substances, and which prevents them from being spun by stretching out at the same time that the thread is twisted, in the manner of the mule or jenny. These patentees recommend a machine which is in fact a mule with certain modifications; and, to give the effect of elasticity in the fibres, they have two methods. The most simple, and that which they particularly recommend, is to provide a holder of large wire for every spindle, which holders are several inches in length, fixed in an arbor or shaft that extends from one end of the carriage to the other.

This arbor or shaft, with the holders, may be Considered as an enlarged and improved substitute for what is called the faller in the mules or jennies for spinning cotton, and the wire-holders fixed therein have elliptical eyes at their extremities, through each of which a thread is conducted in its passage from the rollers which draw out the thread to its spindle. The wire of which the holder is made, after forming the elliptical eye, is left or extended beyond the uppermost part something in the manner of a corkscrew, so that the yarn may be conveniently slipped in when occasion may require it. These holders for each thread are for the purpose of keeping the yarn in a state nearly vertical over the tops of the spindle, when the carriage which contains them is coming out; and, as they will readily yield or spring from the vertical position, they have the same effect as elasticity in the fibres of the substance which is to be stretched out; but the wires being removed from the vertical situation at the beginning of the return of the carriage, and thrown into nearly an horizontal position, by inclining the shaft into which they are all fixed, they bring the yarn below the tops of the bobbins or quills which are fixed upon the spindles, which will then wind up the threads upon them when the spindles are turned round, and then the wire-eyes being regularly curved, and raised up again by the motion of an elliptic wheel which is turned round by the machine, they distribute the yarn regularly upon the bobbins or quills, and prevent it from hinkling and improperly doubling or twisting together. Another method of compensating for the want of elasticity in hemp and flax is to fix a round bar of wood, about an inch and a half in diameter, the whole length of the carriage, about three or four inches above the tops of the spindles, so that the outer surface, or that next the person who works the machine, may be perpendicular, or nearly so, over the tops of the spindles, the inner side having pieces of wood or metal fixed or nailed thereto, leaving only small spaces or notches between each for the yarn to pass through. The use of these pieces is to prevent the threads from getting together and entangling. Every thing relating to the wire holders before mentioned, and the arbor to which they are affixed, must be applied in concert with these pieces of metal, which form a separation between the threads.

M. Reaumur has shown, by a series of curious experiments, that the common mussel, and some other shell-fish of the sea, possess the art of spinning in a great degree of perfection. But he observes that, though the workmanship is the

same, the manner of producing it is very different. Spiders, caterpillars, and the like, make threads of any length that they please by making the viscous liquor, of which they are formed, pass through a fine perforation in the organ appointed for this spinning but the way in which the mussels form their threads is very different, as the former resembles the work of the wire-drawer, so does this that of the founder, who casts metals in a mould. The canal of the organ destined for the mussel's spinning, which, from its shape, is commonly called its tongue, is the mould in which its thread is cast, and gives it its determinate length.-Mem. Acad. Par. 1711.

The SPINNING-WHEEL, in rope-making, for twelve spinners, is about five feet in diameter, and is hung between two posts fixed in the ground: on its top is fixed a semi-circular frame called the head, which contains twelve whirls that turn on iron spindles, with hooks to their front ends to hang the hemp on, and are worked by means of a leather band encircling the wheel and whirls. The whirls are made to run with a truer motion when the head on the rising side of the band has a larger segment of a circle than the falling side; or, in other words, let the base part of the head be longer from the middle than the opposite or falling side, by which means the band will be kept equally tight over the whirls, and consequently the motion be alike to all. N. B. Heads made in this manner have always the wheel turned the same way. SPINOSITY, n. s.

Lat. spinosus. Crabbedness; thorny or briary perplexity. The first attempts are always imperfect; much more in so difficult and spiny an affair as so nice a subject. Digby. Philosophy consisted of nought but dry spinosities, lean notions and endless altercations about things of nothing. Glanville.

SPINOSUM FOLIUM, a spinous leaf, indicates the margin running out into rigid points or prickles, quod margine exit in acumina duriora, rigida, pungentia.

