truth is but what other men say it is and inferring Universal conclusions from particular premisses thence shaping to themselves irrational deductions they transmit to us things like truth for truth it self Hence it is that Sophisters and halfe-knowing men polling other mens inventions saucily impose them upon us for their own shifting onely the phrase and order and adding some impertinencies of their own and render Philosophy which ought to be clear and perspicuous obscure intricate and confused For whosoever they be that read authors and do not by the aid of their own Senses abstract true representations of the things themselves comprehended in the authors expressions they do not resent true Ideas but deceitful Idols Phantasms by which means they frame to themselves certaine shadows and Chimaera's and all their theory and contemplation which they count Science represents nothing but waking mens dreams and sick mens phrensies Give me leave therefore to whisper this to thee friendly Reader that thou be sure to weigh all that I deliver in these Exercitations touching the Generation of living Creatures in the steady scale of experiment and give no longer credit to it then thou perceivest it to be securely bottomed by the faithful testimony of thy own eyes This very thing did Aristotle perswade us to who when he had discoursed much of Bees added at last That the Generation of Bees is after this manner appears by reason and by those things which are seen to come to pass after the maner of Bees Yet have we not a sufficient discovery of what may fall out Therefore when the discovery shall be compleated then is Sense more to be trusted to then Reason For so far onely is Reason to be relied upon as those things which are demonstrated agree with those things which are perceived by sense Of the Method to be observed in the knowledge of Generation SInce therefore in the Generation of Animals as in all other things of which we covet to know any thing every inquisition is to be derived from its Causes and chiefly from the Material and Efficient it seems fit to me looking back on perfect animals namely by what degrees they are begun and compleated to retreat as it were from the end to the beginning that so at last when there is no place for farther retreat we may be confident we have arrived at the principles themselves and then it will appear out of what first matter by what efficient and what procession the plastick power hath its original and then also what progress Nature makes in this work For both the first and remoter matter appears the clearer being stripped naked as it were by Negation and whatsoever is first made in Generation that is as it were the material cause of that which succeedeth So for example A Man was first a Boy because from a Boy he grew up to be a Man before he was a Boy he was an Infant and before an Infant an Embryo Now we must search farther what hee was in his Mothers Womb before he was this Embryo or Foetus whether three bubbles or some rude and indigested lump or a conception or coagulation of mixed seed or whether any thing else according to the opinion of writers In the same manner before a Hen or Cock came to perfection and that is called a perfect Animal that can beget its like there was a Chicken before that Chicken there is seen in the egge an Embryo or Foetus and before that Embryo Hieronymus Fabricius Aquapendens hath descried the rudiments of the Head Eyes and Spine of the Back But where he affirms that the Bones are made before the Muscles Heart Liver Lungs and all the Viscera and that all the inward parts ought to exist before the outward he relieth upon probability rather then experience and laying aside the verdict of sense which is grounded upon dissections he flies to petty reasonings borrowed from mechanicks which is very unbeseeming so famous an Anatomist For he ought to have told us what daily changes his own eyes had discovered in the egge ere ever the Foetus came to perfection Especially seeing he professedly wrote the History of the Generation of the Chicken out of the Egge and hath described in pictures what progress is made from day to day It was I say befitting so much diligence to have acquainted us from the allegation of his own sight what things in the egge are made first what last and what happen together and not to have confined himself to the example of building of Ships and Houses to render a cloudy conjecture and perswasion only of the order and manner of forming the parts We therefore according to the Method proposed will explaine first in an Egge and afterwards in other Conceptions of several creatures what is constituted first and what last in a most miraculous order with a most inimitable prudence and wisdome by the great God of nature and at length we will discover what we have found out concerning the first matter out of which and the first efficient by which the foetus is made as also of the order Oeconomy of Generation that thence we may attain to some infallible knowledge of each faculty of the formative and vegetative Soul by the effects of it and of the nature of the Soul it selfe by the parts or organs of the body and their functions Now this indeed we could not perform in all kind of Animals because some of them cannot be gotten and others again are so exceeding small that our eyes can hardly discern them Let it suffice therefore that we have done it in some creatures which are more known to us to whose platform the first originals of all other creatures may be reduced We have made choice therefore of such as might render the credit of our experiments lesse questionable namely larger and perfecter creatures and such as are within our own power For in the larger creatures all things are more conspicuous in the perfecter more distinct and in those that are in our own power conversant amongst us more obvious so that we have liberty at pleasure by searching into them to rescue our observations from wavering hesitation And of this sort in the race of Oviparous creatures are Hens Geese Pigeons Ducks Eishes Shel-fish of both kinds as Lobsters Oysters c. Fishes that have no shells at all Frogs Serpents also Infects as Bees Waspes Butterflies Silkworms And of Viviparous Sheep Goats Dogs Cats all Cattel that divide the Hoofe and in chief the perfectest of all creatures Man himself Having thorough insight knowledge of these things we may then contemplate the abstruse nature of the Vegetative Soul and discern in all creatures what ever the manner order and causes of their Generation because all other creatures agree either generically or specifically with the fore-cited or at the least with some of them and are procreated after the same manner of generation or else in a manner proportioned
branches and propagations of its Veins are blushing with blood nor doth it execute its publick office untill it be throughly drenched with blood And lastly the blood doth so surround and peirce into the whole body and impart heat and life to all its parts that the soul may justly be counted resident in it and for his sake Tota in tota tota in qualibet parte to be all in all and all in every part as the old saying is But it is so far from truth which yet Aristotle and all Physitians affirm that the Liver or Heart is the Author of the Blood that the contrary out of the fabrick of the chicken in the egge is most manifest namely the Blood rather is the Author of the Heart and Liver And this also Physitians before they are aware seem to acknowledge while they conclude that the Parenchyma of the Liver is a certain affusion or conflux of Blood as if it were nothing else but blood congealed Now it must have a being before it can be affused or coagulated and that it is so experience her self openly displayes for blood appears in the egg before there be any track or Rudiment of any such thing as the Body or any of the Viscera And yet no blood can come thither from the Mother to the Fatus as people commonly phansie in Viviparous productions The Liver of Fishes is alwaies whitish though their Veins are purpled and dark And our Hens the better they are crammed so much the more do their Livers impair and grow pallid Green-sickness Virgins that are Cachectical as the habit of their bodies is pale so is their Liver an evident signe of the penury and dearth of Blood Therefore the Liver borrows his heat and complexion from the blood and not the blood from him Hence it is plaine that blood is the prime genital Part whence the soul primarily results and out of which the primary animate part of the Foetus which is the fountain of all the rest both similar and dissimilar is derived