 6-p alone becomes synonymous with "climate"; it may
be found already in Empedocles. And finally (6) 7rEpLEXWpis added to
this anp: in the writings of Anaxarchos of Abdera, a follower of Demokritos,
we find a discussion of &rEpcoap(i Kal KPaTEW$ TOV 1rEPLEXOVTOS
where the
irgpLExov is coupled with both regular terms for "climate"; later it came to
be used alone.
The transforming influence of climate is recognized by Polybius, who
expatiates on al EK TO6 IrEpLEXoVTos btwpopal ("the differences caused by
climate"); and in Theophrastus (Enquiry into Plants, VIII, vii, 6) occurs
the statement: "For growth and nourishment the climate (' r6o Aipos
KpacLs:
literally "mixture of air") is the most important factor . . . and it
also makes quite as much difference what sort of air and wind prevails in
I
that region (at Xvopat bLtwoipovcL . . . Kai I
Iaspt 7rEPLEXOJTL Kai TOlS 7reE.V/acot).
Galen (De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, ed. Iwan Mfiller, I, 442) in a
reference to Poseidonius concerned with the influence of nature (climate)
on human beings, represents the latter philosopher as saying in his
spvatoyewjoopta
(I quote the passage from the sixteenth-century Latin
translation):
atque enim terras si spectes, non paulum mores hominum inter se differre timiditate et audacia vel voluptatis et laboris studio, cuin affectus antliol motiones semper
corporissequanturhabitum,qui ex aeris ambientis temperatione (CK rn Kara' rToleplkXOV
pAOWS)
KP
(Cf. also Strabo IT, 3, 6: "Indos Aethiopibus praestare ... quia robustiores
sint minusque aeris siccitate adusti.") In Aristotle too (TIcpl P4,Coe7EPEverCOS,
p. 782, B31) we are told that o6arp o ircptrxcov is the causativefactor of the
"dampness" of the Scythians and Thracians, and the "dryness" of the
Ethiopians: the Greeks, living between the colder regions of the Europeans
and the warmer clime of the Asiatics, possess a ,p6oovof disposition-falling
neither into the extreme of courage and too little thought (a European
trait) nor into that of thoughtfulness mixed with cowardice (characteristic
of the Asiatics). Here we have a clear anticipation of Montesquieu's
RESEEARCH
PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOMENOLOGICAL
theory of the influence of climate (or nature) on both the body and mind
of man.2
Thus "climate," in the opinion of the ancients, has the same general
efficacy in regard to living beings, as we are wont to ascribe to the "milieu":
it transforms the conditions of life and life itself. Indeed Diller speaks of
the "(klimatisches) Milieu" of the ancient philosophers, Pollenz, in his
"Hippocrates," of "die Schrift fiber die Umwelt." But I should say that
the Greek term (a'.'p) 6 IrepLtxcwv is still too closely identified with material
"air" to be identified with the Tainian concept of milieu that "ensemble
of conditions...
."
(Montesquieu,
so often spoken of as Taine's prede-
cessor, was really much more in the tradition of Hippocrates; those parts
of his Esprit des Lois inspired by the Greek philosopher, deal specifically
and exclusively with "air," "climate" as determining factors on the
character and constitution of different peoples.2) At the same time this
A7sp irepLtXwv"air" was endowed with qualitiesbordering on the spiritual:
since the air was active in the act of perception, it came to represent a sort
of "Weltseele." Sextus represents it as gifted with reason and perception
(ro 1repeiXov 7quYs XOyLKOVTE 6v KaL ppevwpEs): while we sleep itis not reason
and perception that we lose but our "symphysis" with the surrounding
element(XWpIETaat T7s 7rpos To' 7rEpLExov
avlu.mLas6 ev 71ytvvovs) or, in the words
of Reinhardt's translation "Verwachsenheit mit dem umgebenden Element." And Cicero has expressed the theory that air is not only that by
means of which we see and hear, but that which sees and hears with us:
ipseque aer nobiscum videt, nobiscum audit (De nat. Deorum II, 83)-a
"sympathetic" notion of perception which Reinhardt (p. 192), who traces
this back to earlier Greek ideas, explains by reference to the reciprocal
activity between macrocosm and microcosm: just as our auditive capacity
is "airlike," and our visual, "light-like" (cf. Goethe: "wdir'nicht das Auge
2 Similarly
his contemporary l'abbe DuBos spoke of climat, vapeur, etc.:
. . . les divers caracteres de tous les peuples ... sont modifies par les diff6rences des expositions [= 'exposure'], des climats, des vapeurs, autant et
plus encore que par celles des lois et des habitudes. En effet, ces dernieres
oppositions ont en elles-memes, dans le principe, de semblables causes physiques.
For further Greek theories concerning the relationship of climatology and characterology, cf. H. Diller, "Wanderarzt und Aitiologe" (Leipzig 1932), pp. 115 if. For
the revival of these ancient theories in France, cf. M. Brunschvig, L'abbt DuBos
renovateur de la critique au XVIIIe sieicle, and a Finnish thesis by Laurila; for their
revival in England, cf. the article of Z. J. Fink, "Milton and the theory of climatic
influences" (Modern Language Quarterly II, 67). Sainte-Beuve, in his essay on
Taine's Histoire de la litterature anglaise pointed out the basic identity between the
ideas of Hippocrates, Montesquieu and Taine, without, however, noting the con
tinuity of word-material stemming from Greek: lrepLkxov-ambiens-milieu.
MILIEU
AND
AMBIANCE
sonnenhaft.. ."), so, air itself is perceptive of acoustic, light of visual,

phenomena. Thus the "sympathy" between the cosmos and man does
constitute a kind of loving milieu round about him. Reinhardt says
(translating ro' 7rEptfxov literally): "das Umgebende, die Luft, ist . . . wie
mit einem geistigen, geheimnisvollen Fluidum erfiillt, das in den Menschen
dringt und einstr6mt; dies, dies ist die Erkenntnis: ilberstromen aus dem
Makrokosmos in den Mikrokosmos." The idea of the fundamental kinship
(and kindred feeling) of the 7reptexovfor the soul that perceives goes over to
Christianity (in the form of the principle of Augustine: similitude est
causa amoris). And this ancient idea of the "medium of perception"
in its relationship to the loving universe, is surely reflected to some extent
in Newton's expression when he speaks of space (the aetherial medium)
as the "sensorium of God."
In the examples just above the "air" in question is less akin to "climate"
than to "space." And indeed it is in this latter connection that we are
most apt to find ro 7reptexov used. For example we are taught by Anaximander (according to Fragment 11: the refutatio of Hippolytus, edited by
Diels, "Fragmente der Vorsokratiker," p. 16):
..
8OTWV
,&pxX~ .v
qOUOlVTlVa ro6 4rElpoU, it -as ylveOaL rois
Koo0.tOUS,TavTr)v 6' a16Lou eLuaL Kal a4Y?'7pW,'v Kal rarvras repLexetv
oupavous
Kal
rous iv
aurols
"the worlds are born of the infinite space that contains them all." (Aristotle will repeat, ibid. p. 7, air7 a'px71, the ultimate genesis of the infinite,
etvat [apX?71V]
Kal rEpEPXetvraivra Kat iravra KVU/Epvav.) And then,
r?v &XX(Aiv
in accordance with his theory of the birth of the worlds by "detachment"
from the infinite (fragment 10, Diels, ibid.) Anaximander continues:
EIC toi
ro
Kai
rtVa
iK
yOVl'OEp/.toi
ylol0U
robroU pXyoys oSoalpav
TE
Kal iIUXpOiKaT&
roi6e TOt K60/.4O) &rOKptOVal
T7yV)4vEoLv
repUpvl vat r($ repL T2V ynV aiep&w's r 6kV6p(A,)OOt.3
3 Cf. the explanation of Zeller in Grundriss der Geschichteder griechischen Philosophie (13th ed.), p. 33:
Als der Urstoff ist das Unbegrenzte ungeworden und unverganglich,
und ebenso ewig ist seine Bewegung. Eine Folge dieser Bewegung ist die
"Ausscheidung"
(&KKpIve-Oat)
bestimmter
Stoffe.
Zunachst trennten
sich
das Warme und das Kalte, aus beiden entstand das Feuchte; aus ihm sonderten sich die Erde, die Luft und der Feuerkreis ab, der diese als kugelformige
Schale umgab. Indem der letztere zersprang, bildeten sich radf6rmige, mit
Feuer gefuillte, mit Offnungen versehene HUlsen, die, durch Luftstromungen
bewegt, sich um die Erde in geneigt horizontaler Richtung drehen; das
Feuer ... gibt die Erscheinung der durch den Himmelsraum ziehenden
Gestirne . . . eine Vorstellung, die sich uns zwar fremdartig genug ausnimmt,
die aber in Wahrheit der erste uns bekannte Versuch ist, die regelmassige
Bewegung der Gestirne in der Weise der sphiterenSpharentheoriemechanisch
zu erklaren (p. 33).
This cosmo-organic image of the bark of the tree, compared to the sphere
of fire surrounding the air, which, in turn, surrounds the earth, and developing from a germ (oy6vwos) detached from the infinite-this will be
repeated throughout the Middle Ages; already we glimpse Dante's concentric heavens surrounding the universe, and witness the encrustation
and tautening of the formless. According to an Orphic fragment preserved
by Aristophanes (Birds, 690, in 0. Kern, "Orphicorum fragments," p.
80) there was at first only Chaos, Night, Erebus and Tartarus: in the
depths of Erebus, Night engendered an egg from which was hatched Eros:
he united with Chaos near Tartarus, and became the ancestor of the human
race aspiring to the light if the universe is an egg4 its shell would then
be the heavenly limit of the universe, and the earth as the centre of the
universe would be the yolk of the egg.5
It was an ancient theory that space was filled by a fluid: for Heraclitus,
space (or, that which filled space)6 was similar to fire, a kind of ether.
Poseidonius thought the
IrEPLfxov filled
with a spiritual fluid
(lrvEi6ta)
which permeates man and brings about cognizance: an overflowing of the

macrocosm into the microcosm (Reinhardt, Sympathieund Kosmos,p.
698). The materialists of the Hellenistic period identified this fiery
ether with Aristotle's vital heat, and posited a vital fluid penetrating all
4For this idea as found in the Phrygian mystics and the Hindus, cf. R. Eisler,
Weltenmantel und Himmelszelt 11,524; H. Lommel, "Der Welt-Ei-Mythos im RigVeda" (M6langes . . . Charles Bally, Geneva 1939, p. 214); Frobenius, Erlebte Erdteile
VII (Frankfort 1929), pp. 280 ff. In the Sanskrit text it is the sun that is the yolk
Frobenius thinks
of the "world-egg," and this yolk can change into the "sun-bird."
that the "Urei" myth is essentially connected with the sea ("Urmeer"), which, in
Egypt and India, is sometimes symbolized by the world-embracing serpent: the
world-egg floats on the sea or sinks therein (cf. the idea of St. Augustine's, ridiculed
by Cyrano de Bergerac, that the earth "nageait sur l'eau comme la moiti6 d'une
But here we need be concerned only with the kinship between the
orange couple").
"world-egg globe" and the circle formed by the Ocean.
Latini and, later on, in Leonardo da Vinci; cf.
5 This image is found in Brunetto
Solmi, Le fonti di Leonardo, p. 193 (who, however, does not recognize the ancient
prehistory of this comparison):
Che quando una cosa e rinchiusa e intorniata dentro dell' altra, conviene,
che quella che rinchiude tenga quella rinchiusa; e conviene, che quella che e
rinchiusa sostenga quella che la rinchiude. La ragione, come se '1 bianco
dell' uovo, che aggira il tuorlo, non tenesse, e non lo rinchiudesse dentro
da se, egli cadrebbe in sul guscio; e se '1 tuorlo non sostenesse l'albume, certo
E questa e la ragione perched la
egli cadrebbe nel fondo dell' uovo....
terra e assisa nel miluogo di tutti i cerchi e di tutti i torniamenti, cioe il
fondo de' cieli e delli elementi.
6 So late a writer as Fritz Mauthner
says in his Worterbuch der Philosophie: "I am
unable to find in what respect the ether might be distinguished from the space it
fills. Space and matter are as inseparable as immaterial space is unthinkable."
MILIEU AND AMBIANCE
things. The Neoplatonist Proclus described space as a corporeal, animate