SPINOSUS CAULIS. See BOTANY, Glossary.
SPINOUS, in botany. See SPINOSUS.

SPINOUS FISHES, such as have some of the rays of the back fins running out into thorns or prickles, as the perch, &c.

SPINOZA (Benedict), was born at Amsterdam the 24th of November 1632. His father was a Jew of Portugal, by profession a merchant. After being taught Latin, by a physician, he studied theology, and afterwards devoted himself to philosophy. He began very early to be dissatisfied with the Jewish religion; and, as his temper was open, he did not conceal his doubts from the synagogue. The Jews, it is said, offered to tolerate his infidelity, and even promised him a pension of 1000 dollars a year, if he would remain in their society, and continue outwardly to practise their ceremonies. But, if this offer was really made, he rejected it, from his aversion to hypocrisy, or because he could not endure the restraint which it would have imposed. He also refused the legacy of a very considerable fortune, to the prejudice of the natural beirs; an the art of polishing glass for might subsist independ

accident hastened his leaving the synagogue. As he was returning home one evening from the theatre, he was stabbed by a Jew; the wound was slight; but the attempt led Spinoza to conclude that the Jews had formed the design of assassinating him. He then became a Christian, and frequented the churches of the Lutherans and Calvinists. He now devoted himself more than ever to his philosophical speculations; and, being often interrupted by his friends, he left Amsterdam, and settled at the Hague, where he sometimes continued for months together without ever stirring from his lodging. His Tractatus Theologico Politicus was published about this time, a book containing all those doctrines in embryo, which were afterwards unfolded in his Opera Posthuma, and which are generally considered as a system of atheism. His fame, which had now spread far and wide, obliged him sometimes to interrupt his philosophical reveries. Learned men visited him from all quarters. While the prince of Condé commanded the French army, in Utrecht, he entreated Spinoza to visit him; and, though he was absent when the philosopher arrived, he returned immediately, and spent a considerable time with him. The elector Palatine offered to make Spinoza professor of philosophy at Heidelberg; but this he declined. He died of a consumption at the Hague on the 21st of February 1677, aged forty-five. His life was a perpetual contradiction to his opinions. He was temperate, liberal, and remarkably disinterested; he was sociable, affable, and friendly. His conversation was agreeable and instructive, and never deviated from the strictest propriety. In the Tractatus Theologico Politicus, he treats of prophecy and prophets; and of the call of the Hebrews, whom he affirms to have been distinguished from other nations only by the admirable form of their government. He is likewise of opinion, or pretends to be so, that God may, in a supernatural way, have given political institutes to other nations as well as to the Hebrews. For, according to him, every nation was blessed with the light of prophecy. That light indeed, if his notions of it be just, was of very little value. He labors to prove that the prophets were distinguished from other men only by their piety and virtue; and that their writings are valuable to us only for the excellent rules they contain respecting piety and virtue. He then endeavours to prove that no miracle, in the proper sense of the word, can have been at any time performed; because every thing happens by a necessity of nature, the result of the divine decrees, which are from all eternity necessary themselves. He acknowledges that in the Scriptures, which he professes to admit as true history, miracles are often mentioned; but he says that they were only singular events which the sacred historians imagined to be miraculous. He affirms, in contradiction to the clearest internal evidence, that the Pentateuch and all the other historical books must have been written by one man; and that man, he thinks, was Ezra. The grounds of this opinion are unwortny of the talents of Spinoza. His principal objection to the authenticity of the Pentateuch is, that Moses is made to speak of himself in the third