which by that means attain their Vital heat and become subservient to it And the Heart is erected for this end and purpose onely that it may by continual pulsation to which the Veins and Arteries are ministerial and subservient entertain this blood and spout it out again up and down through the whole body All which is the clearer discovered by this that the Heart hath not a pulsation in all Animals nor yet at all times when yet the blood or something proportionable to blood is never wanting in any Of the Blood as it is the Principal Part. EXER LII IT is therefore evident even to the Eye that the blood is the Primigenial and so the Genital part that all those attributes recited in the precedent Chapter are consistent with it namely that it is the builder and preserver of the body and principal part wherein the soul hath her Session For as we newly said before any particle of the body appear the blood is born and groweth having a palpitation as Aristotle saith within the Veins moving to and fro with a Pulse and is above all the humours dispersed through the whole body And so long as life doth last the Blood alone is Animate and hot Moreover by his various motions in celerity or slowness vehemence or feebleness c. He plainly discovers his resentment of the affronts which any thing casts upon him and the friendships of such as cherish him We therefore conclude the blood lives and is nourished of it selfe no way depending upon any other part of the body as elder or worthier then it self But whether the whole body depend upon it as being postgenit adjoined and a kind of appendix or retainer to it is not the business of this place I shall only adde what Aristotle confesses Truly the nature of the blood is the cause why very many things befal Animals both in order to their manners and sense So that hence we may perceive the Causes not of life onely in general for you can never discover any other Calidum innatum aut influens innate or influent heat which may be the immediate instrument of the soul besides the Blood but also of longer or shorter life or sleep and wakefulness of Wit and Strength c. For by its tenuity saith Aristotle in the same place and cleanness or purity creatures are wiser and have quicker senses and likewise are either more timorous or couragious angry and furious according as their blood is more dilute and thin or more compact and grosse by fibres Nor is blood the Author of life onely but according to its several discriminations it is the cause of health or diseases And Poysons themselves which assault us from without as poisoned darts or bullets did they not infect the blood would do us no prejudice So that our life and wellfare is derived unto us from the same spring If the blood be over liquid saith Aristotle men grow sick for it degenerates into so serous a gore that some have swet Blood If too much of it stream out they die For by want of blood all the parts do not onely languish presently but the Animal it self soon expires I conceive it inconvenient to set down Experiments to confirm this because they require a peculiar Tract I perceive that the wonderful Circulation of the blood first found out by me is consented to almost by all and that no man hath hitherto made any objection to it greatly worth a confutation Wherefore if I shall subjoine the causes and benefits of that Circulation and lay open some other secrets of the blood as how much it conduceth to the happiness of the creature as also to both soul and body that so men may be cautious to preserve their blood pure and clean by commodious diet I conceive I shall perform an office not more new then useful and acceptable to Philosophers and Physitians nor will this opinion seem so improbable and absurd to any as once to Aristotle namely That the Blood like a Tutelar Deity is the very soul in the body as Critias of old and others thought supposing sense to be the chiefest property of the soul and that sense to be in her by the nature of the Blood Now some concluded it to be the soul because it hath a power of moving by its owne nature As Thales Diogenes Heraclitus Alcmaeon and others But that both sense and motion are in the Blood is conspicuous by many tokens though Aristotle denied it For if he himself compelled by the truth of the thing it self did confess that there was a soul in an egge though the egge were addle and that in the Geniture and Blood was found a divine substance proportionably answering to the Matter of the Stars and that it was the Creators Vice-Roy If some of the Moderns say that the seed of Animals ejected in Coition is animate Why should we not upon as good reason
which he affirms to possess the knowledge and fore-sight of the future action and use of every particular part and Organ As the Art of Physick the Bakers and the Cooks slight which set on work the hot cold moist and dry and such like natural Instruments doe no less require the exercise of reason then Mechanical Trades which either work with their own hand as the Smith the Statuaries and the Potters or other artificial instruments But as in the greater world we say Jovis omnia plena All things are full of the Deity so also in the little edifice of a Chicken and all its actions and operations Digitus Dei the Finger of God or the God of Nature doth reveal himself Therefore if it be lawful for us to judge of the faculties by the operations the Vegetal Operations do rather seem to be executed by Art Election and Providence then the very actions of the Rational soul and the Mind though in a most perfect man the top and pinnacle of whose Knowledge and Understanding consists chiefly according to Apollos verdit in this ut no seat se ipsum that he know himself A more sublime and diviner Artificer therefore then man is seems to make and preserve man and a nobler Agent then a Cock doth produce a Chicken out of the Egge For we acknowledge our Omnipotent God and most high Creator to be every where present in the structure of all creatures living and to point himself out by his Workes whose Instruments the Cock and Hen are in the Generation of the Chicken For it is most apparent that in the Generation of the Chicken out of the egge all things are set up and formed with a most singular providence divine wisdom and an admirable and Incomprehensible Artifice Nor can these Attributes appertain to any but to the Omnipotent Maker of all things under what name soever we cloud and veil him whether it be Mens divina the divine Mind with Aristotle or Anima mundi the soul of the Universe with Plato or with others Natura Naturans Nature of Nature her self or else Saturnus or Jupiter with the Heathen or rather as befits us the Creatour and Father of all things in Heaven and Earth upon whom all Animals and their births depend and at whose Beck or Mandat all things are created and begotten Moreover as I have observed this distribution of the Actions or faculties of the Soul which Fabricius doth premise to the order of Generation of the parts as I apprehend it to be faulty so also I conceive it to be unprofitable and inconvenient or impertinent to our business For we doe not attain to the knowledge of the Effect by the knowledge of the actions or faculties but rather on the contrary from the Effects we ascend to the Faculties for the effects or workes are notiora nobis more known unto us then the faculties from whence they spring and the parts which we see made already are more intelligible in Generation then the actions which framed them Nor do those things which are to be considered and determined in the general observation of all Animals fall properly within the compass of the particular generation of the Chicken out of the Egge But of them more hereafter In the mean time we shall proceed to the Order of the Generation of the parts It remaines saith Fabricius that we consider and contemplate in what Order that is which part is made first and which after in the Egge In prosecution whereof there are two foundations to be laid one in respect of the body the other in relation to the incorporeal substance as the Nature or Soul I call that saith he the Corporeal foundation which depends upon and flowes from the Nature of the body and whereof an instance is easily deduced from things made by art For as every edifice doth first require a foundation upon which the whole frame is to be laid and supported whence the walls are set up which do sustaine the Floors and Roofe and then the Houshold-stuff and other furniture are introduced so doth nature proceed in the Fabrick of Animals For first she laies the Bones as the foundation that all the parts of the Body may grow to hang