substance which, through the penetrative force of the air, is infused in
matter (cf. G. K. Chalmers, PAMLALII, 1031). Athenaios considered the
OV Ta
vpX
Ev/.a
7rE/7rT0 orotXEtov (quintessence) as r'6 &lKOV &ta 7rYTat 7rw
Kal &3oLKEtoOat: something in the nature of a Weltseele.
7rapra ovl'EXEO0aL
Anaximenes believed that "as the soul is the air [an airy being] which
rules over us, so breath and air encompass the whole cosmos." In regard
to the "ruling divinity" of the air and the soul see H. Kelsen in The Journal
of Unified Science VIII, 74.
It must be remembered that for the Greeks, even for Greek scientists, "all
things are full of God" (Thales) and that Greek natural science is not
devoid of religious conviction; this has been emphasized by L. Edelstein,
Bulletin of the History of Medicine V, 3 (1937): "... this is Greek rationalism and empiricism: it is influenced by religious ideas. God and His
action are powers reckoned with by the physicians in their theory. and
their practice." The Hippocratic book on the Sacred Disease states:
"This disease comes from the same causes as others, from the things that
come to and go from the body, from cold, sun, and from the changing
restlessness of the winds. These things are divine." And for the later
physicians who follow Plato and Aristotle the divinity of sun and stars
and climate is unquestionable, nor are the forces of the lower world, air
and water, deprived of divinity (e.g. Plato, Laws X, 8996; Aristotle,
On the Heaven, 288 a 4-5). Pausanias says: "to Asclepius they [the
Phoenicians] assign Apollo as father, but no mortal woman as his mother.
Asclepius is air, bringing health to mankind and to all animals likewise;
Apollo is the sun, and most rightly is he named the father of Asclepius
because the sun, by adapting his course to the seasons, imparts to the
air its healthfulness." One understands that such conceptions as "air"
and 7riEi3a, and consequently i- 7rEptExov also, were tinged with religious
connotations.
Particularly important is the conception of ro -rEptExovas found in Aristotle's Physics. It should be noted that the Stagirite spoke of space
a sort of body which he considered
as a place (orIwos),7 as a avq3a rEptExov,
to be physical rather than mathematical,8since he compares space to a vase,
7Mr. Lawrence Ecker has observed in Language XVI, 17, that the abstract notion
of "place" is originally unknown to most languages, which refer rather to "the
place where a certain activity goes on"; thus the Greek word roiros is "the place where
one stretches out" (cf. Lithuanian tekti= "he stretches"); Latin (st) locus and German
according to Language XVI, 91, "the place
Stelle "the place where one stops"-or,
where one is put".
that divested space of this "substantial"
8 It is the philosophy of the Renaissance
characteristic and substituted for substratum space (or aggregate space) "functional
and objects to the liquids contained therein (the Greek language associated ireptexetvwith ireptoxJ "the skin of fruit").9 Space contains both
the boundaries of the outermost containing body and those of the body
contained; the limit of universal space is the ultimate heavenly sphere,
the final envelope, so to speak, beyond which the ne plus ultra of the
Aristotelian cosmology erects before us a verboten!10 (cf. Aristotle, Physics,
IV, 5-7, cited by E. Cassirer, Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie
der Renaissance, 1927, P. 191). In this connection 0. Hamelin, Le system
d'Aristote, 1931, p. 290, writes:
L'espace, avons-nous dit, est "comme un vase." C'est 1Aune metaphor sans
doute, mais si juste qu'elle exprime adequatement la nature de l'espace, a l'exception
d'un seul trait. Un vase se transporte, lespace non: un vase c'est un lieu transportable; lespace est un vase qu'on ne peut mouvoir. I1 n'y a qu'a traduire cette
image en termes abstraits pour obtenir la definition cherchee: "L'espace est la limite
immobile et immediate du contenant." La proposition que cette limite est immediate veut dire qu'elle enveloppe sans aucun interm~diaire le contenu. Il faut bien
comprendre d'ailleurs que la limite, ainsi caractfriske, du contenant est contigu6
(avx'EX6ME'ov)et non pas continue
(avmExes)avec celle du contenu.
II ne peut y avoir
ici continuity: il faut que le contenant et le contenu soient spares Fun de l'autre,
autrement il n'y aurait pas rapport de contenu a contenant, mais de partie A tout.
Mais, si la continuity est, comme nous le savons, une identity de limite, la contiguity
est simplement une coincidence de limited, et la coincidence n'empeche pas la duality.
Elsewhere Aristotle says that every object has its particular and natural
ir-ros: the fall to earth of a heavy object, like the rising movement of a
light one, is the natural movement to its natural place. Here we have the
idea of "the (natural) place of something"-the ancestor of le (mi)lieu
de quelqu'un-which merged with the idea of o 7rcepEXov."1
space" (space as a system): a homogeneous space systematically subject to mathematical construction. It was precisely Galileo who so vigorously combatted the
Aristotelian physics with his new dynamism. (Thus, in one sense, his aria ambiente
and l'ambientecorrespond rather to Greek terminology than to Greek conceptions.)
9 A similar word is also used in Plato of the Ocean: o 7rkptdr reos. Thus the Ocean
was considered as enfolding the earth
(d)Kecapvo
'kovra
7rkptL
ri'
Ty'i"), just as did the
ether.
10Thus, since the reptkXov itself is surrounded by final limits, it may be thought of
as "intermediary" as well as "enclosing." This, of course, explains the fact that
later times can refer to this space as medium.
11With the physical notion of space transposed to the realm of the soul, the dolcestilnovistaGuido Guinizelli writes, in his canzone Al cor gentil ripara sempre amore:
Amor in gentil cor prende rivera ('gets a foothold,' 'takes up its quarters') per so consimil loco ('as its genuine, natural, congenial place') com'
adamus del ferro in la minera ('like the magnet in the iron-ore mine').
In these famous lines we have the consimilis which Lucretius used so frequently and
which suggests the "sympathy" between the object and "it's" place-implying love
as well, since in Augustine's words similitude est causa amoris; cf. the pregnant line
MILIEU AND AMBIANCE
How richly revelatory of Greek thought is the term ro 7rept~xov:it illustrates the ability of the Greeks to conceive, not a "cold" abstraction
of Auzias March, Poesies LXXXVI, 229: amant a mi per consemblant manera. For
the use of the porsemic pronoun one may compare the phrases sua mortemori, suo
fato mori (and in popular French mourir de sa belle (!) mort; cf. W. Schulze, Kleine
Schriften, p. 131: 'Der Tod des Kambyses")-or again, "to pay a debt suo die.'
If we compare suo consimil loco to ambiens locus, it becomes evident that the first
refers to the place from the point of view of the "contained" which "fits in"-the
second, from the point of view of the "container" which "protects" the contained:
there is an admirable harmony and "sympathy" between the two. If we turn to
the medieval heavens, the dynamism of the celestial bodies is nothing other than
their effort to reach their own "natural place"-attracted by divine love (t'Amore
che move it sol e t'altrestelle). Or, coming back to earth: the static social theory of
gradations that obtained in the Middle Ages (according to which everyone must
remain on that rung of the hierarchic ladder to which God has assigned him) is to be
explained (cf. G. Muller, Deutsche VierteljahrsschriftII,689) by this same theory of
the natural, the authentic place. It is this, too, perhaps, that underlies what has
been called the Standortgebundenheitof the souls in Dante's Beyond: the locus penalis
assigned to them in accordance with the theology of Thomas Aquinas. In the light
of this idea of the "natural place" we can understand what it must have meant to a
medieval mind when St. Peter, in Dante's Paradise, chides a group of persons for
having ursurped his place:
Quegli ch' usurpa in terra it loco mio
It loco mio, it loco mio, che vaca
Nella presenza del Figliuol di Dio (Par. XXVII, 22).
The commentaries suggest a reminiscence of Jeremiah VII,12: ite ad locum meum in
Silo, where God speaks of his Temple, the "Domus Dei," as locus meus; they note the
terrible 'ripetizione' of loco mio-all the more terrible because a saint in Heaven has
been deprived of the "natural locus" of his influence on earthly things.
The idea of the "natural place" has outlived the Middle Ages; Ronsard, in his
Hymne des daimons (ed. A.-M. Schmidt) represents God as populating the universe
with beings, each of whom is put in his proper place (v. 59 ff.):
A celle fin qu'il n'y eft point de lieux
Vagues dans l'Univers (= horror vacui!), selon teurs natures
Qu'ils fussent tous remplys de propres creatures.
(Schmidt comments: "il s'agit . . ., par suite d'un raisonnement analogique courant,
du peuplement spacial des divers 6l6ments du cosmos"). The demons have light
bodies (v. 77 ff.), but
pesant quelque peu, a fin que leur corps n'erre
Trop haut jusques au ciel, habandonnant te lieu
Qui leur est destine par le vouloir de Dieu . . .
(variant: "II logea les Daimons au milieu des nuages, leur place destinee)
(v. 83) Ne plus qu'on voit l'exercite des nUes
En un temps orageux egalementpendiles
I)'un juste poix en t'air n'y s'eslevant trop haut .
According to E. Zilsel, Journal of the History of Ideas I,115, Copernicus himself
continued the medieval teleological conception of nature: the idea that objects of the
same nature exert on each other "sympathetic" influences (the air rotates along with
10
but a "warm" one: an abstraction which is visualized and which has not
severed its ties with life, but remains organic and close to the bodily.
the earth because it partakes of the nature of earth-eandam
sequatur natural;
because, we might say, it is consimilis with earth). He likewise continues the
Aristotelian explanation of motion by reference to the effort of objects to reach their
locus naturalis (according to which the "natural" movement of things must be
And even
rectilinear: extra locum esse produces "artificial," circular movement).
the comparison of the feeling of love with the striving of physical bodies towards
their proper place survives: P. 0. Kristeller, International Science I,12 says: "When
Ficino conceives the desire for God as a natural appetite of the soul and compares
it to the natural movement of the elements towards their proper place, he obviously
bases himself on a remarkable passage of (Augustine's) confessions in which our
love for God is defined as a kind of weight (pondus meum amor meus)."
In seventeenth century texts suis locus is still occasionally to be found:
Boileau, Art poetique:
Il faut que chaque chose y (dans un poeme) soit mise en son lieu
Pascal: L'homme ne sait a quel rang se mettre; il est visiblement tombe de son vrai
lieu, sans pouvoir se retrouver.
Even such trite phrases as each thing in its proper place; he should be put in his place
may have a (narrowly circumscribed) "historic origin."
From this notion of a "place fitting for someone" is derived the technical expression of the mathematicians: the geometrical locus of, le lieu geometrique de, der geometrische Ort von. It may be noted that English (just as was true in the case of
medium) chose the Latin word in order to distinguish the scientific term; in some of
the uses of this locus (cf. NED) it is still possible to see the Aristotelian nuance of
the "all-embracing" 1reptLXov+P1rvEP6a:
Cheyne (1775):
Yet space is not actually to be divided; or one part of it separated from
another. Since it is the universal Locus of, and penetrates all Bodies.
Of course the geometrical locus developed a technical meaning quite disparate
from that of the locus naturalis: this is what an object may (or may not) occupy,
whereas the locus geometricus is what an object must occupy.
As for the very modern expression, I'homme et son milieu, while this may immediately recall the medieval suo consimil loco, still it is less suggestive of that attitude
of poised contentment which we found expressed in the Middle Ages toward the
social system; rather, perhaps, there is a suppressed sign of regret at being so deeply
environment that today is felt to be more or
rooted in one's own environment-an
Such a thinker as Rilke, however, who urges that everyone die
less accidental.
"his" death (his idea is, to be sure, more individualistic than that revealed in sua
he only succeeds, after taking
morte morn) opposes this modern feeling-though
account of modern deterministic thought, in replacing suo consimil loco by "the
relatively most fitting place." In "Briefe an einen jungen Dichter" (1929) he writes:
"Wir sind ins Leben gesetzt, als in das Element dem wir am meisten entsprechen,
und wir sind uberdies durch Jahrtausende Anpassung diesem Leben so ahnlich geworden dass wir, wenn wir stille halten, durch ein gluckliches Mimikry von allem, was
uns umgibt, kaumn zu unterscheiden sind. Wir haben keinen Grund, gegen unsere
Welt Misstrauen zu haben, denn sic ist nicht gegen uns" (it is as if he were reacting
against the idea of contrke = contra: "what lies before and against us").
Another similar term is "element" [= "quo vita continetur, deliciae"]; in Italian it
MIIIEU
AND AMI3IANCE
it
And the warm nuance of ro' reptexov is protective: absent is the modern
brand of fatalistic determinism envisaged as a menacing force. Moreover, as is again characteristic of the Greeks, the visualizedabstract term
covers a wide range of life: rro6reptexov embraces climate, the air that feeds
(spiritually as well as physically: lrvEi4a), the environment that conditions, ether, space, place-and the ocean embracing the earth; it appears
even in logical grammatical phraseology to refer to a general term (in
relation to a particular) as a protectingly embracing or encompassing
thing. For a harmonious and poised man is apt, by nature, to see everywhere himself, and the things connected with himself, as being "embraced"
and caressed: to feel that he is the center of a whole the embryo in the
egg, the tree within its bark, the earth wrapped round by ether. This
is an inner form, a living pattern of thought, which must reproduce itself
unceasingly: it harmonizes with what Mommsen (RImische GeschichteI,
26) has said of Greek religious thought and its preference for "das Bildhafte" and "gestaltende Anschauung"-in contrast to the abstract and
conceptual nature of Roman thought. For the Greeks, as for the Grecian
Goethe, Denken and Anschauen were one.
The word.ro 7repeLXov,obviously, did not go over into Latin. One may
perhaps risk the assumption that this was because of that linguistic
purism which prevented the Romnansfrom "speaking Greek in Latin"a procedure to which Cicero in particular objected: cf. his cautious use of
may be found in Sacchetti's Novella 11: [a man] era un elemento a chi in Ferrara
capitava ["a friendly element for everyone who came to Ferrara"], in French from
the time of Montaigne (estre hors de leur element); in German from the sixteenth
century on (Gunther); and in English "to be in one's element" is attested as early
as 1598. This expression is particularly reminiscent of similar uses of "air" (sein
We
Lufft, Paracelsus; v. note 17) which suggest so strongly the idea of sympathy.
may compare the significant identification of element and welkin in the Clown's
speech in Twelfth Night: "who you are and what you would are not of my welkin:
I might say, element; but the word is over-worn."
It is interesting to note in this connection Pascal's severe criticism directed against
the use of anthropomorphic expressions in scientific language-though
such strictures as those expressed below can have no weight as against the developments in
the spoken language:
[les philosopher] parlent des choses corporelles spirituellement
et des
Car ils disent hardiment que les corps tendent
spirituelles corporellement.
en bas, qu'ils aspirent a leur centre, qu'ils fuient la destruction, qu'ils craignent le vide, qu'ils ont des inclinations, des sympathies, des antipathies, qui
sont toutes choses qui n'appartiennent qu'a l'esprit.
[Pensees II, 72]
Cf. Descartes (Tannery II, 223): "la plupart la [la pesanteur] prennent pour une
vertu ou quality interneden chacun des corps que l'on nomme pesants qui le fait tendre
vers le centre de la terre." Finally, one may remember the remark of Leibniz on the
conservatism of language (Discours de ietaphysique):
"nous voyons que ceux qui
suivent Copernic ne laissent pas de dire que le soleil se leve et so couche."
12
PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOOMENOLOGICAL
RESEARCH
vocantur (instead of sunt) in "Ii qui mathematici vocantur,ii qui grammatici

vocantur" (Marouzeau, Traite de stylistique, p. 159). And it may be
remembered that the old Roman poets eschewed even aether ("Id quod
nostri caelum memorant, Grai perhibent aethera"). But this purism
did not extend to the coinage of neologisms patterned upon the Greek.
Cicero himself, in his scientific writings (if to a lesser extent in his orations)
did not hesitate to invent terms that represented translations of Greek
words (e.g., qualitas = Wroto'rns:cf. L. Laurand, Etude sur le style des discours de Ciceron, I, 80; Wackernagel, Vorlesungen fiber Syntax, p. 115).
Thus there was no technical obstacle in the way of coining a Latin term
equivalent to ro' repa-xop. And yet this does not seem to have been created:
K. C. Reilly, Studies in the Philosophical Terminology of Lucretius and
Cicero (New York, 1909) says: "I find no counterpart for it (i.e., for the
7rEptEXOZ'of Epicurus) in Cicero or Lucretius.""2
12 We do find, it is true, a circumstantia aeris in Seneca (on which, perhaps, is
But circumstantia never
patterned the circumstantia angelorum of Tertullian).
gained a foothold in Latin as a reference to air, space, sky, one reason for which may
well have been the utter absence of that 'caressing" nuance which characterized the
Greek term. Indeed, the verb circumstare often had a definitely menacing connotation: ita multi circumstant qui nobis mortem minitantur (Cicero); me . . . saevus
circumstetit horror (Virgil); circumstans nos peccatum (Vulgate).
(The use of umgeben by Goethe (= "von allen Seiten bedrangen") is an obvious imitation of the
Latin circumstare: "Feierlich umgab der frhhe Tod die Knieende" [Iphigenie, v.
1847]). Moreover, in Cicero, this Latin is used to translate the particular Greek
term
avrtLreplacraaOs
[=
"condensation," "counteraction," "resistance"] (just as this
was translated by the humanist Calcagnini in 1544 by circumobsistentia): again the

reference is to activity that is adverse rather than beneficent; for this use of circumstantia in ecclesiastical Latin, cf. Psalm 140: "pone . . . ostium circumstantiae
labiis meis," translated by von Wartburg (FEW) as "frein, barriere"; in Tertullian
it is translated "Druck, Gefahr, Ungluick." Later still, with Thomas Aquinas, the
adverse becomes the arbitrary, the accidental, as he opposes circumstantia to substantia (cf. Henry VI, Act II: "not essentially, but by circumstance").
But though circumstantia aeris has left no traces in the modern languages (cf.
however, in Amyot: "froidure, air circumstant," translated by Godefroy as "amdebiant"), still, in most of these there is at "circumstance" (- the "things"-the
tails, the factors-surrounding
us) which is at least comparable to milieu (to Taine
"circonstances" are components of the milieu: the factors inherent therein are, according to him, circonstances publiques, circonstances socialets, circonstances enveloppantes). In French the adverse meaning seems to have dwindled, whereas in
German and English this force is felt more strongly: cf. dans ces circonstances to
unter diesen Umstdnden or under these circumstances; in these last, the preposition
itself suggests an oppression, as dans does not. And the force of the singular in such
an English phrase as he rises above limitations of circumstance cannot be imitated in
any other language. It is probable that in English such epithets as "favorable,"
"extenuating" (circumstances) came only after "adverse, harsh, (etc.) circumstances."
In
Connected with this word is also the suggestion of "pomp," "ceremony."
MILIEU AND AMBIANCE
13
What we might have expected to find is the substantive ambiens or the