person; the very same childish objection since repeated by Thomas Paine, whose ignorance may somewhat excuse him, but Spinoza surely could read the Commentaries of Cæsar, in the original, who speaks of himself modestly in the third person throughout all his writings. He also objects to the expression of the Canaanites being then in the land. These senseless cavils, worthy only of one of those modern freethinkers whose learning, in the opinion of bishop Warburton, is not sufficient to carry them even to the confines of rational doubt, we have sufficiently obviated in another place. See SCRIPTURE. In the midst of this dogmatical scepticism, he bears such a testimony to the last chapters of the book of Daniel as we should not have looked for in the writings either of a Jew or a Deist. After detailing the various hypotheses respecting the author and the intention of the book of Job, in which, he says, Momus is called Satan, he proceeds in these words :-Transeo ad Danielis librum; hic sine dubio ex cap. 8. ipsius Danielis scripta continet. Undenam autem priora septem capita descripta fuerint, nescio,' thus admitting the famous prophecy of the seventy weeks. That so paradoxical a writer, who had been originally a Jew, and was now almost a Deist, should have treated the New Testament with as little ceremony as the Old, will not surprize the intelligent reader. He begins his remarks, however, with affirming that no man can peruse the Christian Scriptures and not acknowledge the apostles to have been prophets; but he thinks that their mode of prophecying was altogether different from that which prevailed under the Mosaic dispensation; and that the gift, whatever it was, forsook them the instant that they left off preaching, as their writings have to him every appearance of human compositions. This distinction between Christian and Jewish prophecy is the more wonderful, that he founds it principally on the dissimilarity of style visible in the writings of the Old and New Testaments. Taking our leave of his Tractatus Theologico Politicus, we shall now give our readers a short account of his Opera Posthuma. These consist of. 1. Ethica, more geometrico demonstrata; 2. Politica; 3. De Emendatione Intellectus; 4. Epistolæ, et ad eas Responsiones; 5. Compendium Grammatices Linguæ Hebrææ. The Ethica are divided into five parts, which treat in order, de Deo; de natura et origine mentis; de origine et natura effectuum; de servitute humana, seu de affectuum viribus; de potentia intellectus, seu de libertate humana. As the au thor professes to tread in the footsteps of the geometers, and to deduce all his conclusions by rigid demonstration from a few self-evident truths, he introduces his work, after the manner of Euclid, with a collection of definitions and axioms. These are couched in terms generally ambiguous. His definition of substance, for instance, is so expressed as to admit of two senses; in one of which it is just, whilst in the other it is the parent of the most impious absurdity.

Per substantiam intelligo id, quod in se est, et per se concipitur: hoc est id, cujus conceptus non indiget conceptu alterius rei, a quo formari debeat.' if by this he meant that a substance

is that which we can conceive by itself without attending to any thing else, or thinking of its formation, the definition, we believe, will be admitted by every reflecting mind, as sufficiently distinguishing the thing defined from an attribute, which, he says, is that which we perceive of a substance, and which we certainly cannot conceive as existing by itself. Thus the writer of this article can shut his eyes and contemplate in idea the small quarto volume now before him, without attending to any thing else, or thinking of its paradoxical author, or even of the Great Being who created the matter both of him and of it; but he cannot for an instant contemplate the yellow color of its vellum boards without thinking of triple extension, or, in other words, of body. The book therefore is a substance, because conceivable by itself; the color is an attribute or quality, because it cannot be conceived by itself, but necessarily leads to the conception of something else. But if Spinoza's meaning be, that nothing is a substance but what is conceived as existing from eternity, independent of every thing as a cause, his definition cannot be admitted: for every man conceives that which in himself thinks, and wills, and is conscious, as a substance; at the same time that he has the best evidence possible that he existed not as a conscious thinking, and active being, from eternity. His fourth axiom is thus expressed :Effectus cognitio a cognitione causa dependet, et eandem involvit ;' and his fifth, Quæ nihil commune cum se invicem habent, etiam per se invicem intelligi non possunt, sive conceptus, unius alterius conceptum non involvit.' The former of these propositions, so far from being self-evident, is not even true; and the latter is capable of two senses very different from each other. That every effect proceeds from a cause is indeed an axiom; but surely we may know the effect accurately, though we be ignorant of the particular cause from which it proceeds (see PHILOSOPHY and PHYSICS); nor does the knowledge of the one by any means involve the knowledge of the other. If different things have nothing in common, it is indeed true that the knowledge of one of them will not give us an adequate conception of the other; but it will in many cases compel us to believe that the other exists or has existed. A parcel of gunpowder lying at rest has nothing in common with the velocity of a cannon-ball; yet, when we know that a ball has been driven with velocity from a cannon, we infer with certainty that there has been a parcel of powder at rest in the chamber of that cannon, before it was fired. It is upon such ambiguous definitions and axioms as these that Spinoza has raised his pretended demonstrations, that one substance cannot produce.another; that every substance must necessarily be infinite; that no substance exists or can be conceived besides God; and that extended substance or body is one of the infinite attributes of God. We shall not waste time with a formal confutation of these absurdities. They are sufficiently confuted in other articles of this work; and whoever wishes for a more particular examination of the author's principles, may find it in Dr. Clarke's Demonstration of the Being and