upon and be established by them Which bones are first made under another capacity For since Bones take their first rise from a most soft and membranous substance and doe afterwards attaine their induration therefore much time must be allotted to the Generation of the Bones that so they may become the hardest parts and hereupon they are begotten first And for this reason Galen did not compare the structure of an Animal to every kind of building but chiefly to that of a Ship For saith he as the foundation and original of the Ship is the Keel from which the sides or planks imbowed and placed at a distance one from the other like a Hurdle are set up on both sides that so the whole frame of the Ship may be afterwards finished out of the Keel as a convenient foundation So in the fabrick of an Animal Nature first stretcheth out the Chine bone with the Ribbes drawn round it as the Keel and congruous principle whereon she foundeth and finisheth the whole Pile But Experience doth abundantly confute this phansie for it is evident that the Bones are rather made last of all For the Bones of the Limbs the Skull and Teeth are not made before the Brain the Muscles and fleshey parts but even after the nativity in the tender and otherwise perfect foetus they are onely Gristles and Membranes and afterwards in tract of time arrive to the solidity of Bones as doth appear by Infants Skulls and the Ribbes and Joints of Embryo's And though it be true that the first platforme of the body appears like a Bent or incurved Keel yet is it of a soft mucous and glutinous consistence no way resembling either the Nature Constitution or Office of a Bone As also the small Globous bodies which are its appendixes designed for the parts of the Head have no solidity at all in them but are onely Vesicles stuffed with clear water which are afterward transformed into the Braine After-braine and Eyes and are at last fenced with the Skull namely after the Bill and Clawes have attained solidity and obduration Wherefore this Contemplation of Fabricius is a sleepy and injurious one He not considering what really is done by nature in the order of Generation but rather what nature according to his phansie ought to have done as if Nature did imitate Art and Art were not rather Natures Ape Which comming into his head himself afterwards saith Satius fuerit dicere c. It is a more diliberate assertion to say that Art was Natures Scholar and wrought by her Copy because as Galen every where pronounceth Nature is of more Antiquity and wiser in her productions then Art And though the bones are the foundation of the whole body without which it can nor stand
nor move yet it is sufficient for them if they are made together with those parts which do rely upon them For where the things which are to be upheld are not in being the Props are provided to no purpose But nature doth nothing rashly nor constitutes parts before there is use of them But all Animals attaine their parts so soon as action and usefulness is required of them And therefore this first foundation of Fabricius his laying countenanced by his own observations in the Egge and Galens simile is clean demolished He seems to come neerer the Mark when hee saith The other foundation of producing the parts in order is desumed from Nature that is the soul which is Queen Regent of the animal body For since there are two degrees of the soul the Vegetal and Sensative and the Vegetal is tempore naturâ prior first both in time and nature because it is common to the very Plants doubtless the Instruments subservient to the Vegetal are first to be made and fitted before those that attend the sensitive and motive faculties especially the more principal ones and where the Queen keeps Court Now these are chiefly two the Liver and the Heart the Liver as the throne of the Vegetal or Nutritive and the Heart as that Minister of State who by his heat and warmth doth enliven and compleat both the Vegetal and other Faculties and therefore holds a strong league and confederacy with the Vegetal Wherefore if after three dayes Incubation you discern in that part of the egge where the Chicken is bred the heart panting as Aristotle also testifieth muse not at it but conclude that the heart relates to the vegetal Faculty and is therefore the first begotten Now it is also consonant to Reason that the Liver also should be Twinne to the Heart and born with it but doth not appear because he wants a palpitation which the Heart hath For even Aristotle himself saith That the Liver and the Heart are constituted in the body upon like grounds so that if there be a Heart there must be a Liver too If therefore the Liver and Heart are first begotten it also followes that the other Organs that are menial servants relating to these two should be begotten together with them as the Lungs for the Heart and for the Liver almost all the parts which are contained in the Lower Belly But all this is very wide from that order and progress which we see in the Egge Nor is it true that the Liver is born together with the Heart nor will that shift serve his turn where he pretends Latere Jecur quia non palpitat that the Liver lyeth concealed because it is not exposed by palpitation For the Eyes the Vena Cava and the Carina the Keel are discerned even from the very first yet have they no palpitation What impediment then to barre the Liver and Lungs if they are then in being from being seen Nay he himself in his Figure or Table representing the fourth day hath described a small Point in the midst and yet he hath not signified any palpitation belonging to it nor did he own it for the Heart but supposed it to be the first rudiment of the body wherefore he speaks onely out of conjecture and preentertained opinion when he proclaims the Principality of the Liver as other men have also done namely Aldrovandus and Parisanus who casually lighting upon two Points and could not discover a Pulse in both at one and the same time conceived the one to be the Heart and the other the Liver As if the Liver had any pulse at all but those two Points are the two Vesiculae Pulsantes returning answer to each other in alternate contractions as hath been noted in our History Wherefore either Fabricius is deceived or doth deceive where he saith Presently in the first progress of generation the Liver Heart Veines Arteries Lungs and all the parts contained in the lower belly likewise the Keel that is the Head with the Eyes and the whole Spine and Chest are born and framed For the Heart Veins and Arteries are perfectly distinguished for some time before the Keel and the Carina or Keel before the Eyes and the Eyes the Bill and Sides before the Members contained in the lower belly and also the Stomack and Guts before the Liver or Lungs are discerned And that order is observed in generation which we shall presently describe He is likewise deceived when he decrees the Vegetal part to have a being both in time and nature before the sensitive and the motive For that which is first in Nature is for the most part after in the order of Generation In time indeed the Vegetal part is before because the sensitive soule cannot be without it For it cannot actually exist in the body without Organs it being Actus corporis Organici the Act of the Organical body but the sensitive and motive Organs are the workmanship of the vegetative and the sensitive soul before it actually exist is tanquam Trigonus in Tetragono like a Triangle in a Quadrangle But Nature first intends that which is most principal and noble and therefore the Vegetal faculty is after in the order of Nature as being subservient to the sensitive and motive Faculty Of the Order of Parts in Generation according to Aristotle EXER LV. THat which relates to the order of Generation according to Aristotle is thus When the Conception is ordained it proceeds as Seeds do For Seeds also have a first Principle in themselves which being first contained in potentiâ when by and by it is severed it sends forth a bud and a root whereby it attracts aliment for it requires growth So in some sort in a conception where the parts are all in potentiâ the Principle is chiefly active This Principle in an Egge analogous to the blossom of Plants we with Fabricius call Macula a Speck or Cicatricula a small Cicatrice which we have avouched to be the principal particle in which all the other parts are in potentiâ whence afterwards they arise in their order For in it is contained that thing be it what it will which renders the Egge prolifical and there is the first effect of the vegetal heat and operation of the Forming faculty first discovered Macula isthaec that Speck as hath been shewed is presently dilated after incubation and divided into Circles in whose Center a small white Point like the Cicatricula in the ball of the Eye doth display it self where by and by the Punctum rubrum the Red point is discovered panting with the capillary branches of Veines containing blood and that presently so soon as ever the Colliquamentum by us mentioned is framed of that Macula Wherefore Aristotle proceeds The Heart is first actually discerned and that not onely discoverable to sense but according to reason For since that which is begotten is now disjoyned from both parents it ought to demean govern and dispose of it self as