expression aer ambiens, for the Latin verb ambire had not only the literal
it possessed as well the same connotameaning of the Greek verb lreptkxetL;
tion of protection, of a warm embrace: cf. domis ambiri vitium palmitibus
ac sequacibus loris (Pliny: the variants give amplecti) and mundi omnes
amplexibus ambimur, tegimur atque sustinemur (Arnobius). Moreover,
the sixteenth-century air ambiant to which Michaelsson refers can be explained only by postulating a (Neo-) Latin aer ambiens. In Classical Latin
I have been able to find neither this expression nor ambiens used as a substantive (though it must be borne in mind that the Latin translations of
Aristotle are lost). But, applying ourselves to the evidence at hand, let
itself in Classius study something of the use of the Verbambire (7rEptfExE)13
English there is not necessarily an adverse force present: the piece "Pomp and
Circumstance" is jubilee band music. But, of course, whenever ceremony is insisted upon unduly, it becomes an irritant; and in such a phrase as don't stand on
ceremony!there is undoubtedly involved at least a slight reproach. As for the French
ne faites pas de circonstances!and the German keine Umstdnde!the nuance is wholly
adverse.
13 The prefix amb-, obviously, does not historically correspond to 7repL-, but to
&/MpL-, (aApw).
This latter, however, which, like the Latin ambi- (ambo), meant
"on both sides (right and left)" was eventually supplanted, as W. Pax shows (WOrter
und Sachen XVIII, 16), by imps-which meant, first "forward," then "around."
In a similar development in Latin, amb- tended to become replaced by circum- which,
more or less, corresponded to the (secondary) use of rept-. Amb- did not completely
disappear: in addition to such (petrified) forms as anculus (= a,.tworoXoS), a word of
the cult, it was used, as a living element in verbs of embracing (amplecti, ambire).
With such verbs circum- was never triumphant; the lover is not so much interested
in completing a circular movement as in simply enfolding his beloved in his arms;
thus amb-, with its emphasis on "both (arms)" was particularly suitable. And the
loving protective nuance possible with this prefix was undoubtedly enhanced by the
very fact that it was preserved almost exclusively in verbs of this type. And ambire
was never supplanted by circumire: in spite of all the competition offered by the
newer prefix, ambirewas preserved for centuries, kept warm and living by this special
prefix, to be ultimately chosen as the representative of 7reptxeav.
Accordingly I cannot completely endorse the comparison of ambire vs. circumire
given by M. Pax: that, in contrast to the careful and gradual encirclement of an
object never out of one's reach, which is represented by circumire, ambire describes
an impetuous attack upon an object-a violent penetration or invasion ("Eindringen"): he sees violence where I see protection. Moreover, in regard to circum,
while it is true that at the beginning this was probably tame and pedantic (descriptive of movement bent on completing a circular route), still, as this prefix came to
be felt as the equivalent of the Greek 7repl,suggestive of dynamic onrushing movement, much of the vigor of the latter was, of necessity, bequeathed to circam: consider such a verb as circumfundere, which translates some of the meanings of
7rWEpLXEv.
Quite different are such cases as circumamplecti, circumambire-verbs of compound prefix, in which circum has been added on to the earlier amb- whose force had
14
RESEARCH
PHILOSOPHYAND PHENOMENOLOGlCAL
cal Latin: a use which was to make possible the eventual creation of an
aer ambiens. For example in the following passages ambire (alternating
with amplecti, coercere,circumfundere) is used to refer to the embrace of
the Ocean:
Catullus LXIV, 31-Oceanusque mariatotum amplectiturorbem.
Ovid, Fast., 81-82-Oceanus . .. qui terram liquidis, qua patet, ambit aquis (variant:
amplectitur).
Ovid, Metam. I, 30-circumfluus umnor(the Ocean) . . . solidumque coercuitorbem.
Ovid, Metam. I, 37-iussit (freta) et ambitae circumdare litora terrae.
Cicero, Somn. Scip. 13-omnis enim terra ... parva quaedam insula est circumfusa
illo mariaquod Atlanticum magnum, quem Oceanum appellatis in terris.
And it is in such examples of ambire that we have the real germ of (aer)
ambiens, and not in those copied from the ThLL by Michaelsson most of
which contain the idea "to revolve," "to run through a course" (cf. Macrobius, I.c. I, xxxi: "quod eadem signa Saturnus annis triginta, luna diebus
viginti octo ambit et permeat"; a similar concept also underlies the
derivative
ambitus).
I have not found the verb ambire used to refer precisely to the air, the
is
space, surrounding the earth. But the "skyey" quality of WrEpLxov
suggested in the following passage from the commentary of Macrobius on
the Somnium Scipionis (a work which was to serve as an authority for the
Middle Ages: Dante, Chrestien de Troyes, etc.); here, in a description of
the celestial orbs, ambire appears as a more poetic variant of continere:
Verum solis circo superiorum stellarum circos certum est esse maiores, si eo quod
continetur id quod continent maius est, cum hic sit caelestium sphaerarum ordo, ut
a superior unaquaeque inferior ambiatur.
(We have here already the Galileo-like turn of sentence noted abovecf. also "circulos per quem sol discurrit a Mercurii circulo, ut inferior
ambitur," I, xix).
In the absence of more specific examples of ambire in reference to space,
several expressions may be found, among which the concept "embrace"
become weakened. In general, it could perhaps be said that this was done with no
perceptible change of meaning; however, in the following example of circumambire
from St. Jerome (ThLL), the idea of "around" ("round and round") is surely
strongly emphasized to an extent of which amb- alone would have been incapable
(note the vertigine!): sphaera hanc ipsam terram circumambit vertigine et dicitur
coelum.
In Toletus we shall find circumambiens used to represent the "externus locus";
this is undoubtedly the origin of the English circumambient as applied to air in 1635
by Adam. The term appears not to exist in Romance, though one may note the semantic derivative French, circonvoisin.
15
MILIEU AND AMBIANCE
is prominent: in the following passage from Lucretius V, 317 (given me by

Professor Friedlander): deniquejam tuere hoc, circurnsupraque quod omnem
continet amplexu terram,it is possible to see in the duality of the terminology the desire to indicate at the same time the "caressing" quality of
space, and its relation to the objects which it surrounds. The verb
amplecti itself is used; the ThLL notes under amplecti II B("de rebus") that
"subest ubique quaedam imago" and gives the following examples: Cicero:
aera amplectitur immensus aether (Aug. De civ. 4, 11); aether terramtenero
(!) circumiectuamplectitur (cf. Pacuvius:... complexucontinet terrain = the
I7rep EXovTa of Euripides); Mela: universum uno ambitu se cunctaque
amplectitur.'4
To these I add a passage from the Somnium Scipionis (IV, 9) which

along with Macrobius' commentary so greatly influenced the cosmology
of the Middle Ages (and particularly that of Dante-cf. E. Moore, Studies
in Dante III, 14):
Nonne aspicis quae in templa veneris? Novem tibi orbibus vel potius globis
connexa sunt omnia, quorum unus est caelestis, extimus, qui reliquos omnes complectitur, summus ipse deus, arcens et continens ceteros ...
in which arcens is equivalent to coircens; to this we may compare Cicero,

De nat. deorum: "ipsius mundi, qui omnia complexu coircet et continet"
and (ibid. IT, 91): (the earth) "est circumfusa undique.. hac animali
spirabilique natura cui nomen est aer" (thus 'air' = 'nature' is a living
container); and again "hunc (the air) rursus amplectiturimmensus aether";
(98): ".... restat ultimus, et a domiciliis nostris altissimus omnia cingens
et coercenscoeli complexus, qui idem aether vocatur." Cf. also the passage
from Ovid. Metam. I, 12, describing the chaotic stage of the universe:
"nec circumfuso pendebat in aere tellus"; Lafaye translates "dans F'air
environnant. "
At this point it is interesting to observe the procedure of Apuleius in
his translationof the Greek work 7replKO6gOV (cf. SiegfriedMiller, "Das
Verhdltnis von Apulejus' De mundo zu seiner Vorlage," Philologus, Suppl.Bd. XXXII, 2, 1939, p. 22); the Greek referring to the embrace of the
8 ravr'zs (the Mediterranean) Kal To
Ocean: 7repexoIevov (Asia) wro'
roepLe
't2Kfeav6 is rendered by "constringiturqueOceani cingulo et societate nostri
maris" (previously ambitus pelagi has been used of the sea). Thus Mtiller
can establish an "tbersetzungsgleichung":
WrEptfxeo-GaL=cinguloconstringi.
(We shall later see this rendered in medieval translations simply by contineri.)
OaXaSoos
On p. 44,
7reptppeoA4fvr
l u/i-rao-a
4'a vn-os...
vro'i
s 'rA avi-N -LKs
Kaxov/,Jv7fs
appears as "omnem hanc terrenam immensitatemn
14 This verb, like 7repaxewv,

was also applied to the embrace of the particular by the
general: "littera utrimque vocales amplectitur" (Martianus Capella).
16
Atlantici maris ambitu coerceri insulamque hanc esse cum omnibus insulis
suis; nam similes hic alias et alias minores circumfundit Oceanus"; here
lrEptppErcT~ca =
ainbitu coerceri (cf. also the circumfundit with Cicero's
"quaedam insula est circumfusa illo maria). Muller labels this manner
of translating "Erweiterung aus der Vorlage heraus": an amplification
which makes explicit the implicit:
'hanc terrenam immensitatem' wird frei hinzugefiigt . . . ambitu coerceristeht als
vollerer Ausdruck fur das einfache 7reptppEdGat; beide Erweiterungen haben offenbar
den Sinn, diese ungewohnlicheTatsache, dass der ganze Erdkreis eine Insel ist, durch
eine Antithese "immensitas-ambitu coerceri" noch mehr hervorzuheben.... Seine
Kr6nung erfahrt der Satz aber mit dem letzten Kolon "insulamque ... cum insulis
suis omnibus.'
The Roman has an eye for the narrowest strip of the boundless expanse:
his gaze follows the Mediterranean to the Pillars of Heracles which are,
for him, the point where the river begins to broaden; but to the Greek,
this is the point where the Ocean narrows.
As for
rzptExoP,in the meaning of "space," "ether," we see that in Apu-
leius (the ether) 4a Tr CEza E/I 7rEptEXovOw&/aTa is rendered by "quae divinas

et inmortales vivacitates ignium pascens..." (note again the emphasis
on the protective qualities of the "ambiente": cf. the earlier aether sidera
pascit of Lucretius).
Tt is obvious from the above that the Latin writers were much given to
the stylistic device of variation and amplification--and this was the case
even when they were faced with a definitely finite phenomenon: cf. Cicero's
procedure when describing the limited boundaries of a harbor: "non ...
Iortu illud oppidum clauditur, sed urbe portus ipse cingitur et continetur
(Verr. 5, 96). Thus the question arises (which I do not feel competent
to decide): did the Romans resort to periphrases because of the lack of the
technical term WrEPXEICV
(and xrEptppEZv), or did the lack of this technical
term coincide with an engrained habit of variation? My own feeling,
based on such a passage as the one just cited from Cicero, would prompt
the latter conclusion; but it also seems to me evident that the Romans were
unable to decant into their own idiom the richness and fullness of the
Greek term, and thus were forced to have recourse to the procedure of
diversification, of breaking up one concept into convenient parts-in
short, of using many terms for what, in Greek, was concentrated into one:
multa, non multum might be the Roman device in this connection. It
seems to me reasonable to assume that the Romans felt less well-protected
in the universe, less at home with the infinite, than did the Greeks; for
their part they rather tended to cling more to the soil: that graspable
entity, that mother earth so dear to the Romans-among whom flourished
the cult of so many chthonian divinities. The gesture of Brutus who,
MILIEU
17
AND AMBIANCE
on his return home, kissed the soil, is symbolic of not only the patriotic
but also the earthy feelings of the Roman people. And as regards this
soil, they were apt to qualify sober epithets: the Roman word for "continent" is "that which holds together" (terra continens); the Greek word is
,qruEposwhich (though its etymology is as yet unconfirmed) perhaps is
related to a&ELpOs "infinite." The Romans were unable to sense the
grandeur of all-embracingness, and in their language the substantive
ambiens is lacking while various verbs, of which ambire is only one out
of many, vie for the honor of rendering the Greek verb 7rrptExauv.
*
When we come to the medieval period, the same variety of terms to

is in evidence, if we may judge by the procedure
represent the verb IrEPtExELP
of certain Aristotelians treated by A. Schneider, Die abendldndlischeSpekulation des 12. Jhs. in ihrem Verhdltniszur aristotelischenu. jiidisch-arabischen
Philosophie ("Beitrdge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters,"
Here (XVII, 4, pp. 30, 37) are to be found, as renderings of
1915).15
irepxewxa,the verbs concludere, circumscribere, capere, continere, coercere.
(I might add the aer conjunctum "ambient air" of St. Thomas, De coelo
III, 7.) John the Scot: "Nil enim aliud est locus nisi ambitus, quo unumquodque certis terminis concluditur" (this author includes among those
things which can be limited by "their" spaces such incorporeal entities
as grammar and rhetoric). Hugo de St. Victor: "corpus dimensionem
habens loco circumscribitur." John of Damascus: "Locus corporeus est
terminus continentis quo continetur id quod continetur; v. gr. a&rcontinet; corpus continetur." John of Salisbury: "caelum ... qui continet
omnia" (according to his theory the air must describe a circular movement; being lighter than matter it can not remain motionless, nor, since
it contains all, can it move in a straight line-an idea derived from Aristotle). GilbertusPorretanus: "locus in corpore capiente et circumscribente
constitutes est."
But the most important passage for our purposes is another from this
same Gilbertus Porretanus, which contains a part of his refutation of the
argument against the theory that "the place of a thing is formed by the
body containing it." The argument against this theory raises the objection that, if this were true, the limit of the farthermost heaven (beyond
15 There may be noted, however, in a (probably medieval) Latin translation of a
Greek commentary of Galen, which was derived, according to H. Diller ("Die tyberlieferung der hippokratischen Schrift wept aepcop uOar&co rorcop," Leipzig, 1932, p. 112)
from an Arabic version of the ninth century, an echo of the Greek 6 amip 7repL X&W
Wyas: "Voluit Hippocrates hoc in loco aeri nos ambienti corpora comparari"; this
would seem to be evidence of a traditional rendering of IreptXc'A by ambiens.
18
1PlIuLOSOrIY
ANDI) I HENOMN NOILOGICA'sL RE1<Sm1u1CI
which, according to Aristotelian and medieval cosmology, there is nothing)

would be its own place; the refutation of Gilbertus consists precisely in
refusing a "place" to this last heaven: "sed revocat hoc in dubium postrema
caeli facies extra quam nihil est. Haec vero dici potest quod ipsa sibi
locus sit, ut veteres exploratum fecere, quando id quod ambitur alterum
et disjunctum ab eo est quod ambit." (Goerceturappears later as a variant
of ambitur.) Here, as in Macrobius, ambire is used as an equivalent of
(and again, incidentally, used in connection with
the Greek verb 7repEXewv
a reference to the heavens).
In Ockham we find: "talia (que moventur et in aliquo continentur)
nota localiter non acquirunt aliquem rem sibi inherentem ... sed tamen
and
adquirunt locum ambientem"; here locus ambiens = r6r'rosIrEPtEXWV
represents a variant of that locus circumdans or corpus circumdans which
is to be found in the famous Thomistic definition of locus (Summa logicae
3, 6): "Est autem locus superficies corporis continentis immobilis...
superficies corporis circumdantis illam, quae contigua est corpori circumdato, dicitur esse locus." Locus (circum)ambiens also appears in later
commentaries of Thomas Aquinas: e.g., in Toletus, de Physica auscultatione (1574):
Locus est duplex: alter intrinsecus rei ipsi, alter extrinsecus. Extrinsecus quidemn
est circumambiensipsum corpus locatum, videlicet corpus continens, aut ejus superficies ultima, de quo locutus est Aristoteles. Intrinsecus vero locus rei est spatium
illud quod ipsa res vere intra se occupat....
and in Eustachius a Sancto Paulo, Summa philosophica (1609):