Attributes of God. According to Spinoza bodies are either attributes or affections of Goa; and, as he says there is but one extended substance, he affirms that substance to be indivisible. He attempts to prove that God is an extended as well as a thinking substance; that as a thinking substance he is the cause of the idea of a circle, and as an extended substance of the circle itself; that the minds of men are not substances, but certain modifications of the divine attributes. And that thinking and extended substances are in reality but one and the same substance, which is sometimes comprehended under one attribute of the Deity, and sometimes under another. If this impious jargon be not Atheism, or as it has been sometimes called Pantheism, we know not what it is. According to Spinoza, there is but one substance, which is extended, infinite, and indivisible. That substance indeed he calls God; but he labors to prove that it is corporeal ; that there is no difference between mind and matter; that both are attributes of the Deity variously considered; that the human soul is a part of the intellect of God; that the same soul is nothing but the idea of the human body; that this idea of the body, and the body itself, are one and the same thing; that God could not exist, or be conceived, were the visible universe annihilated; and therefore that the visible universe is either the one substance, or at least an essential attribute or modification of that substance. According to him, nothing but the prejudices of education could have led men to fancy that there is any real distinction between good and evil, merit and demerit, praise and reproach, order and confusion; that eyes were given that the owners might see; that the sun was formed to give light, &c. If this be true, it is impossible to discover wisdom in the operations of his one substance; since it is the very characteristic of folly to act without any end in view. His Compendium Grammatices Linguæ Hebrææ, though left imperfect, appears to have so much merit, that it is to be wished he had fulfilled his intention of writing a philosophical grammar of that language, instead of wasting his time on abstruse speculations, which, though they seem not to have been injurious to his own virtue, are certainly not calculated to promote the virtue of others, or to increase the sum of human happiness.

SPINOZISM, the opinions and doctrines of Spinoza. See the last article.

SPINTHERE. Color greenish-gray. In small oblique double four-sided pyramids. It does not scratch glass. It occurs in the department of Isere in France, incrusting calcareous spar crystals. It is believed to be a variety of sphene.

SPINTURNIX, in fabulous history, a bird, or rather a quadruped with wings, which was said sometimes to attend the sacrifices, and carry away a live coal from the altar; which was reckoned an omen of ill luck.-Pliny. It would have been more natural for such a monster to have carried off the sacrifice.

SPIRA (Francis), an eminent Italian lawyer, who flourished with great reputation in the beginning of the sixteenth century, at Citadella in the Venetian States. He had imbibed the prin

ciples of the Reformation, and was accused of heresy, before John De La Casa, archbishop of Benevento, the pope's nuncio at Venice. He made some concessions, and asked pardon for his errors; but the nuncio insisted on a public recantation. Spira was exceedingly averse to this measure, but, at the pressing entreaties of his wife and his friends, he at last complied. But he would have suffered much less torture at the stake, had he had the courage to have avowed his faith and died a martyr, than he did afterwards by the remorse he felt, and the dreadful state of melancholy he fell into. By the advice of physicians and divines, he was removed to Padua; but no change of place, medicine, regimen, or consolatory advice, could afford any relief to his wounded conscience. He thought himself certain of eternal damnation, and refused all the consolation that could be suggested. He sometimes even imagined that he already felt the torments of the damned. His melancholy case, in which he long lingered, and to which at last he fell a victim in 1548, made a great noise throughout Europe. The celebrated Henry Scrimzeor is said to have written an account of it with his life. We have seen a small work giving an account of his case in English, probably an extract or translation from Scrimzeor; but, of all the books that ever were printed, it would be the most dangerous to be put into the hands of a person inclined to melancholy. SPIR'ACLE, n. s. Į Lat. spiraculum. A breathing hole; vent;

SPIRACULA. small aperture.