ascititious Wardrobe or some few daies Pageantry or Masquingstuff but a lasting one and Natures liberal Dowry which delights not onely in the Embroidery of Animals and chiefly of Birds but hath imploied her Pencil upon Flowers and Plants adorning them with wonderful Art and variety of colours Certain Paradoxes and Problemes to be considered of concerning this Subject EXEECIT LVII THus far have we spoken concerning the Order of Generation by which the difference between those creatures which are produced by a Metamorphosis and those which are borne by an Epigenesis hath been discovered as also between those that spring from a Worme and those that arise from an Egge for these are bodied out of one part of the prepared matter and fed with the other But they take up the whole matter in their frame or Constitution these are together augmented and formed they are augmented first and from a Canker-Worme grow into an Aurelia and are afterwards formed and made consummate Animals as Butterflies Silk-wormes and such like Animals And therefore Aristotle as Fabricius observes as he constitutes a kind of twofold nature of the egge and a kind of twofold Egge in these creatures so he laies down a twofold action and a twofold Animal produced by it For saith he out of the first egges which are the first rudiments of the Generation a Worm constantly doth proceed namely out of the Egges of Files Ants Bees Silk-wormes c. in which a certain fluid matter is conteined and out of all that fluid matter is the Worme made But out of the second Egges which are layed by the Worm himselfe the Butterflie is born and proceeds that is a Volatile Animal which is concluded in a kind of Shell Skin little bag or egge and when that bag is broken it departs thence as Aristotle delivereth concerning the Locusts egges Lastly these are perfected by a succession of parts but they namely such as are generated by a Metamorphosis are made intire at once And in the same manner are both Spontaneous productions generated which obtain their first matter and first extraction from putrefaction filth dew excrements or out of the parts of Plants or Animals as also those issues which proceed from the seed of Univocal Animals For it is common to all Animals to desume their Original from seed or an egge whether that seed proceed from other Animals of the same species or happen there casually from some thing else For as it sometimes befalls in Art so also in Nature namely that the same things are sometimes casuall which at other times are effected by Art as Aristotle doth instance in Health so in like manner is the Generation of any Animals as far as they proceed from Seed whether their seed be casuall or else proceed from an Univocal Agent of the same kind For even in casuall seed there is a motive principle of Generation which can generate out of it self and by it self and the same thing is found in it as in Univocal Animals namely a power to form a living creature But of this more at large hereafter Now some Paradoxes do here arise to be examined For since the Macula is dilated the Colliquamentum concocted and prepared and many other things not without great providence ordered towards the formation and growth of the Chicken before any particle of the Chicken appear what should hinder the Innate beat and vegetative soul of the Chicken to be existent before the Chicken it self For what can produce the effects and operations of Life but that which is the cause and efficient of those Effects and Operations namely the heat and faculty of the Vegetal soul And therefore the soul doth not seem to be Actus corporis Organici vitam habentis in potentiâ the Act of an Organical body which hath life in it in potentiâ for we conceive the form of the Chicken to be such an Act. Now in what can we imagine the form or soul of the Chicken to be but in the Chicken it self unless we allow the forms to be separate or grant a Metempsychôsis But this is most manifest where the same Animal lives by a succession of forms as Aristotle speaks as for example Out of a Canker-worm an Aurelia and then a Butterfly For the same Efficient Nutritive and Preserving principle must needs be in each of these unless we will place one soul in the Boy another in the Young man and a third in the Old or affirm that the Canker-worm and that worm which becomes a Silk-worm also the Silk-worm and the Butterfly have the same form of which matter Aristotle hath accurately written and whereof more largely hereafter Again it seems a Paradox that the blood should be made and move and be endowed with Vital spirits before any sanguifying or Motive Organs are constituted at all Nor is it less new and unheard of that there should be Sense and Motion in the Foetus before his brain is made for the Foetus moves contracts and extends himself when there is nothing yet appears for a brain but clear water Besides the body is nourished and encreased before the Organs dedicated to Concoction namely the Stomack and Liver are formed And likewise Sanguification which is the second Concoction is performed before the first which is by the Stomack and called Chylification The Excrements of the first and second Concoction namely in the Guts and the two bladders of Urine one the other of Gall are coetaneous to the concocting Instruments themselves Lastly there is a Minde Providence and Understanding not onely in the Vegetal part of the soul but even before the soul it self procuring disposing and ordering all things and artificially molding the future foetus to a resemblance with his parents even from the very first original and all this to advance the being and well being of the Foetus Concerning which Resemblance we may enquire what should be the cause why the Foetus sometimes resembles the Father sometimes the Mother and sometimes also the Progenitors and those either of the Father or Mothers side And this the rather since upon one single coition and at the same moment of time many Egges are fructified together This also is a wonderful thing that the Virtues and Vices the Diseases the Marks the Moles or Spots should be transferred to Posterity and that into some onely of the Progeny and not unto all In the race of Cocks some are of a generous spirit and born to battle who will dye rather then turn their backs upon their Adversaries and yet their Nephews unless they proceed of like parents do by degrees forfeit their galantry according to that saying Fortes creantur fortibus In many other Animals and especially in Man the Bravery of the Succession or Family is observable and many of the Indowments both of body and soul are derived down to it ex traduce This I have often admired that when the Issue hath obtained a mixt fabrick or composition from both Parents and that in
