PARTICLE, a term in Theology, used in the Latin church for the crumbs or little pieces of consecrated bread, called in the Greek church μῖδια. The Greeks have a particular ceremony, called τὰ μῖδια, of the particles, wherein certain crumbs of bread, not consecrated, are offered up in honour of the Virgin, St John Baptist, and several other saints. They also give them the name of προσφερα, oblatio. Gabriel archbishop of Philadelphia wrote a little treatise express πρὶ τὰ μῖδια, wherein he endeavours to show the antiquity of this ceremony, in that it is mentioned in the liturgies of St Chrysostom and Basil. There has been much controversy on this head between the reformed and catholic divines. Aubertin and Blondel explain a passage in the theory of Germanus patriarch of Constantinople, where he mentions the ceremony of the particles as in use in his time, in favour of the former; Messieurs de Port Royal contest the explanation; but M. Simon, in his notes on Gabriel of Philadelphia, endeavours to show that the passage itself is an interpolation, not being found in the ancient copies of Germanus,
Particle
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Partnership.
manus, and consequently that the dispute is very ill grounded.
Organic Particles, are those small moving bodies which are imperceptible without the help of glasses; for besides those animals which are perceptible to the sight, some naturalists reckon this exceedingly small species as a separate class, if not of animals properly so called, at least of moving bodies, which are found in the semen of animals, and which cannot be seen without the help of the microscope. In consequence of these observations, different systems of generation have been proposed concerning the spermatric worms of the male and the eggs of the female. In the second volume of Buffon's Natural History, several experiments are related, tending to show that those moving bodies which we discover by the help of glasses in the male semen are not real animals, but organic, lively, active, and indestructible molecules, which possess the property of becoming a new organized body similar to that from which they were extracted. Buffon found such bodies in the female as well as in the male semen; and he supposes that the moving bodies which he observed with the microscope in infusions of the germs of plants are likewise vegetable organic molecules. Needham, Wisberg, Spalanzani, and several other writers on the animal economy, have pursued the same track with M. de Buffon.
Some suppose that these organic molecules in the semen answer no purpose but to excite the venereal desire: but such an opinion cannot be well founded; for eunuchs, who have no seminal liquor, are nevertheless subject to venereal desire. With respect to the beautiful experiments which have been made with the microscope on organic molecules, M. Bonnet, that learned and excellent observer of nature, remarks that they seem to carry us to the farthest verge of the sensible creation, did not reason teach us that the smallest visible globule of seminal liquor is the commencement of another universe, which, from its infinite smallness, is beyond the reach of our best microscopes.—Animalcules, properly so called, must not be confounded with the wonderful organic particles of Buffon. See ANIMALCULE.