Most of these spiracles perpetually send forth fire, Woodward. more or less.

As these volcanos are supposed to be spiracula or breathing holes to the great subterraneous fires, it is probable that the escape of elastic vapours from them is the cause, that the earthquakes of modern days are of such small extent compared to those of ancient times, of which vestiges remain in every part of the world, and on this account may be said not only to be innocuous, but useful. Darwin.

SPIREA, the spiræa frutex, in botany, a genus of plants belonging to the class of icosandria, and to the order of pentagynia; natural order twenty-sixth, pomacea: CAL. quinquefid; there are five petals; CAPS. polyspermous. There are eighteen species; of which two only are British, the filipendula and ulmaria. 1. S. filipendula, dropwort, has pinnated leaves: the leaflets are serrated; the stalk is herbaceous, about a foot and a half high, terminated with a loose umbel of white flowers, often tinged with red. The petals are generally six, and the segments of the calyx are reflexed; the stamina are thirty or more; the germina twelve or upwards. It grows in mountainous pastures. 2. S. ulmaria, meadow-sweet. The leaves have only two or three pair of pinnæ, with a few smaller ones intermixed; the extreme one being larger than the rest, and divided into three lobes. The calyx is reddish; the petals white, and the number of capsules from six to ten twisted in a spiral. The tuberous pea, like roots of the filipendula dried and reduced to a powder, have been used instead of bread in times of scarcity. Hogs are very fond of these roots. Cows, goats, sheep, and

swine, eat the plant; but horses refuse it. The flowers of the ulmaria have a fragrant scent, which rises in distillation. The whole plant indeed is extremely fragrant, so that the common people of Sweden strew their floors with it on holidays. It has also an astringent quality, and has been found useful in dysenteries, ruptures, and in tanning of leather.

SPIRAGO, a town of the new Italian kingdom, in the department of the Olona, district and late principality of Pavia, seated on the Olona, in a fertile country. SPIRAL, adj. Fr. spirale; Lat. spira. SPIRALLY, adv. Curve; winding'; inSPIRE, n. s. & v. n. volved, like a screw: the adverb corresponding: a spire is a curvature; any thing wreathed or hoisted to a point; any thing taper: to shoot up in the way.

S

The process of the fibres in the ventricles, running in spiral lines from the tip to the base of the heart, shews that the systole of the heart is a muscular constriction, as a purse is shut by drawing the strings contrary ways. Ray.

The sides are composed of two orders of fibres, running circularly or spirally from base to tip. Id. on the Creation. It is not so apt to spire up as the other sorts, being more inclined to branch into arms. Mortimer. These pointed spires that wound the ambient sky, In glorious change! shall in destruction lie. Prior. Why earth or sun diurnal stages keep, In spiral tracts why through the zodiack creep.

Blackmore.

The intestinal tube affects a straight, instead of a Arbuthnot on Aliments. spiral, cylinder. Air seems to consist of spires contorted into small spheres, through the interstices of which the particles of light may freely pass; it is light, the solid to the spaces they take up. substance of the spires being very small in proportion Cheyne.

As woodbine weds the plant within her reach, Rough elm, or smooth-grained ash, or glossy beech, In spiral rings ascends the trunk, and lays Her golden tassels on the leafy sprays, But does a mischief while she lends a grace, Straitening its growth by such a strict embrace.

Cowper.