For it doth not these offices as as it is Elementary and deriveth its original from Fire but in as much as it is made the Primigenial Heat and most immediate and convenient instrument of life it self by being impowred by the Plastical virtue and function of the Vegetative soul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Blood is the Vegetal part of Man saith Suidas which is true also of all other Animals And Virgil seemeth to have intended as much where he saith Unâ eâdemque viâ sanguisque Animusque sequuntur Both Soul and Blood Stream in one Flood The Blood therefore is a Spirit in regard of its excellent power and virtue and also celestial because the Soul is an Inne-mate in that spirit which Soul is of a nature answerable in proportion to the Element of the Stars that is something which beareth an Analogy to the Heavens as being the Instrument and Deputy of the Heavens And so in this manner all natural bodies fall under a double consideration namely as they are considered in their private capacity concluded within the bounds of their own proper nature or else as they are the Instruments of a nobler Agent and superiour power For being considered in their own proper abilities it is perhaps no question but that being all subject to generation and corruption they do derive their original from the Elements and act according to their rule but being considered as they are the Instruments of a more worthy Agent and regulated thereby they do not now act of themselves but by the guidance of another and thereupon seem to participate of another more divine Essence and so exceed the power of the Elements So likewise the heat of the blood is an animal heat inasmuch as it is guided in its operations by the soul and also a Celestial heat as being subservient to the Heavens and lastly a Divine heat in that it is the Instrument of Almighty God as we have formerly said where we also did demonstrate that the Male and Female are the Instruments of the Sun the Heavens and of God himself as being subservient to the generation of Animals The Inferiour World according to Aristotle is so continuous to the Superiour Orbes that all its motions and mutations do seem to borrow their original and regulation from them And truly in this World which the Greeks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from the beauty of its order the inferiour and corruptible things are subservient to the superior and incorruptible and yet they all are obedient to the will of the Almighty and Eternal Creator They therefore who conceive that in a body compounded of the Elements it cannot act beyond the power of the Elements except it do also participate of another more divine body and upon that ground do suppose those Spirits whereof they treat to be constituted partly out of the Elements and partly out of a certain Aetherial and Celestial substance do seem to have built their reasons upon a very shallow foundation For you can hardly finde out any Elementary body which doth not in its actions surpass its own proper power Not to seek farre for an instance which is every where obvious the Aire and the Water while they carry ships to the farthest Indies and round the world and many times also into contrary parts while they Grinde Bake Sift drain deep Wells cut Timber in sunder kindle fires bear up some things and overwhelm others and perform many other innumerable and wonderfull offices do they not seem to act above the power of Elements So also Fire how many and how strange employments doth it undergo viz. in the Kitchen and also in the Shops of such as deal in Mettles and in the Chymists furnace by subâ—â—â—ation fusion concoction corruption coagulation and infinite other uses What shall we say of it when Iron it self is produced by its assistance quod terram domat quaetit oppida bello Which tills the Field And makes Towns yeild When the Load-stone to which Thales did therefore ascribe a Soul draws Iron unto it and that Mettle which subdueth all opposers as Pliny speaketh pursueth after I know not what vanity and the Needle also being only touched by this Loadstone doth still direct it self towards the Poles of the world When our Clocks do faithfully strike all the houres both of Day and Night do they not seem to partake of another Body besides the Elements and that more divine then the Elements Since then such excellent Operations are produced by the dominion and sway of Art which operations do farre exceed the power of the Materials themselves what shall we then think may be produced by the prescript and regiment of Nature whom Art doth onely imitate And if they effect such wonderfull things in obedience to Men what performances may we expect from them when they are instruments in the hands of God himself In short therefore this distinction is necessary namely that no Primary or first Agent doth act any thing beyond its own power but every Instrumental Agent doth exceed its own power for it acts not onely by its own power but also by the virtue of the superiour efficient They therefore which deny such eminent endowments to the blood and flye up to Heaven to fetch down I know not what Spirits to whom they may ascribe those divine operations they do not know or at least do not consider that the work of Generation and of Nutrition also which is indeed a Species of Generation for whose sake they attribute such notable prerogatives to those Spirits doth much exceed the power of those spirits themselvs not of those spirits only but even of the Vegetal Soul nay of the Sensitive in a word of the Rational soul her self and not the power only but the very apprehension of the Rational soul for the Nature and Order of Generation is truly admirable and divine beyond the comprehension and grasp of our thoughts or understanding That it may therefore more clearly appear that those eminent attributes which learned men bestow upon the Spirits and the Innate Heat do belong to the blood alone These few following considerations do offer themselves over and above those things which are wonderfully evident in an Egge before any rudiment of the Chicken appear and also in a perfect and adult Foetus Namely that the blood being considered absolutely in it self out of the Veins as it is an elementary substance and composed of several parts namly of serous thin crass and concrete parts is called Cruor Gore and doth possess a few onely and those obscure abilities But being in the veins as it is a part of the body and that also an Animate and Genital part and the Immediate Instrument and primary seat of the soul and also as it seemeth to partake of another more divine body and is inspired with a divine animal heat it is then endowed with excellent abilities and answerable in proportion to the element of the Stars
white is turned into a kind of straw-coloured substance For that complexion is in the the thicker white of all egges that are stale and is daily increased in them namely according as the Egge groweth Staler as is said and that without any assistance of veins by reason of the thinner substance exhaling But the Foetus growing bigger as we shall declare in its place and the circles of the branches of the veins being disseminated up and down part of both the juyces are dissolved not as Aldrovandus would have it by an innate vertue of the veins but by the heat of the blood inhabiting there For into what part soever of the moisturer the foresaid veins extend their Territories there presently appears a colliquation or resolution in the bordering parts and therefore the Yolk at that time seems double because its superior part which is joined to the cavity above about the obtuse angle being more mollified and dissolved then the rest of the Yolk appears like melted Wax compared to the other cold compacted part And upon that score as all melted things do it obtaineth a larger roome And that Upper part liquefied by the genital warmth is disterminated from the other liquors and especially from the White by a peculiar most thin coat of its own Whence it happens that a breach being made upon this slender frail and invisible membrane there presently follows a confusion and mixture of the Yolk and White which disturbs the whole frame And it is many times a cause to frustrate and void Generation when those liquors become to be of a diverse nay of a contrary nature according to that Text in Aristotle so often cited Egges are depraved and made addle most in hot weather and that upon good reason For as Wines grow sower in hotter weather the dregs being subverted for that is the cause of their depravation so Egges are destroyed their Yolk being corrupted for these are the more terrene and earthy parts in both So that Wine is disturbed by a commixture of the dregs and the Egges by diffusion of the Yolk And hither you may justly reduce that of him too where he saith Egges that are under the Henne in tempestuous thunders are corrupted For the exceeding smal membrane is by so great a noise quickly torne asunder And therefore perhaps confused and putrid Egges are called Ova Cynosura because as we have observed it thunders most in the Dog-days And therefore Columella rightly admonisheth that most men deeme the Summer-Solstice to be inconvenient for hatching of chickens This is most certain that Egges suffer quassation concussion and dissolution very easily if any man disturb them while the Hen is Sitting because at that time the liquors in them are liquefied and swell and the membranes embracing them are dilated and grow tender The fourth Inspection of the Egge EXERCIT. XVIII THE fifth day of Incubation is discerned first saith Aristotle the body of the Pullus being very small and white wherein the head is conspicum and in it the eyes much turgent which continue so a long time for it is long ere they abate and connive But in the lower part of the body there is no part â—â— first