. . . locus externus duplex est, realis nempe et imaginarius. Realis est vera et realis
superficies corporiscontinentis, imaginarius vero est imaginaria superficies qua corpus
quod a nullo alio corpore continetur, ambiri concipitur quomodoCoelum Empyreum
ambiri a loco imaginario.16
In all of the passages above there is continued Aristotle's definition of

space (place) as representing both the limit of the body that contains
and the body contained. Let us now consider the following passages
dealing with medieval French theories, chosen from Ch.-V. Langlois'
16 With the introduction
of the idea of an "imaginary circumambient space" the
bodily compactness of the auCLac7reptLxoV is loosened, space begins to partake of the
Descartes (ed. Adam-Tannery III, 387) continues in
boundlessness of imagination.
this vein when he attacks the errors of those interpreters of St. Thomas "qui ne le
[le lieu] congoivent pas comme ils doivent, et qui supposent que superficies corporis
ambientis soit une partie du corps circonjacent"; speaking of the externum locus
he says, in a Latin passage (VIII, 78):
Notandum est, per superficiem non hMcintelligi ullam corporis ambientis
partem, sed solum terminium qui medium est inter corpus ambiens et id quod
ambitur, quique nihil aliud est quam modus . . .
[19121
(Both these passages are cited in E. Gilson, "Index scolastico-cartesien"
s.v. lieu).
MILIEU
AND AMBIANCE
19
work, La connaissance du monde et de la nature au moyen age (1911). In

the chapter "De la force du firmament" in L'image du monde (13th century), p. 77, we find a statement which sums up Anaximander's egg-shell
theory: "Le monde est rond comme une pelote. Le ciel entoure la terre
de toutes parts comme 'l'eschaille l'oeuf.'" (The word eschaille, "coque,"
goes back to German schale.) On page 282 is a passage from the dialogue
Placides et Timeo which elaborates this "classical comparison": "Dieu fit le
firmament 'tout a la ronde' et superposa a l'interieur les quatre elements dans
l'ordre de la pesanteur: terre, eau, air, feu. Comparez la disposition concentrique des diverses parties d'un oeuf: la coque, c'est le firmament; la peau
blanche par dessous, c'est la terre; le blanc c'est l'eau; le jaune, c'est le feu."
And finally from Le livre du tresor of P. Brunetto Latini: "Le grand philosophe Aristote dit qu'il y a un cinquieme element (quintaessentia): c'est 'uns
ciels reons qui environne et enclost dedanz soi touz les autres elemenz,'
comme l'ecaille d'un oeuf. Admirable prevoyance de la nature, d'avoir
fait rond ce ciel, et par consequent, le monde qu'il enserre! Regardez
les tonneaux et les cuves des charpentiers, les vouites des maisons et des
ponts: la forme ronde est la meilleure. Le monde est comme un oeuf,
oui les diverses matieres sont deposees concentriquement par ordre de
pesanteur..."
(here, environne et enclost together render the idea of
ambire).
As regards Dante's astronomy (cf. E. Moore, l.c.) I quote first the passage
dealing with the concentric heavens surrounding the earth (Paradiso
II, 112); here the verb contenerefigures:
Dentro dal ciel della divina pace (the empyrean)
Si gira un corpo (the Primum mobile), nella cui virtute
Lesser di tutto suo content giace.
Lo ciel seguente (of the fixed stars) c'ha tante vedute,
Quell' esser parte per diverse essenze
Da lui distinte e da lui contenute
(here we find the Aristotelian idea of the lack of continuity between the
not o-v?ExEs).This
"containing"and the "contained"-of the 0o-vz'E6i0'Oz,6
idea of the completely closed spheres around the world is responsible for
the idea of Dante that the greater is a celestial body the more forces it
"contains" (Paradiso XXVIII, 64):
Li cerchi corporai16a sono ampi ed arti,
Secondo il piu1 e il meno della virtute,
16a (A repercussion of the idea of the r#LcL
"The larger body contains
7reptLxov).
continuing the reference of the Latin
the greater possibility of doing good"-cape
In the passage "losto che luogo (space) 11 la (the
capere ("to have capacity").
soul) circonscrive (Purgatorio XXV, 88) we can sense that even the shadow (the
soul) of a dead person in the other world is limited by space; and we are told (v. 94)
that Vaere vicin (Vossler, Die g6ttliche Komodie II, 125, translates "die Luftumgebung") is shaped ("informed") by the residual intellectual capacities of the soul.
20
Che si distende per tutte lor parti,

Maggior bonth vuol far maggior salute;
Maggior salute maggior corpo cape
the space is permeated by the potenze, the forces of the soul-later on the
physicists will have space pierced by interstellar forces.
We have noted many points in common between the medieval cosmology
and that of the Greeks. But one important element present in Greek
thought seems to be lacking with the writers of this age: the warmth
and vitality, the activity of the 7EpLEpxoV;we hear no more of that 'fiery
ether' with which space was once identified. The transforming activity
of which the Greeks spoke, and which the physicists of the Renaissance
were to rediscover, is, in the Middle Ages, perhaps replaced by astral
influences: the active influences of the stars on the virtutes of men and
objects on earth. In the first passage cited from Dante and in the lines
which follow this, he insists on the variety of these influences: diverse
essenze-varie differenze la distinzione che dentro da se hanno-differenti
membra (of the) organi del mondo-(the heavens) conformate a diverse
potenze-virtua diverse fa diverse lega-la virtue'mista etc."7
17 These diversifying
forces are known as virtutes or dignitates: in the Middle Ages
every entity (and paricularly such realia as abstractions) had its intrinsic virtus,
proprietas or dignitas; G. Crocioni (Lingua nostra IX, 29) has recognized in a dignitate of the Vita Nuova a dignity planetaria-one
of the five qualities ascribed to the
ascent of a planet. From this dignitas rerum "particular quality" (which goes back
to antiquity: in Plautus and Pliny it means "inner value"; cf. Gr. A4LCOLS) is derived
This
the meaning "choice quality" (Eng. dainty, 0. Fr. daintie[r]) or "friandise."
last meaning may originate directly from the "Jdgersprache," as von Wartburg
(FEW s.v. dignitas) contends; but ultimately dignitas goes back to the language of
the ancient philosophers who were wont to speak of the "dignity of things"-an
In this connection I may mention
important fact which von Wartburg overlooked.
the commentary to Lucan's Pharsalia of Arnulfus (who lived at Orleans in the twelfth
century):
Nam anime dicuntur esse create ad numerum stellarum et quecumque
anima dicitur nutriri cum sua stella
Thus, after the death of the body the souls which are possessed of purgatoriae virtutes
revert ad comparem stellar (text quoted by Berthe M. Marti in Modern Language
Quarterly II, 10); cf. Ant. Viscardi, La letteratura religious del medio evo romanzo
(1932).
The influence of the stars on earthly bodies is of course also a remnant of ancient
cf. H.
astrology, according to which the astra represented "elements" (aToLXeza),
Diels, Elementum, p. 57; this notion is still to be found in Paracelsus:
Denn was ein element ist, dasselbig ist auch cin astrum. Denn ohn ein
astrum mogen sic nicht leben . . . Nun von dem astro (dcr Erde zu reden,
auch liegen(l: (lalin (las
wissen1d (lass in ihm alle himmlische operation
astrum ist verborgen, die corpora sind offeulbar.
In Spain Graciin echoes still in the seventeenth century the medieval conception
(Critic6n I, 2):
21
MILIEU AND AMBIANCE
We now come to the translations of Aristotle dating from the Renaissance. The following passages were copied for me by Professor Friedlander from the edition of Aristotle published by the Prussian Academy of
Berlin (Vol. III); here we may see how 7repL0xov is translated:
De gener. et corr.: quod est universal et cuncta ambit continetque (Vatablus)
Meteor.: ob id quod ambitcontinetque(Vatablus)
De gener. anim.: continent a&r(Theodorus Lazas)
De mundo: in aere (Budaeus)18
Porque has de saber que no ay astro alguno en el cielo que no tenga su
diferente propiedad, assi como las yervas y las plantas de la tierra: unas de
las estrellas causan el calor, otras el frio, unas secan, otras humedecen, y
desta suerte alternan otras muchas influencias, y con essa essencial correspondencia unos a otros se corrigen y se templan
The passage illustrates the combination of astral influence with the well-tempered
climate.
is continued in the
18 This use of the word aer alone as an equivalent of lrepLkxo'
Renaissance writings of Romance; I have come across several passages in which the
word "air" has the full connotations of "climat" (just as in Greek, &jp=Kpi=afs)
Boccaccio,
Decamerone [every plant was there, he says]
". . .
la quale il
nostro aere patisca"; this is translated by the editors: 'il nostro clima.'
"la ville, la quelle je trouvay belle, bien forte et en bel air"-Rabelais,
Pantagruel, chap. XXXII. [Incidentally, this use of air furnishes a clue
to the formation of numerous place-names to be found in Romance (and
also Anglo-Saxon) countries: Belair, Bellaria, etc.]
And in another part of the same work of Rabelais (Tiers Livre) an aer is found which
is even more keenly reminiscent of Kpacia:
"par l'aer et tout ce ciel est son bruyt et nom (i.e. that of Diogenes) jusques
a present, restedmemorable et celebre assez"
Here, air and sky between them serve to protect and preserve this renown-which is
presented as something material, as a sound, "bruyt."
Again we may note the use of this word by the physician Pare (the same who used
the term air ambiant "c'est a dire qui est a l'entour"-cf. Michaelsson), when, reflecting the ancient belief that the air is inhabited by demons, he speaks of seeking
the aetiology of disease in the "air" (one may note such expressions, still surviving,
as coup d'air, malaria; il a e frappe d'un mauvais vent, Portuguese, deu the o ar):
Je ne sgache homme si peu verse en la philosophic naturelle, ny en astrologie, qui ne recherche en lair la cause efficiente de tant de maux . . . car
d'oA procederoient tant de pestes contagieuses ... sinon de l'air qui n'a
este chiche de son poison mais nous en a infectedA son plaisir? D'oui seroit
venu tant de coqueluches, de pleuresies, d'aposthemes, caterrhes, fluxions,
grenouilles, crapaux, sauterelles, chenilles, araignees, mousches, hannetons,
lima~ons, serpens, viperes, couleuvres, lezards, scorpions, et aspics . . ."
It is interesting that both "fluxions" and "grenouilles" belong to the list of things
nourished by this "air"; to Par6 this element represented not only a "cause
efficiente" but also a breeding place: the home of tiny animals. Yet when Brissaud
("Histoire des expressions . .. relatives a la m6decine," 1892) cites, and comments
upon, this passage, he relegates to the notes that part of the sentence from "grenouilles" on-thereby splitting into two, as it were, what was a single concept for the
22
De caelo: quod quidem caelos universes inquiunt continere (Argyropoulos)19

De gener. et corr.: infinitum et id quod comprehenditatque continet (Vatablus)
scientist of the sixteenth century. In this connection we may note the Paracelsian
use of Luft or Chaos in reference to "the element or place in which an organic being
can live"-a use comparable to that of the suo consimil loco of Guinizelli (note the
presence of the possessive pronoun in the following quotations!): R. L6we, Zeitschrift far vergleichendeSprachforschung LXIII, 120, cites the Liber de Nymphis,
Sylphis, Pygmaeis et Salamandris (1590):
Also ists mit den Gnomis in den Bergen, die Erden ist ihr Luift, und ist
ihr Chaos; dann im Chaos lebt ein jegliches Ding, das ist ein jeglich Ding
wohnet im Chaos, geht und steht darinn. . .. Das ist so vil, als wenig uns
der Lufft hindert zu gehn, also wenig werden die gehindert von Berg unnd
Felsen.
"Water" is represented as "des Vischs Lufft"; of the salamander it is said: "da ist
das Feuer ihr Luift, wie unser Lufft, unser Lufft ist." Because the word Chaos
was also used by Paracelsus (in the formation Chaoskdlte-cf. also his Lufftkalte)
to designate the vapor produced by cold water, van Helmont was later to derive the
word gas from chaos: in this way "gas" is represented as a product of "ambient air,"
of "suus aer (suus locus)."
The use of the word air in the meaning "manner, appearance" has been explained
by all etymologists from Diez to Dauzat (most of them imbued with the spirit of
Worterund Sachen, so destructive of the things of the spirit), by reference to Old
Fr. aire (= "aerie") which is supposed to have telescoped with air (Littre, von
Wartburg). I personally am opposed to this interpretation, believing that air =
"maniere" is none other than air = "atmosphere". The expression air de cour is
found as early as the sixteenth century (cf. also German Hofluft, Klosterluft): here
the word is used figuratively to suggest the spiritual atmosphere, the moral climate,
emanating from a certain place. Because this "atmosphere" indicated something
characteristic which distinguishes one place from another, it became possible to use
the word air, in a general reference, with the meaning "caractere dominant"; Huguet
lists under this definition such examples as un abregede l'air general des Arrests de la
Cour; l'air general de la cause; le principal air de l'Oratoire-all of them expressions
which would no longer be possible today. I may add to these 16th c. examples another from the Apologie de Raym. Sebond,where Montaigne, alluding metaphorically
to the nurturing ether of the Ancients, calls Tasso le plus formera l'air de cette bien
antique, naifve et pure poesie; cf. also the somewhat more rationalistic passage from
Chapelain (17th c., quoted by Ch. A. Beall, La fortune du Tasse en France): I'amenite
des inventions extravagantes[of Tasso] . . . qui avaient accoutumele monde a leur air.
What has remained of this meaning is preserved, perhaps, in the phrase l'air du
temps (Ital. l'aria del tempo)-on which was doubtless fashioned the modern sophisticated l'air du mois. This expression, which served as the heading of a section of
the Nouvelle Revue Francaise, was introduced in 1933, at a time, this is, when European affairs were entering upon a dangerously confused and uncertain stage-of
which it was becoming increasingly difficult to discern the "caractere dominant."
Thus the phrase lair du mois would seem to represent an ironic creation of subtle
critics who sought at least to seize the rapidly evaporating essence of one month's
history.
But air de cour, in referring to a spiritual atmosphere, was not only indicative of a
"caractere dominant": it was also descriptive, descriptive of appearance. Thus
MILIEU
AND
AMBIANCE
23
De juvent. et select.: totum illud quod nos ambit (Vatablus)