SPIRE, or SPEYER, an ancient town in the west of Germany, situated at the confluence of the Spirebach and the Rhine, fourteen miles south of Manheim, and sixteen north-east of Landau. It long gave name to a bishopric; and the only interesting building is the old cathedral, now falling into decay. Spire was frequently the seat of the German diet; and it was in one of these assemblies, in 1529, that a protest, entered by the reformers against certain proceedings of the emperor, procured them the name of Protestants. From 1795 to 1814 it belonged to the French; at present it is the capital of the Bavarian province of the Rhine, and has a lyceum established by government. Population about 4000. The bishopric of Spire was not of great extent. It contained 55,000 inhabitants, and yielded a revenue of £30,000 sterling. It was secularised in 1802, and at present belongs partly to Bavaria, partly to Baden. The episcopal residence was Bruchsal. SPIRIT, n. s. & v. a.) SPIR'ITALLY, adv. SPIRITED, adj. SPIRITEDNESS, n. s. SPIRITFULNESS, SPIR'ITLESS, adj. SPIRITOUS, SPIR'ITOUSNESS, n. s. SPIRITUAL, adj. SPIRITUALITY, N. S. SPIRITUALIZE, v. a. SPIRITUALLY, adv. SPIRITUALTY, n. s. SPIRITUOUS, adj. SPIRITUOSITY, N. s. SPIRITUOUSNESS.

Fr. esprit. Lat. spiritus; Breath; air; wind; an immaterial substance or being; intellectual being; the soul; temper or disposition; genius; ardor; courage; an apparition or spectre : to spirit is to animate or actuate as a spirit; encourage; entice: spiritally is by means of the breath: spirited, lively; vivacious: the noun substantive corresponding spiritfulness is sprightliness; liveliness spiritless, vapid; dejected; low; depressed spiritous, defecated; refined; advanced near to spirit: spiritousness corresponds: spiritual, immaterial, mental, or intellectual; not gross; not temporal: the adverb (spiritually) and noun substantive corresponding: the spiritualty is used for the clerical body: to spiritualize is to refine; purify from the pollutions of the world: spirituous is having the quality of spirit; lively; gay: both the noun substantives following corresponding.

Bible.

The spirit shall return unto God that gave it. They were terrified, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. Luke xxiv. 37.

More ample spirit than hitherto was wont Here needs me, whiles the famous ancestors Of my most dreaded sovereign I recount, By which all earthly princes she doth far surmount. Faerie Queene.

Place man in some publick society, civil or spiritual. Hooker.

Look, who comes here? a grave unto a soul,
Holding the' eternal spirit against her will
In the vile prison of afflicted death.

Shakspeare. King John.
Farewel the big war,

The spirit stirring drum, the ear piercing fife.

The warlike feats I've done, his spirits fly out
Into my story.
Id. Cymbeline.
A man so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone.
Drew Priam's curtain. Shakspeare. Henry IV.
Nor doth the eye itself,

That most pure spirit of sense, behold itself.
Thou art reverend

Touching thy spiritual function, not thy life.
We of the spiritualty

Will raise your highness such a mighty sum,
As never did the clergy at one time.

Id.

ld.

Id.

If this light be not spiritual, yet it approacheth nearest unto spirituality; and if it have any corporality, then of all other the most subtile and pure.

Raleigh. All purges have in them a raw spirit or wind, which is the principal cause of tension in the stomach. Bacon.

All bodies have spirits and pneumatical parts within them; but the main difference between animate and inanimate are, that the spirits of things animate are all continued within themselves, and branched in veins as blood is; and the spirits have also certain seats where the principal do reside and whereunto the rest do resort: but the spirits in things inanimate are shut in and cut off by the tangible parts, as air in snow.

Id. Natural History. glass; the former appearing like a spirit in the air. Perhaps you might see the image, and not the

Bacon. Both visibles and audibles in their working emit no corporeal substance into their mediums, but only carry certain spiritual species.

She is a spirit; yet not like air or wind,
Nor like the spirits about the heart or brain;
Nor like those spirits which alchymists do find,
When they in every thing seek gold in vain :

Id.

For she all natures under heaven doth pass, Being like those spirits which God's bright face do

see;

Or like himself, whose image once she was, Though now, alas! she scarce his shadow be.

For of all forms she holds the first degree, That are to gross material bodies knit ; Yet she herself is bodyless and free, And though confined is almost infinite.

Davies.