extant correspondent to the upper But thâ—sâ— Branches which shoot out from the Heart one tending to the ambient membrane the other to the Yolk do suppâ—â— the office of the Navel The original of the Chicken therefore from the White but its nourishment from the Yolk by the Navel By which words Aristotle seems to distribâ—â—â— the whole Generation of the Pullus into three classâ—â— or orders namely from the first day of Incubation to the fifth and thence on to the tenth or fourteenth and so on to the twentieth As if he had oâ—â— recorded those things in his History which he â— covered at these three Inspections The great changes in the Egge do indeed happen at these times as if by these Decretory days as by three distinct degrees the progresse of the perfect Egge to the utmost exclusion of the Chicken were distinguished For the fourth day the first particle of the Foetus namely the Punctum saliens and the Blood appear and after that the Foetus is corporated The Seventh the Chicken is distinguished into parts and beginnes to move The tenth it beginnes to be down-feathered about the twentieth it breathes and cryes according to its kind and seeks to make its escape The Life which it obtains about the fourth day seems to emulate that of Plants and is to be esteemed onely a vegitative animation But from that to the tenth it enjoyes a sensative and moving soul as Animals do and after that it is compleated by degrees and being adorned with Plâ—â—es Bill Clawes and other furniture it hastens to get out that being at length emancipated it may be unconfined and free Aristotle therefore enumerates amongst those things which befall after the fourth day chiefly three that is to say the fabrick of the body the branchings of the veines which now supply the Nature and Office of the Navel and the matter or substance whence the Foetus doth first spring and is constituted and nourished Concerning the Fabrick of the Body he relates four things first what magnitude it is of secondly what complexion thirdly what parts are most conspicuous namely the Head and Eyes and lastly what distinction or difference there is between the Parts Truth is the Body is exceeding small resembling in form that common worm or Maggot out of which the Flie is bred it is also white of colour like that little Worm which the Flie depositeth in putrified flesh to be cherished and bred up and he elegantly addes that it is most notorious from its Head and Eyes For that which first appears is a similar and indistinct Body as if it were some concrete and congealed substance of the colliquamentum it self like that Gelly which is made of the decoction of Harts-horn being like a transparent cloud which were hardly distinguishable were it not divided as it were into two parts whereof the one lies in a heap together and is much larger then the other being the Rudimens of the Head which is first discerned on the fifth day in which the Eyes are anon manifestly distinguished which at first are the biggest of all much puffed up and prominent and are discriminated both from the rest of the Head and the whole Body besides by a certain blackness cast round about them Any one of these is larger then the whole Head as also the Head alone exceeds all there of the Body in magnitude This Whiteness of the Body endureth a while as also the tumor of the Eyes which are filled also with a most clear moisture or water within but are dark and blackish without as it is also with the Brain that is to say to the tenth day and more for saith Aristotle It is late ere they diminish and contract to their allotted proportion Nay according to my observation
both But how can there be a commixture of souls if according to Aristotle the soul as being the form be an Act and a Substance For no man can deny but that that thing whatsoever it be which is the Principle and Cause of those Effects which we see produced in a Fertile Egge is a substance susceptible of divers powers forces and faculties as also of several conditions vertues vices health and sicknesse For some Egges are longer lived then others and some do procreate Chickens endowed with the vertues and soundnesse of constitution of the parents and others produce them inclinable to distempers Nor can we for this inconvenience accuse the Matter out of which they are generated since the diseases of the Male are sometimes transferred to the Chickens who is not concerned any thing at all in the Matter of the egge For from the Male the Plastical and Generative faculty onely doth proceed which renders the egge fertile but doth constitute no part of it For the Geniture which is emitted from the Male in Coition doth not enter into the Matrix where the Egge is formed Nor as we have said before and Fabricius also joynes in the Suffrage can it any way penetrate those recesses and much lesse the Ovary which is seated neer the Precincture or Midriffe of the body that so it might communicate any portion of the Matter or any thing at all besides its single Vertue For constant experience testifies that one and the same act of Coition doth fructifie many egges together and not onely those that are existent in the Uterus and the Ovary but those also that are not yet begun as we shall declare hereafter and have already proved in our History If therefore the Egge be rendered Fertile from its own proper soul or be endowed with an innate fructifying principle of its own by which either a dunghil Chicken or a mongrel-issue between the dunghil-Henne and the Cock-Pheasant doth arise and that either Male or Female like the Male or Female-Parent sound or sickly we must then conclude that the Egge even while it is contained in the Ovary doth not live by the Soul of the â—â—â—ne but is a freeborn Independant Issue from 〈◊〉 very first original As the Acorne taken off from the Tree and the Seed from the Plant are no longer to be counted parts of them but creatures as it were at their own dispose living and subsisting by an inbred vegetative faculty peculiarly their own Now if we affirm that a Fertile Egge hath a soul a question will arise whether that self-same soul be now at present in the Egge and how after in the Chicken or whether their souls be distinct For we must of necessity acknowledge that some Principle there is which doth constitute and nourish the egge and also that there is a Principle which produceth and sustaineth the Chicken The question therefore is whether the Principle or soul of the Egge and Chicken be one and the same or more then one and diverse For if there be more then one soul namely one which belongs to the Egge and another to the Chicken it will be farther enquired whence and at what time the Chickens soul arrives to it And what that is in the Egge which dilates the Cicatricula raises the Yolk to the top and produces that Eye which we call the Colliquamentum alters the Constitution of the liquors and doth predispose all things for the fabrick and structure of the Chicken when as yet there is nothing at all of the chicken existent Whence also can we pretend that proper and convenient Aliment is derived to â—â—â— Chicken to sustain and augment it when there iâ— yet no Chicken at all For these operations sâ—â— to belong to the Vegetative soul of the Chicken â—â— cause they relate to the Chickens use namely â—â— nutrition and Augmentaetion But now when the fabrick of the Chicken is in hand and half-perfected what is it that makes the Foetus One â—â— the same thing with the Liquors conjoining the together by continuity and concrescence What is it that feeds and enlarges the Pullus that doth vindicate those juices which are advantageous to its nourishment from Putrefaction preparing melting down and concocting them Since the soul is the Act of an Organical Body which hath life in Potentiâ it is an incredible thing that that soul should be in the Chicken before its body have received any Organization Nor yet can we believe that the soul of the egge the chicken is one and the same for the soul is the Preserver of that thing only whose soul it is but the Puttus and the Egge are two distinct things and do exercise not only distinct vital operations but Contrary in so much that one of them seems to result from the Corruption of the other May we then say that the Cause and Principle of life to them both is one and the same namely to the Chicken which is yet but an Embryo and to the rest of the Egge as if it were the simple and single act of one and the some body or as if out of the parts constituting â—â—â— natural body one soul did spring which were all in the whole as they say and all in every part As we finde in the Trunk Leaves and