Meteor.: in mundo terrae circumfuso ambientes magnitudines (Vatablus)
Phys.: continens; quod haec omnia continet (Argyropoulos)
air could mean, not only "essence, gist" (as in the examples from Huguet) but also
"manner, appearance."
It is undoubtedly this meaning which we have in modern
air (usually to be found in the grammaticized phrase avoir lair [de]); today the word
is rather restricted to persons, but it was earlier applied to things; in Montaigne we
find: "C'est une ladrerie spirituelle qui a quelque air de sante"; in Moliere: "vous
devriez un peu vous faire apprendre le bel air des choses"; "Vos paroles, le ton de
votre voix, vos regards, vos pas, votre action et votre ajustement ont je ne sais quel
air de quality qui enchante les gens" (cf. Livet, Lexique de Moliere). One may note
that in the second example air is combined with that vague expression, so fashionable
at the time of the "spiritual" precieuses, je ne sais quel (quoi). Indeed, Andry de
Boisregard (1689) in attempting to define our word, is forced to resort to this expression: "[air =] je ne sais quoi qui parailt en un instant, que la nature donne et
qu'on ne peut bien definir" (this indefinable thing being what La Fontaine called
la grace plus belle que la beauty: ". . . que la nature donne" = grace). Thus in the
beginning air = "maniere" retained something of the haziness, the intangibility, of
air itself.
But there is to be noted another interesting application of a meteorological figure
and one which must also have played a part in the final development of air. This
represents a concept emanating from the love mysticism of the Middle Ages (and
the Renaissance), a mysticism which did not exclude physical love yet which held
woman, even qua woman, as divine. And as such she was surrounded, by the Provencal and Italian poets, with a halo, an "atmosphere," which served to veil her in
mystery, to suggest that she dwelt in a divinely harmonious world of her ownwhich the lover, nevertheless, sought to penetrate.
According to one Provencal
poet, to breathe the atmosphere in which the Beloved lived was to partake of a
spiritual communion with her: Ab l'alen tir vas me l'aire Qu'ieu sen venir de Proenza;
and the Italian Dante senses in her sigh an emanation of a gentle soul which asks
for a response of gentle sighings:
e par che da la sua labbia si mova
un spirito soave pien d'amore
che va dicendo a l'anima: Sospira!
The sigh of this donna angelicata is thus both air and spirit (just as her glance is a
Neo-Platonic light-emanation).
With Petrarch who was so sensitive to the spiritual
qualities of the air of a landscape (suspiravi, fateor, ad italicum aerem animo potius
quam oculis apparentem, Le familieri ed. Rossi I, 157) the Divine Woman becomes
more and more similar to a pagan goddess of Nature; her beauty is that of the sun,
the stars, the sunrise, the dawn-and the more impredictable the moods and states of
mind of the Beloved become, the more is emphasized the idea of her own "climate":
Quel vago (!) appallidir . .. volendo mostrar laria del viso rannuvolata. In this
same passage he compares her face to a sky (which may become obscured by clouds);
cf. also his lines: mi contendi laria del bel volto and quell' aria dolce del bel viso adorno.
The expression aria del bel viso is defined, in the seventeenth century, by Salvini:
Quella che si chiama aria del viso, viene dal costume e dalla interna disposizione dell' anirna che s'affaccia, per dir cosi, al volto, e si mostra a'
riguardanti.
Firenzola, a century earlier, had offered a more naturalistic explanation of the aria
24
RESEARCH
From these excerpts we may notice how the synonymatic richness of the
medieval philosophers has given way to stereotyped terms; in the place
of the variety achieved by the Schoolmen who, as they rethought the
of a woman, conceiving it to be a manifestation of a "moral health," of a well-tempered climate, so to speak.
Interestingly enough this word was also applied to thorough-bred horses-refering, specifically, to their gait:
Certa cadenza e liberty di moto, che si accomoda alla disposizione naturale
(Tomdi un cavallo, e lo fa operare con obbedienza, misura e proporzione
maseo-Bellini)
une grand' quantity de tres-bons et beaux
sgavoient alter de tous airs (Brantome, 16th c.)
grands
chevaux
... qui
le moreau superbe, qui alloit a deux pas et un saut, et d'un tres-haut et bet
air (ibid.)
(note also such an expression as se donner des airs which probably was originally
The sophistication of the court connoisseurs of horsean equestrian metaphor).
lore went to the extreme of postulating various "moral climates" in thevarious
sophistication consisting of the toto coelo distinction between one gait
gaits-the
and another. And perhaps they also had in mind, half-ironically, the magical
Later, par
"air" of a beautiful woman, in ascribing air, aria to a thoroughbred.
ricochet, the equestrian term may have been again diverted toward womanhood:
particularly in the circle of the precieux who delighted in employing the terminology
of sports and war when speaking of love, and all things spiritual; it is possible that
un bet air has made its way back from the stables to the dwellings of human beings
in which it originated.
Indeed it is at least possible that the modern French avoir t'air de, used of a person,
is partly based upon the "air" attributed to horses; in Spanish we find the expression
attested by Covarrubias (1611) tener Pedro el ayre de Juan = "es parecersele en el
movimiento(!), o en el cuerpo, o rostro"; in French, too, avoir t'air de may at first
have been used of a person in movement-comparing his own to the movement of a
horse; le bet air may be the ideal gait! (The following example of modern Spanish,
from the pen of A. Castro, seems to preserve both the meaning "climate" and that
of the 'airs' attributed to persons by way of horses: "Savonarola se mueve en medio
de aires proftticos y maravillosos.")
In one of the varieties of modern Spanish argot (the xiriga of the Asturian bricklayers) we find a curious periphrase of the personal pronoun: miaire, tuaire, suaire,
nuestrosaires etc. (cf. Aurelio de Llano Roza de Ampudia, Dialectos jergales asturianos
[Oviedo, 1921]). I venture to see in this bizarre suffix our aire, aria, air ironically
applied to a person who se donne des airs, se da aires de gran senior. According to
Dauzat (Romania XLVIII, 412) this same periphrase is to be met with in the "Bellaud" ("argot des peigneurs de chanvre du Jura"): voutres er = vous ['your airs'].
One may also compare a similar formation in the "argot des malfaiteurs": monan =
rnoi ['my year']; votre an = vous ['your year']: this represents a parody of a periCorneille: "un plus puissant d6mon veille sur vos
phrase once very lofty-cf.
annees."
Thus tu (mn')as (lout) lair d'un idiot (later tu as l'air idiot, completely grammaticized [= semnbler,cf. tu as l'air idiote, said of a woman] may be due to a convergence
of the atmospherer" and the "air > gait" ideas. Perhaps this use is a parody of
M\/ILIEU AND
AMBIANCE
25
Aristotelian cosmology, sought always the proper term, we find here

(with the exception of one appearance of comprehendere)only the two verbs
continere and ambire. It was one of these two verbs, then, that must
these noble conceptions; this would seem to be indicated by the sixteenth century
Italian examples which appear so frequently in comedies (as Tommaseo-Bellini
egli mi ha aria
del bet poltrone (Cecchi, Commedie); gli avevano aria d'aver
bisogno (G. B. Belli).
These may parodistically follow the loftier use of ella ha
state):
una graziosa aria di fanciulla, and similarly, Fr. tu as l'air d'un idiot may be the
parody of vous avez l'air d'un homme de quality.
Finally, we may note another meaning of air, aria which seems likewise to go
back to the gait of horses: this is the meaning "song, ' "air," which appears first
in Italian and is then borrowed by French, Spanish and English; note, in the following passage cited by Tommaseo-Bellini from Varchi (16th c.), the parallelism of
aria and andare:
N6n si ricordava delle proprie parole di quei versi, ma aveva nel capo il
suono di essi, cioe 'aria, o quella che diciamo l'andare.
Thus the movement, the lilt, of the melody is presented as in contrast to the words
which are rationalized. Moreover, at the same time in French, we find air used in
such a connection as to suggest the translation "accent" (this word itself repreents an original musical term applied to pronunciation): "Elle parloit bien, aveq
un fort bel ayr, tant FranQoisque Hespaignol" (Brantbme); c'est la princesse . . .
qui a le plus bel air de parler" (Marguerite de Navarre). One may note a similar
aura del parlare in which Tasso senses the influence of Amor (Le rime II):
E laura del parlar cortese e saggio [of Amor]
Fra le rose [the incarnate of the Lady Love] spirar s'udia sovente.
L'aura del parlar = the accent of love (and of Love).
19 The lexicological continuity between scholastic translations of Aristotle and
those of the Byzantine humanist Argyropoulos, who helped usher in the Renaissance
by his teaching in Florence, has recently been established by E. Lerch in his article
"Aristoteles, die Lokomotive und das Automobil" (Studia neophilologica XII, 3
[1940]): ro KLtvTLKYV KaT'a rO6Tov for the locomotive faculty of animals and human
beings has been rendered in Thomas Aquinas by motivumsecundumlocum, in Argyropoulos by loco motivum(and this expression is the ancestor of the locomotive(engine)).
The continuity of our cultural heritage from ancient Greece is made manifest by the
fact that our most modern technical inventions derive their names from ancient
philosophic thought.
It is worthy of note that the same Argyropoulos who repeated the scholastic
neuter motivumdid not dare coin a neuter ambiens: we must only infer that he did
not find this word in the Schoolmen, who, for themselves, would probably have not
hesitated before a formation of such ambiguous gender as is ambiens: it is they
who coined the substantivized
ingrediens,
agens, differens, expediens etc., which
have survived in Romance languages. The absence of ambienswith the Scholastics is

perhaps simply due to the fact that the way had not yet been prepared, by the general
acceptance of the verb ambire in the reference in question.
Among the Romans themselves, however, the substantivization of the present
participle was very rare. Exceptions are mostly to be found in the philosophical
language (cf. consequensin Cicero); somewhat more frequently the plural form appeared (cf. the nascentia of Paulus Nolanus, which has become Fr. naissance: v.
Stolz-Schmalz, Lateinische Grammatik566a). And the comparative absence of the
26
1rep1-EXEV;and since continens was already

employed in a particular reference ("the continent"), ambiens alone was
accessible as the technical term for "space as a container." And, though
I have not been able to find this term in Latin, its existence is proven by the
creation in Italian of ambiente (obviously a Latinism) which we find in
Galileo:
furnish the nominal expression for
In questa [costituzione] l'ambiente niente preme l'ambito, ed

in quella l'ambito punto non ispigne contro l'ambiente.20
Thus there is a filiation leading from Aristotle's 1reptxov through the medieval and Renaissance translations to Italian ambiente.21
neuter present participle is part of a larger Latin phenomenon: the absence of the
abstract neuter in general. According to Deutschbein ("Der Sinn des germanischen
Neutrums" [Euphorion XXXVIII, 1937, p. 401]) and to Stegmann von Pritzwald
(Wbrter und Sachen, 1938-39, p. 234) the abstract adjectival neuter, as we find it for
example in das Gbttliche or rO ocioV, is known only to Greek and to the Germanic
languages (one might mention, however, such occasional uses in Latin as honestum,
bonum, doubtless representing imitations of the Greek). For, in the neuter use of
the Latin past participle, no abstraction is involved: per neglecta = "at unguarded
spots"; in occultis templi = "in the secret parts of the temple," etc. Such a usage
represents rather a "Verdinglichung" (a "Verdinglichung," moreover, that traverses
the language: note that it is "res divinae" which is the equivalent of "das GdttBut I cannot follow the authors in their belief that the neuter in Greek
liche").
(and German) illustrates, as they say, "die transzendentale Realitat, das ilberindividuelle Urbild, den Archetyp der Dinge und Erscheinungen, " as this is embodied
in Platonic and Germanic philosophy.
-As though language could create a philosophy (and it were not rather the reverse)! Indeed, Spinoza, writing in the Latin language that lacked the flexible
neuter infinitive of the Greek, simply resorted to the device of "borrowing" the
"philosophical" article ro, inserting this into his Latin (tiny islets of Greek in the
Latin text): the deficiencies of Latin did not prevent him from philosophizing!
And can it be said that England has failed to produce any philosophers?-though
this language is utterly lacking in a special form for the neuter (the volume of R.
Otto, "Das Heilige," had to be translated into English by "The Idea of the Holy"a translation eminently appropriate, it seems to me). Or, conversely, since Spanish,
alone among the Romance languages, does possess a particular form for adjectival
abstractions (lo hermoso, corresponding to ro KaXo6v, das Sch6ne) it would have to
follow, by the same logic, that Spain has had the greatest philosophers of all the
Romance countries.
of Newton's Principia mathematics by Mme du Chatelet,
20 Cf. the translation
cited by Brunot, Histoire de la langue frangaise VI, 1-2, p. 558: "Les corps ambiants
sont a ceux qu'ils contiennent, comme toutes les parties ext6rieures d'un corps sont
a toutes les parties int6rieures, ou comme l'6corce est au noyau": Mme du Chatelet
did not have at her command the opposition possible to Galileo, ambiente-ambito.
Latin of an (as yet) attested aer ambiens is less serious
21 The lack in Classical
than it might seem, in view of the general experience that, in the Middle Ages and
early Renaissance, conceptions elaborated in learned circles found their expression
MILIEU AND AMBIANCE
27
The medieval and Christian cast given to the concept of zrepexovambiens, already visible in Arnobius, is the insistence on the love of a
personal God for his creation and on the finite nature of this his universe:
attractive physical forces (which are at the same time moral ones) traverse
the cosmos: I'Amor che muove it sole e l'altre stelle. And God, the magnet
of love, is and works therein; with Dante he appears enthroned in the
outermost heavenly sphere of fire: about him his creation (dispersed
though it may appear to mortals) lies, a book bound with love (legato
per amore in un volume). This book of the world is a finite, compact thing.
in the different national languages later than in Neo-Latin. This linguistic fact
corresponds to a cultural fact: the familiarity of all scholars of this time with Latin,
which still formed their common language. For example the words Middle Ages,
moyen dge, Mittelalter appear about 150 or 200 years later than does the Neo-Latin
media aetas (according to N. Edelman, Romanic Review XXIX, 1), and nostalgia,
the creation of a Swiss physician of the sixteenth century, precedes the German
(originally Swiss) word Heimweh (cf. Kluge, Wortforschungund Wortgeschichte,
p. 46). Again, Schadenfreude,which is considered as so typically German, is probawellbly a loan-translation of the sixteenth century from the Greek 7rtXaLPEOIKaKla,
known to humanistic circles (it was said of the devil, the Foe, the malignus; compare
in this connection the French joie maligne, originally the Schadenfreudeof the devil
who has succeeded in capturing a soul).
It was Italian, as we have said, which first among the national languages adopted
ambiens. Michae1sson notes this fact and, since to him Italian ambiente connotes
vagueness, cites von Wartburg to the effect that the Italian language is of a nature
"less Cartesian" than the other tongues. But the "vagueness" of ambiente, even
today, is questionable-and in the beginning it was a purely scientific term, in whatever language it appeared. As I have pointed out, it was probably a Neo-Latin
word of most precise connotations, and thus "Cartesian" enough-even for those
who would limit this epithet to the realm of "reason" and "clarity" alone.
And as concerns the judgment on the Italian language to which he appealed:
there is a great danger in such apparently "idealistic" generalizations, particularly
when they come from the pen of a positivist such as is von Wartburg (who would
doubtless show that even positivists may display flexibility of mind). In this way
the cause of idealism itself is most seriously harmed: the opponents of idealism, disarmed, accept such generalizations as "scientific," unaware that what has passed
as an aperqu(that may be instructive by its very boldness) is in fact no more than a
milk-and-water dilution of a truth. The historian of ideas can not insist too strongly
against this new superstition, this "linguistic folklore."
Moreover, Michaelsson, in appealing to this generalization in support of his
"vague" interpretation of ambiente, would seem to suggest the absurd conclusion
that any language which contains vague expressions must itself be vague: unscientific, unclassical. But have not all peoples, in all ages, had alike their vague and
precise expressions?-Indeed, the language of Descartes, and in his own lifetime,
enjoyed the expression (than which none could be less precise): "je ne sais quoi."
In Moliere it is found coupled with the equally vague air = "maniere":
Vos paroles, le ton de votre voix, vos regards, vos pas, votre action et votre
ajustement ont je ne sais quel air de quality qui enchante les gens. (Livet,
Lexique de Moliere) Cf. note 18.
28
PHILOSOPHY
AND
PHENOMEN OLOGICAL R-ESEAR(I'cH
Professor Lovejoy, in his masterly work The Great Chain of Being,