Fruits â—â—â— Tree in which wheresoever we make a separation or division be it in what part it will wee say that the first Cause and Principle of that part â—â— the same with that of the Whole as being the Form and End of the One but the Principle only of the Other For so in a Line in what point soever a division be made it will be the End of the â—ore-going part but the Beginning of the subsequent And the same thing may seem to befall in â—â—lity and Motion namely in every Transmutation and Generation And so much at present concerning these matters which we shall more exactly and more copiously handle when we treat in General of the Nature of the Soul of the Foetus of any Animal whatsoever as also what it is From whence and when it comes What part it takes first possession of and how it is all in the Whole and all in every part And also how it is the same and yet diverse All which we shall determine and resolve out of multiplied experiments That the Egge is not the Production of the Womb but of the Soul EXER XXVII AS we conclude saith Fabricius the Action of the Stomack to be Chylification and the action of the Testicles to be the Generation of Seed because the Chyle is found in the Stomack and Seed in the Testicles So we positively resolve that the Generation of Egges is the action of the Uterus of the Fowle because the egge is found resident there So then we evidently know and understand which is the Instrument and Place of the Generation of Egges But 〈◊〉 againe since there are two Wombs in a Fowle thâ— Superior and Inferior and
and Species of an Animal And againe the Female may seem to have most â—ight to the title of Efficient for he saith in Proâ—â—sse of time these diverse Parents produce a diverse 〈◊〉 the off-spring at length assuming like form with the Hen. As if the Seed of the Male were lesse powerful and did in time lose the Species which it imprints as being razed out and expunged by 〈◊〉 more potent Efficient And this that instance concerning the soil doth more strengthen For â—â—reign Seed is at last transformed according to the â—â—ture of the soile where it growes By all which it 〈◊〉 probable that the Female is a stronger 〈◊〉 in Generation then the Male For in the Universe likewise the Earth is held to be as it were the Female and the Mother But the Heavens and the Sun and the other Bodies of that kind Philosopherâ— call by the name of Father and Genitor Now the Earth also produceth many things of its own accord without any Seed And amongst Animals some Females do procreate of themselves without a Male thus the Henne generates a Subventaneous Egge but the Male never begetteth any thing without a Female Nay by those very Arguments which contend to prove the Male to be the Principle of Generation and the primary Efficient the energy or efficiency of the Female seems to be confirmed and ratified For that is to be counted the Primary Efficient in which the reason of the foetus and form of the Production is most eminent and whose apparent similitude is discovered in the foetus and also which hath an existence it self before and then generates Since therefore the Form Reason and Similitude of thè foetus is no lesse not more in the Female then in the Male and she also is in being before as a Primary Mover We may well conclude that the Female is as eminent an Efficient of Generation as the Male. And though Aristotle truly say that the Conception or egge assumes no part of its body from the Male but onely its form species and soul and that the Female contributes onely the body and quantity Yet it doth no way appear to the contrary 〈◊〉 that the Female doth contribute in some sâ—â— both Form Species and Soul and not the Maâ—â— singly As is evident in the Hen which produâ—â— Egges without a Male as the Trees beare the Fruits Herbs and Seed without any distinction of Sexes at all And Aristotle himself confessâ— that even a Subventaneous Egge hath a Soul The Female therefore must be the Efficient Cause of the Egge And yet though there be a Soul in the Subventaneous Egge yet that Soul is not Prolifical and therefore we must acknowledge that the Henne is not properly the Efficient of a Perfect Egge but that she is so made by Authority and Commission procured from the Cock For an Egge except it be Prolifical cannot justly be said to be Perfect Now such an Egge is produced onely by the Male or rather by the Henne having received such instructions from the Cock as if from his Coition the Female did receive the Art Reason Forme lawes Rule and Model of the future Foetus Thus the Female like a fruitful Tree being made fertile by Coition is made Oviparous bearing perfect and Prolifical Egges For though the Henne have at present no rudiment of Egges at all ready in the Ovary yet being fructified upon Coition â—he suddainly after both hath and layes Egges and those also Prolifical ones And here the experiment of poor Women is of use Which having a Hen at home but never a Cock they commit her for a day or two to a neighbours Cock and from that small communication all her egges succeed fruitful for all that seson That is not onely those Egges which now are Yolks and onely want a White or else have some Rudiment of their future growth though never so litle but even those Egges also which are not yet begun at all and are to be conceived a great while hence are all rendered fruitfull by the same vertue The Benefit of this Disquisition con cerning Fecundity EXERCIT. XXX THe Disquisition wherein we examine What it is in the Egge that renders it fruitful is very subtle and difficult and of exceeding great use As also what is in the Conception what in the Seed and what in the Hen that confers Fecundity upon them Likewise what in the Cock distinguisheth him from a barren cock Is it the same cause which we call the Soule in the Foetus or some part of the Vegetative Soul For the knowledge of the First Cause conduceth much to the compleat science of Generation For Science springs from Known Causes especially those that are the first Causes Nor is this indagation lesse useful to the knowledge of the Nature of the Soul But when once the verity of this is throughly discovered not onely Aristotles opinion concerning the Causes of Generation is refuted and chastised but even those things also which Physitians have written against him are easily disproved Our Quere therefore is whether that which affords the Fertility to the Egge Yolk Papula or Whelke Cock Hen and to its Womb be one and the same thing or diverse Likewise whether it be a Substance from whence this vertue flowes For it seems to be susceptible of Powers Faculties and Accidents Or whether it be also a Corporeal thing For that seems to be mixt it self which generates a mixt thing namely a similitude common to both Cock and Hen such as is that ambiguous Species produced by a Cock-Phesant and a Dung bil Hen. It seems also to be a Corporeal thing which suffers from without in so much that it doth not onely produce feeble issues but deformed also and sickly ones and such as are obnoxious to and do inherit the Virtues and Vices of their Parents We may also make a question concerning each particular whether that which confers the Fertility be ingenerated or comes from without Namely whether it be transferred from the Egge to the Chicken from the Hen to the Egge and from the Cock to the Hen. For it seemes to be a thing ex Traduce namely which is transferred from the Cock to the Hen and from Her to the Egge the Womb and the Ovary From the Seed to the Plant and back again from the Plant to the Seed For this is common to all things that are perpetuated by Generation namely that their first rise should result from Seed Now the Seed the Conception and the Egge are all of one and the same kinde and that which renders these Fruitful is in all of them the same thing or something of a like nature and that is some divine thing and hath an analogy to the Heavens to Art Intellect and Providence As is plain by the wonderful operations artifice and counsel of those creatures in whom nothing is constituted in vain rashly or by chance but all for some Good and to some End We shall hereafter be