would see an antinomy between the cosmology and the metaphysics of
the Middle Ages: "In European thought we find the anomaly that a
metaphysical and practical otherworldliness coexisted with a cosmological
finitism" (p. 142). The point must be made, however, that though
Christianity itself is otherworldly, the God of Christianity is not; on the
contrary (as we see in Dante) He is this-worldly, though supraterrestrial.
The earth and all that is therein, as well as the heavens high above the
earth, are the work of his hands-and the object of his concern. Again,
Professor Lovejoy contrasts medieval cosmology with medieval art:
And-unlike medieval towns and other medieval things-this cosmical scheme
had the essential qualities of a work of classical art: indeed the most classical thing
in the Middle Ages may be said to have been the universe. Men preferred to worship
in Gothic churches, but the architecture of the heavens was not a piece of Gothic
design, which is not surprising since it was, in fact, a Grecian edifice.
But I should think that it is not so much the Gothic spire, stabbing and
piercing the sky (this later manifestation of a Germanic Unendlichkeitsdrang), as it is the earlier Romanic church with its massive enclosure of
the Holy of Holies or the Byzantine cupola, finite image of the infinite
world,22which represent the typically medieval and Mediterraneo-Oriental
parallels to the Greek-inspired cosmology. In the light of these reflections, the anomaly of which Professor Lovejoy speaks seems to me to
disappear; the Middle Ages are more Grecian in their philosophical outlook, as in their art, than is generally admitted. Their thinking went
toward the visual and the finite, as is shown also by their capacity of seeing,
as did the Greeks, abstractions as well-defined personalities or allegories.
Thus such phrases as aer ambiens, locus ambiens, which we find in the
Renaissance, brought with them a connotation of beneficence, happy selflimitation, finitism. But, of course, to those of the Renaissance thinkers
who longed for freedom, freedom of body, mind and soul, who sought to
merge with the infinite, they could only imply coercion and imprisonmentjust as is apt to be true in the case of a modern thinker faced with such
concepts as these represented: it is interesting to see in Lovejoy's work
how the modern historian, emancipated from the closed-vase-theory
22 According to Philipp Schweinfurth (Deutsche Literaturzeitung 1940, col. 531),
the "Pendentivkuppel" of the Hagia Sophia is "Hellenistic-Roman" and corre-
sponds with the tendency to riroirrpla of the Greek mystery cults: "Der Himmel
selbst sollte hier vergegenwartigt werden, indes sich der Allerh6chste regt, der
hier taglich im Messopfer
zugegen ist....:
Epyov
&IAjd1r77ov
Kal
avTLKPVS
irl
'y^qS
(Nicet. Aconin.)."
Cf. also my remarks in Revista de filologia hispdnica (1940), p. 157, in reference to
the article of L. Blaga.
otbpaYvov osatpcoca
MILIEU
AND AMBIANCE
29
of the medieval world, will employ, in his appraisal of this epoch, metaphors
smacking of oppression and aimlessnesss"; he sees fetters where antiquity
and the Middle Ages had seen only protection and caressing goodness:
The medieval world was . . . definitely limited and fenced about23 . . . the men of
the fifteenth century still lived in a walleduniverse as well as in walled towns (p. 101).
. . . (a universe) limited and boxedin . . . (p. 104)
23 The "boxed-in" feeling of the Middle Ages is apparent in the motifs and allegories of this time: cf. the hortus conclusus in which the Virgin (Maria im Rosenhag
or Rosengqrtlein), or the Church, is ensconsed; or again, such lines as the following,
from the poetry of the Provengal troubadour Marcabru, descriptive of "True Love":
Nasquet en un gentil aire
e.l luoc on ilh es creguda
es claus de rama brancuda.
The extent to which this feeling invaded medieval thought is also to be seen in
the choice of words made by Alanus ab Insulis in his Anticlaudiamus, when he describes the creation by Nature of the various forms of things:
Omnia sub numero claudens, sub pondere sistens,
Singula sub stabili mensura cuncta coercens.
Huyzinga ("tUberdie Verkniipfungdes Poetischen mit dem Theologischen bei Alanus
de Insulis") points out that the source of this passage is Lib. sap. XI, 21: sed omnia
in mensura et numero et pondere disposuisti, and notes that Alanus substituted, in
the place of disponere, "die praignanterenVorstellungen des Schliessens, des Festset-t
zens und des Einhegens"; he fails, however, to go further into the matter of the concept of "shaping" seen as an act of enclosing. From the same author he quotes the
lines dealing with logic:
Quomodo res pingens descriptio claudit easdem
Nec sinit in varios descriptum currere vultus
and comments: "Der Akt des Einschliessens in den Begriff ist dem Fixieren eines
Bildes gleichgestellt." By now we have seen that the claudere (amplecti, coercere)
of logical terminology is identical with the claudere(amplecti, coercere)used in reference to space and the heavens. It is only to be expected, then, that in Alanus, the
creation of forms and the formation of sentences (clauses!) must alike suggest a
walling-in, a framing, an embrace within a circle.
In the hymn of Thomas Aquinas, Pange, lingua, gloriosi mysterium(where we may
note the expression, borrowed from Venantius Fortunatus, pangere mysterium),
the poet says of Christ: miro ordine clausit (his life). This means, not only that
Christ ended his life "in a wonderful way" (as Beeson in his Primer of Medieval Latin
translates), but that he "ensconced his life in a wondrous order" ("subjected it to
the concept of order"). One cannot afford to disregard the logical flavour of the
word. Any concept "includes," encompasses, its own meaning and its power ("vertue"), cf. the two Dante passages below: in the first (Inf. IX, 106) the poet, seeking
information about one of the circles of Hell, inquires into la condition che tal fortezza
serra-the conditions which define this circle are conceived as imprisoned in a fastness; in Par. XVII, 36, Cacciaguida is described as Chiuso e parvente del suo riso,
which line is explained by Torraca: "avvolto nello splendor, che dal suo riso scaturiva, e per esso splendor visibile." The poet appears at the same time as
"wrapped" in the (potential) heavenly smile that defines him and as (actually)
30
RESEARCH
Let us follow Professor Lovejoy as he traces the outline of the revolution

which took place in the cosmology of the Renaissance:24 "his (Copernicus')
exteriorizing the power of serenity accumulated in him: chiuso alludes to the superhuman potentialities enclosed in this human soul which has become a pure concept.
The English word-family compass, to compass, to encompass (with the French
etymon compas, compasser) represents a reverse development. The verb meant
originally "to measure (by steps)" (= Vulg. Lat. + com-pass-are) > "to design, to
devise a work of art," and then "to describe a circle," "to close round, surround,
enclose"; the idea of the circle was originally alien to the word, as its etymology
(passus, "step") shows, and arose only because, in the Middle Ages, the well-devised,
designed, was necessarily conceived of as circular and "enclosing"-the circle representing the ideal geometrical form (on the subject of "circular style" in the Middle
Ages, cf. Modern LanguageNotes LV, p. 995). Thus a building or engine made "par
compas" (originally "in orderly fashion") came to mean "[made] with the aid of a
compass." Cf. Old Provengal garandar"embrasser, renfermer" (= "to encompass,"
said of the sky), formed from the radical of "to guarantee," from which is derived a
substantive garan "the right measure (a compaset a guaran)," > "borderline, circle"
-the circle being the ideal limit.
That the Middle Ages were prone to see things in a frame is proved also by the
development of the 0. Fr. verb decliner which, in the much-debated final line of the
Chanson de Roland ("Ci falt la geste que Turoldus declinet"), appears in the meaning
"to tell, set forth, give an exposition of." The latest commentator, H. K. Stone (Mod.
Phil. XXXIII, pp. 345 ff.), rightly explains this particular meaning of decliner as
an extension of its use as a technical term of grammar ("to decline"), and his thesis
is supported by the evidence of such 0. Prov. passages as (Flamenca); "Tot jorn
recorda e declina E despon sos motz e deriva (!)." It is not too bold a statement to
say that the medieval homo litteratus (and particularly the ProvenQaltroubadour)
thought of himself as a grammaticus (v. the treatises of Scheludko and Curtius).
But what Mr. Stone fails to see is that the very idea of "telling a story" was conceived of as an orderly recital, proceeding from the beginning to the end, much in
the manner of the declension of a paradigm that includes and encloses all the different forms of a given word. The idea of the general framework into which the particular must fit, whatsoever be the reference, was never absent from the mind of the
medieval poets. Thus such a passage as (Sainte-Foi): "Hanc non fo senz qu'il
non.l declin" ('jamais ne fut sens qu'il [i.e., the book which served as the poet's model]
ne l'expose') is not the "absurd" exaggeration which Mr. Stone thinks it to be;
rather it is an allusion to that totality of meanings which any ideal book (of which
the prime example is the Bible) must include. Likewise, in the passage from Marcabou: "[wise is] Cel qui de mon chant devina So que chascuns motz declina," the
meanings of each word are presented as integrated into a totality. (Nothing would
have been more abhorrent to the medieval mind than such a concept as that underlying the modern development of such verbs as "to sketch" [Fr. esquisser, etc.]
toward the meaning "to set forth.") Finally we may venture to wonder whether
such old Latin expressions as concepta verba (cf. nuncupare connected with capere;
Germ. in Wortefassen) may not indicate the idea of a sentence conceived as a "setting," a "framework" (cf. E. Norden, Aus altr6mischenPriesterbichern, 1939, p. 92).
24 E. Cassirer sees in G. Bruno the Weltgefahl of infinitism which preceded the
scholarly discovery of the infinite: cf. "Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie
MIILIEU
AND AmBI-`NCE
31
world, though not geocentric, was still centered, still spherical in shape,
still securely walled in by the outermost sphere, se ipsam et omnia continens"25(p. 104). Here we recognize the arnbiens and ambitum of the
der Renaissance," 1917, pp. 197-98; it is this passage which suggested to me the equation lreptkxov= ambiente:
Das Unendliche als ein Instrument der exakten wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis ist ihm noch fremd: ja er hat es in seiner Lehre vom Minimum in
dieser seinerFunktion ausdriucklich bekampft und abgewoehrt. Aber sowenig
er die logische Struktur des neuen mathematiseh-Unenidlichen
durchschaut,
so sehr umfasst or den unendlichen Kosmos rnit der ganzen Glut eines leidenschaftlichen Affekts. Dieser heroische Affe kt ist es, dce sich jetzt gegen
das "no plus ultra" der mittelalterlichen doginatischen Glauboeislehre wie der
aristotelisch-scholastischen
Kosmologie zur Wehr setzt. Der freie Flug
der Phantasie und der freic Flug des Denkens (larf nirgends durch feste
raumlich-dingliche Schranken gehemmt werden. So wendet sich Bruno
vor allem und immer von neuem gegeon die Konzoption des Raumes als
des o-cvuya -rEpExov
der peripatetischen
des "Umschliossenden",
Physik.
Der Raum, in dem sich die Welt befindet, ist ihm nicht die ausserste Umgrenzung, in der sie gewissermassen eingehuillt uind eingebettet ruht: or ist
vielmehr das freie Medium der Bewegung, die sich ungehindert fiber jede
Diese Bewegung
endliche Grenze und nach allen Richtungen hin erstreckt.
kann und darf kein Hemmnis in der "Natur" irgendeines Einzeldinges
oder in der allgemeinen Beschaffenheit des Kosmos finden: denn sie selbst,
in ihrer Universalitat und ihrer Schrankenlosigkeit, ist es vielmehr, die die
Der unendliche Raum wird erfordert als das
Natur als solche konstituierte.
Vehikel der unendlichen Kraft; und diese ist wiederum nichts anderes als ein
Diese drei Momente
Ausdruck des unendlichen Lebens des Universums.
sind ffur Brunos Denken nirgends scharf geschieden; wie in der stoischen
und neuplatonischen Physik, auf die or sich stuitzt, so fliesst auch bei ihm
der Begriff des Raumes mit demn des Athers und dieser wider mit dem
Begriff der Weltseele zusarnmen. Auch hier ist somit ein dynamisches
Kosmos durchMotiv, das die Starrheit des aristotelisch-scholastischen
Aber es ist nicht, wie bei Kelpler und Galilei, die
bricht und tiberwindet.
Form der neuen Wissenschaft der Dynarnik, sondern ein neues dynamisches
Weltgefufhl, das hier den Ausschlag gibt.
Later on, he quotes Bruno (De Immenso et Innurnerabilibus, I, i)
. . .Intrepidus spatium immensum sic findere )etlmlis
Exorior, neque fama facit me impingere in orbes,
Quos falso statuit verus de principio error,
Ut sub conficto reprimamur carcere vere,
Tanquam adamanteis cludatur moenibus totum.
Nam mihi mens melior . . .
25 Similarly Ariosto still reflects the ancient and medieval
cosmography, ini the
passage from Orlando Furioso (XXXIV, 70) which describes Astolfo's visit to the
moon [he notes the smaller size of this body in comparison]:
Di cio che in questi globi si ragaona,
In questo ultim-noglobo (della terra,
Mettendo il mar che la circonda e serra.
(Cf. also Marjorie Nicholson, A World in the Moon). Ain(l Camoons expresses himn-
32
Middle Ages. "Precisely by means of the heliocentric system, he (Kepler)

was able to find new reasons for conceiving the world to be as definitely
limited and enclosed as it had been in the system of Ptolemy" (p. 106).
self in his Lusiads (VI, 27) about the universe and the ocean in the same terms of
limitedness:
Principe (Jupiter) que de juro senhoreias
De um polo ao outro polo o mar irado,
Tu, que as gentes da terra toda enfreias,
Que ndo passem o termo limitado;
E tu, padre Oceano, que rodeas
0 mundo universal e o tems cercado
E com justo decreto assi permites
Que dentro vivao so de seus limites
note also (X, 80): "[o Saber alto e profundo] Quem cerca em derredor esse rotundo
Globo. . . ." It is highly significant that this Renaissance epic that deals with the
discoveryy of new worlds beyond the columns of Heracles, and with the resultant
expansion of the "living space" of a European conqueror nation, still leaves unshaken
the medieval dome above and the medieval notion of space.
The "boxed-in" Lebensgefuihl is also reflected in G6ngora's Soledades (1613-14),
the setting of which is the shore of the Ocean: the poet sings of the feats of the explorers who extended our horizon beyond the Mediterranean "pond" (I, 400), beyond the straits of Gibraltar "locked with the two keys of Heracles" (402)-but,
after the Horatian manner, it is the theme: inculcar sus limites al mundo (412) that
is emphasized, rather than the infinitude of new worlds. Even the tiny bird fleeing
before the falcon (II, 923-30) is defined as a breve esfera de viento, negra circumvestida
piel, as a small sphere of wind, enveloped in skin, hovering in the "liquid walls
(!)" of an arena in the "diaphanous element" of the air: the bird in the sky becomes
a symbol (or, better, a duplication) of the earth-a microcosmic globe in the walled-in
whole. Thus the sharp contours of Spanish baroque art serve to limit and restrain
the vital and dynamic forces which it has harnessed for its use. Though classic
serenity is shaken and life itself becomes a storm, yet this unrest (miraculously
calm) "rests" within a rigid and crystalline vase. (Cf. my article in Revista de
filiologqa hispanica II, 1940, p. 169.)
By contrast with such writers Calvin appears as a modern-as is pointed out by
A.-M. Schmidt in Foi et vie XXXVI (1935), p. 274:
Il (in Comment. sur le livre des psaumes, ad Ps. CIII, v. 26) depeint le ciel
comme un milieu homogene ou' la loi toujours revisable de Dieu regle le cours
(les astres et refute la pernicieuse doctrine des spheres concentriques de
cristal, qui intuit les chrltiens au paganisme de se representer laTrinite marchant sur la crofite du dernier ciel comme un plancher translucide.
Note: "Au XVIIC siicle, le faimeux jesuite Kircher pretendait encore
que, par temps clair, on pourrait apercevoir, au delaydes astres, la splendeur
du Paradis."
But even those who no longer believed in the "walled-in-ness" of the world, were
often obliged, because of the prevailing conception of their times, to use such terms
as enclosee"; cf. Pascal, IPcnsees 11, 72:
L'homrne a besoin (de lieut potir le contenir, de temps pour durer, de mouvement pour vivre . . . l'air pour resp)irerhere Plascal is using an expression that recalls the Aristotelian material space.
Again, Gracidn, who begins the action of his allegorical novel El criticon on the island
MILIETU, AND
Aii1I
JAx
NCEX
33
To Kepler the universe is a sphere, for Inetal)hysical reasons: (1) because

a sphere is the most capacious possible (again the motif continens-ambiens1),
(2) because the sphere is, like God, the most perfect form (Ronsard:
En la forme rondegit la perfection qui toute en soi abonde). The following
passage reminds us of the rEptExoVrEptox'-relation:
The function of the outer sphere is to 'throw back and multiply the light of the
sun, like an opaque and illuminated wall.' It may also be described as the skin or
shirt of the universe (mundi cutis sive tunica).
Professor Lovejoy concludes that it is not the heliocentric theories of

Copernicus and Kepler that caused the revolution in cosmology during the
16th and 17th centuries, but five theses of which two only interest us here:
(2) "the shattering of the outer wall of the medieval universe"; (5) "the
assertion of the actual infinity of the physical universe in space...
Giordano Bruno argued that beyond the universe there could not be
nothingness because of the infinitude of the divine essence (the idea of the
"plenary universe"). And though a Galileo still compromises with the
Aristotelians who would have a finite and spherical universe, Descartes
rejects the idea of the enveloping sphere (we may remember his abhorrence
at shutting up the universe "dans une boule"), and for this Addison was
later to praise him-in terms which perhaps inspired the metaphors of
Professor Lovejoy cited above. And, a generation before Addison,
Fontenelle (1686) had succeeded in gaining the support of his Marchioness
for the theory of the pluralitye des mondes" by his argument that the
universe had been throttled by the ancient cosmology. In regard to
Descartes, Lovejoy continues:
(Descartes) destroyed those orbs of glass which the whims of antiquity had fixed
above . .. (he) scorned to be any longer bounded within the straits26and crystalline
walls of an Aristotelic world.
But in his departure from the Scholastics, not always did Descartes
reject or destroy outright: in some cases, by his new interpretation and
of St. Helena, choosing this spot as representing the center of the Spanish empire,
catholic and universal, which embraces the two hemispheres, resorts to the same
''compartmental" manner of expression in his paraphrase of the Biblical creation:
Luego que el supremo Artifice tuvo acabada esta gran fibrica del mundo,
dizen trato repartirla, alojando en sus estancias sus vivientes.
Convocolos todos . . . fu'les mostrando los repartimientos y examinando a cada
uno quail dellos escogia para su morada y vivienda . . . [Man] obliga todos
los elementos a que le tributen quanto abarcan, el ayre sus aves, el mar sus
peces . . ."
Note that the elements contain (abarcan) the beings which belong to them and which
stay in "their" places-Standortgebundenheit!
26 The word "straits,"
incidentally, reminds us that the Straits of Gibraltar, the
columns of Heracles which Dante's Ulysses had still considered a non piu oltre,
have ceased to form the limits of the known world.
34
RESEAR(CH
AND PHENOMETNOLOGICAL
PHILOSOPHY
qualifications of a theory apparently accepted by him, he manages to

undermine gently the theory itself. For example Aristotelian and Scholastic physics had insisted that all action of one body on another could
occur only by contact; in the case of activity at a distance, the same was
still achieved by interposition of intermediary bodies: cf. St Paulo: "omnis
actio fit per contactum, quo fit ut nihil agat in distans nisi per aliquid
medium." In discussing this theory Descartes makes use of the old
terminology
(". . . in sola enim superficie
fit contactus"),
but as the
passage in question shows, when quoted at greater length, the ancient

theory has suffered a strange sea-change:
... nihil plane illud esse a quo sensus nostri afficiantur praeter solam illam superficiem, quae est terminus dimensionum ejus corporis quod sentitur: in sola enim
superficie fit contactus; et nullum sensum affici nisi per contactum, non ego solus,
sed fere omnes philosophi cum ipso Aristotele affirmant. Ita ut, exempli causf,
panis vel vinum non sentiatur nisi quatenus ejus superficies, vel immediate a sensfts
organo, vel mediante aere aliisve corporibus, ut ego judico, vel, ut ajunt plerique
Philosophi: mediantibus speciebus intentionalibus (= the pictures of things which
(VII, 249.)
the objects themselves transmit to our senses), attingitur.
For this mediante dere aliisve corporibus is an allusion to none other than
that famous invention of Descartes, the "matiere subtile": that tenuous
substance with which he imagined all space to be filled (thereby echoing
the xrv4lca of the ancients and anticipating the "ether" of modern physicists) and which also, according to him, could penetrate the interstices
of all bodies-including the human body. Thus the "surface at which
all contact must occur" becomes, at the hands of Descartes, itself subtly
transformed, conditioned by this new element he has introduced.
And thereby are dissolved the sharp lines between the body and its
-rptCxov upon which Aristotelian and Thomistic physics had insisted.
No longer is the body impenetrably encased; into every pore and crevice
creeps this subtle ether, the same with which the celestial bodies are surrounded. The stuff which fills the heavens is at the same time within us,
within all bodies. One can well understand how this theory of penetration,
of "boring-from-within" must have found favor during the time of Descartes -a period in which the tendency was away from the older stable
order based upon a trust in the validity of sharp lines of demarcation.
Moreover, even the distinction between mind and matter was threatened
by the introduction of the matiere subtile. This element was, on the one
hand, a material substance, yet it was assumed to possess such active
properties as esprits vitaux, esprits animaux which could affect organisms;
and this assumption must have served somewhat to volatilize, to melt,
the too, too solid nature of matter the "subtlety" of this "matter"
must have tended to undermine the firmness of Cartesian dualism itself!
1ILIEU
AND AMBIANCE
35
The matiere subtile of Descartes was accepted by Newton (who calls it

spiritus subtilis) only in cases of activity at a minimum distance: adhesion,
sensation, electricity and light. But in regard to the law of gravity, that
works through "immensas distantias," Newton completely rejects the
efficacy of any such element:
[vis gravitates] agit non pro quantitate superficierum particularum in quas agit (ut
solent cause Mechanicae),27 sed pro quantitate materiae solidac; et unius actio in
immensas distantias undique extenditur. ... (p. 484 of the Principia).
The Principia mathematics naturalis philosophiae (1684) give us a picture

of interstellar space pierced by vital forces working in a vacuum.28 According to him the attraction of the stars is due to tension in the ether; one
mass attracts the other "as the rope unites the horse and the load"
(chapter De Mundi Systemate). Material bodies (in the words of Bloch,
La philosophic de Newton, 1909, p. 330) ". . . se cherchent mutuellement,
ou s'agitent Fun l'autre par des emanations, soit qu'eiles soient produites
par Faction de le'ther, de l'air ou de tel autre milieu qu'on voudra, corporel
27 The depreciation suffered
by the adjective mechanic ("machine-like, automatic;
without intervention of thought") dates perhaps from Newton's anti-mechanistic
law. In France, the home of Cartesianism, however, the shift of values illustrated
by the use to which the word was put is attested much later than in England-not
until Buffon and Rousseau (in German evidences of the shift appear in 1756). Indeed, in seventeenth century France, the celestial mechanics of Descartes was accepted as a manifestation of God's wisdom: in Bossuet we find the term used in a
most eulogistic phrase-and
in a context which leaves no doubt as to the sincerity
of the eulogism:
Tout cela [the structure of the body] est d'une 6conomie, et, s'il est permis
d'user de ce mot, d'une mecanique si admirable que . . .
And Fenelon, in speaking of the movements of animals which, to Descartes, were
automatic, says:
Des mouvements si justes et d'une si parfaite mecanique ne peuvent se
faire sans quelque industrie . . .
(cf. Littr6, s.v. melcanique 2). Again, Saint-Simon, that belated propagator of
seventeenth century values in the eighteenth century, uses the noun melcanique to
apply to the functioning of court life: in contrast to the vague expression of the
sixteenth-century expression air de cour, his mecanique de la cour would suggest that
the life of the court, superior as it is to the life of the world of commoners, is comparable to that of the stars themselves, regulated by celestial mechanics.
And he
spoke in solemn terms of la mecanique des temps et des heures in the existence of the
"Sun-King" Louis XIV (cf. my Rom. Stil-u. Literatur-Studien, II, 5); in referring
to the technicalities involved in a measure taken at the French court, he uses the
phrase la mecanique d'une chose. (It was necessary for Littre to devote an entire
item (mecanique 2, no 5) to this linguistic particuliarity of the reactionary duke.)
28 In his Opticks (1704), however,
he seems to vacillate between this and a "corpuscular" theory; he became definitely inclined to this theory in the last years of his
life-as Whittaker points out in his Introduction to the 1931 reprinting of the Opticks.
36
L RESEA RCH
PHILOSOPHYAND PH-ENOMEINOLOGICA
ou incorporel, qui pou5se Fun vers l'autre d'une rnaiierc

(1lrelconqlue les
corps qui y nagent." Moreover, the famous proposition of the Second
Book of the Principia, which aroused the bitter opposition of the Cartesians, established the fact: "si une sphere tourne d'un mouvement uniet infini,
forme autour d'un axe donnedde position, dans un fluide hoomogene
que le fluide soit muc circulairement par cette seule impulsion, et que
chaque partie de ce fluide continue uniformement dans son mouvement,
les temps periodiques des parties du fluide seront comme les carriesde leur
distance du centre de la sphere" (from Mme du Chatelet's translation).
In attributing qualities of transmission to the ether (or as he usually
calls it, the aetherial, fluid, vibrating, medium), Newton was not entirely
modern. We have seen that Aristotelian physics, accepted by the Schoolmen, admitted that the air supported or favored the movement of a projectile. And it is known that Leonardo da Vinci (who defined air as a
kind of heavy fluid, dilatable, compressible and resistant, surrounding the
globe) had anticipated Newton's principle of air resistance the same
Leonardo who, while differing with Aristotle on many points, yet preserved to a certain extent the harmonics of the ancient terms: "che cosa
e la causa dell' impeto e del mezzo ove si crea" (cited by Solmi, Le fonti di
L. da Vinci, p. 74): here we have the impetus of Albert of Saxony and the
impetuosity of Oresme ("une qualite nouelle ... et ceste qualite ou redeur
fut aide en mouvement naturedl . .").
As we have said, it was the term medium which Newton regularly used,
whether writing in English or in Latin, to refer to air, space, ether. In
Classical Latin the substantive medium had a twofold spatial reference:
the midpoint of an object, and the intermediate point (region, substance)
between two or more objects.29 It would seem obvious that it is the
29
It must be noted, however, that medium is to be found mostly in prepositional
phrases: per medium, in medio etc.; the absolute use of the word is rare (as is readily
suggested by subsequent developments in Old French: in medio survives in enmi,
per medium in parmi, but medium itself (= mi) failed to continue as a living element
of the language).
Comparable to Latin medium is the Greek ,ie ov (cf. Liddell-Scott),
which is usually to be found in conjunction with a preposition; Professor Paul Friedlander, who first called my attention to this fact, commented that the absolute
represents a later abstraction from the adverbial phrases. The
,ueWov probably
primitive mind is first conscious of an immediate local situation, of being, oneself,
"in the middle," or of seeing an object as already in an intermediate relationship to
other objects; the abstract idea of the relationship itself is a concept more sophisticated.
This is confirmed by the explanation given by Brugmann (an explanation corroborated by Benveniste, Origines de la formation, des norns, p. 98) concerning the IndoEuropean *medhios, presumedly the root of p'o-os, medics, etc. According to him the
origin is to be sought in a *me-dhi, representing a radical me- (cf. Greek ,uE-ra) plus
adverbial ending, and meaning "au milieu": it was from this that was extracted the
MILIEU AND AMBIANCE
37
second of these which is at the base of Newton's aetherial (etc.) medium:

the air flowing betweenall bodies. But there is much more than a spatial
reference involved; Newton is primarily concerned with the functional
properties of this ether, and medium means rather "intermediary (agent)"
than "intermediate." His authority, and that of his scholastic forerunners, for such a use of medium may be found, e.gr. in such post-Classical
Latin sentences as: "deus ... vos . .. dignos ... faciat vitae perpetuae per
medium (ad teot-relas) ... Christi" (Canon. Turner I, 2, 1, p. 32hh 20).
Here we have an example of a functional interpretation of a spatial relationship: the one "in between" is in a position to establish connections
between units otherwise isolated, to serve as intermediary, as a "medium"
of communication, or of transmission of influences.30 This functional interpretation must have continued throughout Latinity (cf. ut nihil agat in
distans nisi per aliquid medium cited above though here the spatial relationship is more in evidence). Thus the term medium was admirably
fitted for reference to the ether, which, by Newton, was thought of primarily as the conveyor, transmitter of attractive forces3"(cf. Leonardo's
mezzo 'whence is born the impetus of movement").
adjectival form *medhios which refers to the attribute of "belonging to (something)
in the middle" (cf. Greek EftO's = "in relation to the right," derived from the locative *6SE'l = "at the right").
30 This functional
development of the intermediate idea is a common phenomenon. In Italian the one word mezzo long possessed both references (according to
Tommaseo-Bellini, whose examples range from Dante to Galileo); the modern French
As for Engle moyen (= "means") is based upon OF moyen (= "intermediate").
but also "mean"
lish, we may compare not only "intermediate"-"intermediary,"
-("means"; moreover, though the substantive medium has become limited exclusively to a functional meaning, the adjective has retained the 'intermediate' idea (as
has also the French adjective moyen in contrast to le moyen).
The English substantive medium (also "means") is reserved, in contrast with
"intermediary," for inanimate reference: the 'medium' of printing, of water-colors,
etc. There is one case, it is true, in which it is applied to a person: a spiritualistic
this person is represented as a thing which passively allows com"medium"-but
munication to flow through; his function is that of serving as a channel through which
The
the "mediumistic fluid" is supposed to pass between the spirits and the living.
word is not attested in this reference before 1853, but already in the eighteenth centuiry, the way was prepared by the theories of Swedenborg (cf. Bloch s.v. medium,
who also notes that the French word followed the English as early as 1856); it is
interesting that this use of medium, representing the transfer of a technical term to
the spiritual realm, was anticipated by one whose mysticism had such a physical
basis.
A late derivative of the 7rEptEfxovappears perhaps in the perisprit of the spiritualists: E. Bosc (Diet. des sciences occultes, 1896) comments: "le corps de l'homme
comporte une sorte d'enveloppe subtile d6nommele double aithhrique [note this Greek
form!] et perisprit par les spirited."
31 These attractive forces, even with Newton, obviously were not limited to grav-
38
PHILOSOPHY
AND
PHENOMENOLOGICAL
RESEARCH
However, this is not to say that the medium of Newton is actually and
throughout to be defined as "medium of transmission of influences" or
some similar phrase; in regard to his aetherial medium, such a translation
would be clumsy at best-and in scores of other cases, particularly in the
ity alone; the aetherial medium is also referred to as a conductor of light. And
this was perhaps the original technical reference of medium as applied to the air.
Centuries before Newton, mezzo (diafano, transparente, etc.) is to be found with
Dante, in passages dealing with perception (it may also be noted that the first examples of medium in English, at the end of the sixteenth century, refer to optics,
and that the first example of aetherial medium attested in English [1624] is to be
found in a similar context; in Greek the word /j4ovo was used to refer to air as the
medium of perception):
Queste cose visibili . . . vengono dentro a l'occhio . . . per lo mezzo diafano . . . si quasi come in vetro transparente.
E ne l'acqua ch'e ne la
pupilla de l'occhio, questo discorso (= this transit), che fa la forma visibile
per lo mezzo, si si compie, perched quell' acqua e terminate che passar piA
non puo, ma quivi, a modo d'una palla percossa si ferma; si che la forma,
che nel mezzo transparente non pare [nell' acqua pura] lucida e terminate
. . .acci6 che la visione sia verace, cioe cotale qual e la cosa visibile in se,
conviene che lo mezzo per lo quale a l'occhio viene la forma sia sanza colore,
e l'acqua de la pupilla similemente: altrimenti si macolerebbe la forma
visibile del color del mezzo e di quello de la pupilla ... [la stella] puote parere
cosi [non chiara e non lucente] per lo mezzo che continuamente si transmuta.
Transmutasi questo mezzo di molta luce in poca luce, si come a la presenza
del sole e a la sua assenza; e a la presenza lo mezzo, che e diafano, e' tanto pieno
di lume che e vincente de la stella . . .
(Convivio III, ix, 6-12; Vol. IV of Barbi's edition of Opere di Dante)
The commentators of this passage quote parallel sentences of Thomas Aquinas:
In corporibus specularibus aliquando apparet color clarus, quando scilicet
speculum est purum et mundum non habens aliquem colorem extraneum,
et medium similiter purum. . . quando aer vel aliud perspicuum est in
propria natura purum, et non aliquo coloratum, tunc habet solum rationem
medii, per quod videtur objectum, non autem habet rationem objecti....
In another passage of the Convivio (III, xiv, 3-4) Dante introduces a normative
judgment concerning this light which needs a mezzo, assigning it to a lower level of
the hierarchic order in comparison with Divine Light:
lo primo agente, cioe Dio, pinge la sua virtue'in cose per modo di diritto
raggio, e in cose per modo di splendor reverberate; onde ne le Intelligenze
[= the angels] raggia la divina luce sanza mezzo, ne l'altri si ripercuote da queste
Intelligenze prima illuminate . . . mostrero differenza di questi vocaboli,
secondo che Avicenna sente. Dico che l'usanza de' filosofi e di chiamare
'raggio,' in quanto esso e per lo mezzo, dal principio al primo corpo dove si
termina; di chiamare splendorre' in quanto esso e in altra parte alluminata
ripercossa. Dico adunque che la divina virt-h sanza mezzo questo amore
tragge a sua simulitudine.
Cf. again Thomas Aquinas: "agens per voluntatem statim sine medio potest producere quemcumque effectum"; oness
angeli (= Intelligenze) . . . immediate vident
Dei essentiam."
The modern commentators of the Italian passage explain: "Dante
39
MILIEU AND AMBIANCE
Opticks, medium could not possibly be so specifically translated. For this

substantive was not used exclusively of the air but could refer to any
element of whatsoever nature:
But the truth of this Proposition will farther appear by observing, that in the
Superficies interceding two transparent Mediums (such as are Air, Glasses, Island
Glasses, white transparent Arsenick, Diamonds, &c), the Reflection is stronger or
weaker accordingly, as the Superficies hath a greater or less refracting Power (Opticks,
Whittaker edition of 1931, p. 247).
...
280).
vibrations
in the refracting or reflecting Medium or Substance .
. (ibid., p.
A very little variation of obliquity will change the reflected Colour, where the
thin Body or small Particles is rarer than the ambient Medium (ibid., p. 254).
Hallucinantur igitur qui credunt agitationem partium Flammae ad pressionem,
per Medium ambiens, secum lineas propagandam conducere (Principia, 1714 edition).
The one interpretation which is always fitting is simply "element (or substance)." Thus the aetherial (etc.) medium = "the aetherial element"
(sc. the air); transparent,refractingmedium = "any element of transparent
property," "any element serving to aid refraction"; ambient medium =
"any element immediately surrounding a body." At the same time, it is
also true that a functional connotation (of varying intensity) is everpresent with the term medium; the very choice of this word in reference
to the various elements reflects the point of view of a scientist conscious
of the potentialities, the properties of all elements with which he has to
insiste nello spiegare qual sia il modo onde Dio riduce a sua similitudine l'amore
della sapienza. Egli fa cio sanza mezzo . . ., senza usare d'altra causa o creatura,
ma immediatemente convertendolo a se, come a fine ultimo."
Finally we may note the following passage from the Paradiso (XXVII, 73); the
vision of the Beati which the poet had for a while been granted, fades from view as
the mezzointervenes:
Lo viso mio seguiva i suoi sembianti,
E segui in fin' che il mezzo, per lo molto,
Gli tolse il trapassar del piu avanti
(the commentators explain: "lo spazio di mezzo tra l'occhio e i vapori trionfanti").
Thus, in the wake of the beatific vision (this lofty goal of the Christian) the idea of
the interposed medium is a reminder of a basic limitation of mankind (which needs
the mediative activity of Christ, called IeTLTela, medium).
And it may well be that
it was due to its theological ties that this term passed over into Renaissance physics
as the optic medium. However, it cannot be denied that already in Thomistic science, medium, without benefit of a theological impetus, had been accepted as a term
of physics: to refer to space which fosters movement.
The Fremdworterbuchof Schulz-Basler quotes a German sentence (Sturz, 1768):
"jedes Volk ist gewohnt, durch ein eigenes Medium zu sehen" which shows how the
"medium of perception" could develop a meaning somewhat akin to "mentality."
Goethe says in 1794: "durch das Medium seiner Personlichkeit begreifen."
40
RESEARCH
deal; who in his experiments, in the formulation of his theories, sees any
given element as a "factor": as, in some way, an active entity, a means
to an end-in the largest sense, as a means through which the efficacy of
physical laws manifests itself.
Thus, regardless of the multiplicity of reference of which medium is
capable, there is perhaps one "meaning" throughout: an element envisaged
as a factor.32 And yet, for practical purposes it is convenient roughly to
divide Newton's mediums into two main groups: (1) the phrases which
regularly refer to one element alone: aetherial, fluid, vibrating medium =
the air or ether; (2) phrases which refer to elements of various types and
various functions: transparent, refracting, ambient medium. Of these last,
that which would seem at the furthest extreme from aetherial medium is
ambient medium: it is wholly colorless and unrevelatory of the nature of
the element; it is found (and frequently found) in the most perfunctory
of references and has a narrowly local significance, used for the practical
purpose of emphasizing the immediately surrounding element of any given
substance (it appears in Samuel Clark's Latin translation of the Opticks
as medium circumjacens, circumjectum).3 And it is also the least vital of
all the mediums; it need have no property save that of contiguity. (In
the Optickswhich is written in English ambientmedium shows the adjective
with a small a whereas Aetherial medium has always a capital A!)
It is very striking that ambient should be regularly used to accompany
the least of all the mediums; with Newton it appears devoid of that "allembracing" connotation which originally ambire shared with amplecti.
The "all" is obviously lacking in his ambient medium since this may not
32 Cf. the word mezzo used in Galileo in the meaning
"element (envisaged as a
factor)": "[the movement or quiet] de' diversi corpi solidi ne' diversi mezzi"; "il
peso d'altrettanta mole del medesime mezzo" (Discorso intorno alle cose galleggianti,
1611).
33 It is possible that the expression
ambient medium was a ready-made term to
which Newton fell heir: mezzo ambiente is to be found in the first half of the century,
with Torricelli:
Sarebbe un effetto senza causa, cioe un assurdo in natura, se una palla
volasse attraverso per 'aria, impedita dal mezzo ambiente, e non ajutata da
potenza alcuna che l'accompagnasse.
It is possible, however, to give this mezzo ambiente a slightly different interpretation
from that ascribed to Newton's phrase. The Italian expression may be simply the
equivalent of aere ambiente-or of ambiente alone in that meaning: cf. "I corpi
leggieri essere mossi all' insuc, scacciati dall' impulsione, dall' ambiente piuc grave"
(Galileo).
The substantive ambiente, however, did not always refer to the air: it could also
be used with apparently the exact meaning of Newton's ambient medium, in reference
to any element whatsoever which surrounds a given body (cf. Galileo: il contenuto
fosse una sfera solida e l'ambiente un liquid, quoted by Tommaseo-Bellini).
MILIEU AND AMBIANCE
41
refer to the vast expanse of the heavens;34 nor is ambiens any longer
"embracing": no overtones of warmth and beneficence emanate from this
perfunctory phrase, used in the most trivial of references. And the fact
that Newton was insensitive to the all-embracingness of ambient is perhaps
a bit of semantic evidence of the truth that is everywhere manifest in his
description of the universe: that Newton had lost the feeling of "man and
his ireptexov." Now, man is alone in an infinite chilly cosmos traversed by
innumerable forces of attraction, in a universe run according to rigid laws
and ruled over by a God who bears no relation to man; a God who, says
Newton, should be called Deus and not Dominus which implies a reference
to human subjects and human worshippers (he admits that man does dare
to say meus dens, but meus Aeternus would be impossible, since the quality
of eternality, as of almightiness, is absolute).
In this Newtonian universe of objective and infinite grandeur man appears in all his insignificance, overwhelmed by the Whole, the All; he is
nothing, or at best possessed of only relative values.35 There were those
who were able to adapt themselves to this new universe; indeed, with
Rousseau and Shaftsbury, the infinitism of the Newtonian system encouraged an impulse toward a mystic merging with the Whole. But there
was something essentially bleak in this vision of a universe totally mindless
of man; with Copernicus the earth had ceased to be the center,lsa with
Newton, man himself was fallen from his high estate, no longer the
"measure of all things." Thus it is not difficult to understand that a
Goethe should defy this system (in what Croce, Critica XXXVIII, 170,
calls "la vana e assurda polemica contro il Newton"), moved as he was
by a desire to feel that his universe was protected by a beneficent atmosphere:
Die Erde empfand er als ein kugelhaft in sich abgeschlossenes Lebewesen, gleichsam mit einem eignen k6rperartigenOrganismusund eigner Atmosphare, die er durch
eigne Normen tatig und leidend wissen wollte, ohne willkiirlich masslose und zufallige
Eingriffe aus dem unermesslichen und gestaltlosen Weltraum. Mit andren Worten:
seine Vorstellungsart war selbst bei Betrachtung der anorganischen Naturreiche,
der Luft und der Steinwelt, wesentlich bedingt durch das eigentliche Korpergeffthl,
auch hier war ihm der menscbliche Organismus, die begrenzte, in sich abgeschlossene,
aber von inneren eignen Bildungskraften erfullte Gestalt, das Mass, ja das Bild der
Erscheinungen.
Seine ganze Naturlehre ist die ins Theoretische projizierte, auf alle Naturreiche
34 Rogerus Cote, however, in his Preface to the 1713 edition of the Principia,
uses the expression "fluidum ambiens" to refer to interstellar space.
35 We may remember Voltaire's Micromegas, that inhabitant of the stars who had
no absolute stature, but varied in size according to the magnitude of the body with
which he was compared.
35a Cf. Nietzsche: "seit Kopernikus rollt der Mensch aus dem Zentrum ins x."
42
angewandte Umsetzung eines mit seinem Leib schon gegebnen Instinkts, der ihn bis
in die entlegensten Forschungen hinein fuhrte, und dieser Instinkt war eben der
griechische, wie er sich in dem Wort lraTrcveIrTpOv AvOporoS manifestiert, auf deutsch:
der Leib ist die Grundlage unsrer Erkenntnis, der Sinn der Welt.36
(To be continued)
LEO SPITZER.
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY,
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND.
36 Gundolf in his biography of Goethe plays up in full relief the latter's ties with
Greek culture; equally truly he might have called attention to his feeling for the
Middle Ages (if it were not that in the school of Stefan George the pagan is preferred
to the Christian), and the relationship of this to his anthropocentricism.
Of course, if Goethe had been absolutely consistent, he should also have objected
to the heliocentric world-system of Copernicus, and have insisted on making man
the measure of the universe-in some such parallelism as that of the Spanish mystic
Luis de Le6n who, in his "Introducci6n al simbolo de la fe," wrote:
... toda la tierra, solida y redonda, y recogida con su natural movimiento
dentro de si misma, colocada en medio del mundo, vestida de flores, de yerbas,
de irboles y de mieses ... Pues, ! qu6 dir6 del linaje de los hombres, los
cuales puestos en medio de la tierra..
. Luego el aire . . riega la tierra con
aguas ... Y 61 tambien sostiene sobre si el vuelo de las aves, y nos da el aire
con que se mantienen y sustentan los animales (chapter "la Tierra")
Here again we have a reminiscence of the ancient concept of the ether that nourishes:
aether pascit.

Semantic History I

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Semantic History I

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Milieu and Ambiance: An Essay in Historical Semantics

Author(s): Leo Spitzer

PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

In Studia neophilologica XII (Uppsala 1939-40), 91-119, Karl

PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEAR-H

p rEXlvTos rheas aepOS Kara<TaOEL,

appears later in a Latin version as "Voluit Hippocrates hoc in loco aeri

copat(originally "the seasons"), a term current in Galen (as in Herodotus;

die die Skala aller mdglichen Erscheinungsfornmenal)lauft, nicht alle diese

so often spoken of as Taine's prede-

his contemporary l'abbe DuBos spoke of climat, vapeur, etc.:

sonnenhaft.. ."), so, air itself is perceptive of acoustic, light of visual,

PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Poseidonius thought the

with a spiritual fluid

which permeates man and brings about cognizance: an overflowing of the

MILIEU AND AMBIANCE

things. The Neoplatonist Proclus described space as a corporeal, animate

PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

(avmExes)avec celle du contenu.

Ty'i"), just as did the

MILIEU AND AMBIANCE

PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

vocantur (instead of sunt) in "Ii qui mathematici vocantur,ii qui grammatici

"condensation," "counteraction," "resistance"] (just as this

was translated by the humanist Calcagnini in 1544 by circumobsistentia): again the

MILIEU AND AMBIANCE

What we might have expected to find is the substantive ambiens or the

MILIEU AND AMBIANCE

is prominent: in the following passage from Lucretius V, 317 (given me by

To these I add a passage from the Somnium Scipionis (IV, 9) which

in which arcens is equivalent to coircens; to this we may compare Cicero,

s 'rA avi-N -LKs

appears as "omnem hanc terrenam immensitatemn

14 This verb, like 7repaxewv,

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rzptExoP,in the meaning of "space," "ether," we see that in Apu-

leius (the ether) 4a Tr CEza E/I 7rEptEXovOw&/aTa is rendered by "quae divinas

When we come to the medieval period, the same variety of terms to

ANDI) I HENOMN NOILOGICA'sL RE1<Sm1u1CI

which, according to Aristotelian and medieval cosmology, there is nothing)

and in Eustachius a Sancto Paulo, Summa philosophica (1609):

In all of the passages above there is continued Aristotle's definition of

work, La connaissance du monde et de la nature au moyen age (1911). In

PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Che si distende per tutte lor parti,

MILIEU AND AMBIANCE

Decamerone [every plant was there, he says]

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De caelo: quod quidem caelos universes inquiunt continere (Argyropoulos)19

De juvent. et select.: totum illud quod nos ambit (Vatablus)

Aristotelian cosmology, sought always the proper term, we find here

del bet poltrone (Cecchi, Commedie); gli avevano aria d'aver

bisogno (G. B. Belli).

These may parodistically follow the loftier use of ella ha

who coined the substantivized

agens, differens, expediens etc., which

have survived in Romance languages. The absence of ambienswith the Scholastics is

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1rep1-EXEV;and since continens was already

furnish the nominal expression for

In questa [costituzione] l'ambiente niente preme l'ambito, ed

MILIEU AND AMBIANCE

PHENOMEN OLOGICAL R-ESEAR(I'cH