by coition He sreaks of a subventaneous egg and addes further But those eggs which are conceived by coition and are 〈◊〉 discovered to have obtained some portion of the White they becom fruitful by virtue of that Cock who was first concerned in coition for they are now furnished with both Principles Whereby he seems to confess that the Female also is an Efficient in Generation or hath a generative power because every female hath a vegetative â—â—ule now generation is a faculty of the vegetative soule And upon this ground when he propounds the difference between the male and female he even there owns them to be Generative 〈◊〉 for he saith We call that animal the male which begets or generates in another and that the female which generates in it self And therefore according to Him both doe Generate and as have is in both a vegetative soul so is there in both Generative power But how these differ hath been â—â—ved before in the History of the Egge Nameâ—â— the Hen alone by her self without any assistance of the Cock Generates a subventaneous egg as 〈◊〉 do from themselves produce a fruit but she 〈◊〉 not produce a fortile egge with out either â—â— antecedent or subsequent Coition of the Cock the female doth generate but it is only in some 〈◊〉 and the males coition is required that that â—â—rative faculty should be perfected in the female that so she may not only bring forth an 〈◊〉 but such an egge that may produce a chicken 〈◊〉 for this defect in the females generation the 〈◊〉 seems to have been created as shall herein appeare that so what the female cannot compleat alone namely the seed or fertile egge that the male should supply by coition wherein he doth impart that power either to the Hen or the Egge A perfect Henne-egge hath two Colours EXERCIT. XXXVI ALl eggs therefore are not perfect eggs but some are reputed imperfect because they have not yet attained their just magnitude which they afterwards doe receive abroad And others be-because they are yet improlifical and afterward doe borrow a prolifical power from without as Fishes eggs or the spawn of fishes Other eggs also are by Aristotle counted imperfect because they are of one colour onely but those that are of two colours perfect as being constituted of a Yolk and White which are conceived to be more distinct better concocted and endowed with more heat And therefore those that are called Ovâ— Centenina which Fabricius conceits to be onely constituted of the Reliques and Remainders of the White are only of one colour and repâ—â—â—â— imperfect because of the defect of their heat and their own imbecillity But amongst all the eggâ— that are there is none more perfect then the Hen which is still produced perfect and adorned with all its liquors and accoutrements and of a convenient and just magnitude Now Aristotle gives this reason why it comes to pass that some Eggs are of two colours and others of one only because saith He in hotter Animals those things out of which the rudiments of Generation and those out of which the Aliment is derived are always distinct and apart and of them one is white and the other yellow As if the Chicken took its life from the White and were onely fed by the Yolk And in the same place he saith That part of it which is hot doth more resemble the complexion of the parts that are to be made but that which is the more terrene part affords onely supply to the body and keeps at greater distance from it And therefore in eggs that have two colours the Animal assumes its beginning from the White For the Animal rudiment is in the White and the nourishment is derived from the Yolk Therefore we see his opinion is that the foresaid Liquors are distinct and that eggs are produced party-coloured And these Assertions of his are partly true and partly false For it is false that the Chicken is made out of the White and fed by the Yolk For by our History of the Fabrick of the Chicken both from the dissemination of the Umbilical Vessels and the distribution of their propagations which without all question doe serve for the attraction of the Aliment it is most manifest that both the constituting matter and the Aliment are from the first original supplied both from the yolk and white for some part of both these liquors doth melt and dissolve And also the Macula by whose first dilatation the Colliquamentum is made which is also stiled by us the Oculus or Eye of the Egge is plainly seen to be imprinted into the 〈◊〉 of the Yolk And yet for all this the distinction of the egg into the yolk white doth seem to be very necessary because those two Liquors as they are without all doubt of a diverse nature so doe they serve to a diverse use And that is the reason why they are distinct in every perfect egg one of them being the Aliment which is next at hand and the other that which is farther off with the one the foetus is sustained at its first formation with the other in succeeding time For it is most unquestionable as Fabricius affirmes truly and we also shall explain anon that both the Yolk and White are the Aliment of the chicken and thâ—â— the White is first spent Wherefore I agree with Aristotle against the Physitians that the White is the most sincere most concocted and elaborate part of the Egge and therefore as being the better part it encompasseth the whole circumference of the egge which is yet in the Wombe whilest the Yolke as the more terrestrial part doth reside in the Center For the White seemes to containe 〈◊〉 plenteous animal heat in it and therefore to be the neerer and first nourishment And so also upon the same account the exteriour part of the White seems to be more simple and better concocted then the interiour In that Physitians affirme that the Yolke is the hotter part of the egge and most nourishing I conceive they understand it in relation to us as it is become our nourishment not as if it doth supply more congruous aliment to the chicken in the Egge And this appeares out of our History of the Fabrick of the Chicken which doth first 〈◊〉 upon and devoure the thinner part of the white before the grosser as if it were more proper diet and did more easily submit to transmutation into the substance of the future foetus And therefore the yolk seems to be a remoter and more differred entertainment then the white for all the white is quite and clean spent before any notable invasion is made upon the yolk Nay the yolk is found in the Abdomen of the Chicken even after his exclusion as if it were reserved for the Infant chicken instead of Milk The two-coloured egges therefore are most perfect as being more distinct and wrought up by a more vigorous heat For since there ought to
the Winds the Sun the Heavens Jupiter the Soul and in general Nature which is the Principle of Motion and Rest And so by the same rule Any of the Stoicks who thought the Soul to be fire may decree fire the efficient cause of Animals because fire doth nourish and augment it self and seems in some sort to live at its own dispose and liberty though not our destructive culinary fire but the Natural Celestial Vegetative Generating and Healthy fire which the Heathen worshipped by the name of Jupiter whom they called the Father of Men and Things not his lame Brother Vulcan whose ayd and benefit we notwithstanding daily use in several employments to our great advantage but the divine Animal Spirit the Author of Living creatures And therefore Aristotle saith That this question concerning the Efficient is very dubious namely Whether it be an extrinsecal thing or something inserted in the Geniture or Seed and Whether it be a part of the soul or the soul or something which hath a soul Wherefore that we may deliver and rid our selves of the maze and labyrinth of the manifold Efficient causes in this disquisition of the Efficient of the Chicken we have need of Ariadnes Clew woven and cunningly wrought of the Observations of almost all Creatures living And therefore it is to be deferred to a more general Inquest In the mean time we shall recount those things which relating to the particular generation of the Chicken out of the egge do manifestly appear or are strangers to the common perswasion or else do require any further search How the Efficient cause of the Chicken doth operate according to Aristotle EXERCIT. XLVII ALl men generally confess the Male to be the primary efficient cause in Generation as in whom the Species or Form resides And they farther affirm that his Geniture being emitted in coition doth cause both the being and fertility of the Egge But how the seed of the Cock doth produce the chicken out of the Egge neither the Antient nor Modern Philosophers and Physitians have sufficiently explained nor yet solved the question proposed by Aristotle Nay Aristotle himself hath not done it He saith The Male doth not conduce to the Quantity but the Quality and is Principium Motûs the Principle of Mutation but the Female contributes the matter And a while after Every Male doth not emit seed nor is it any part of the Foetus in those that do emit it As nothing which passeth from the Carpenter contributes to the matter of the Wood nor is there any part of the Carpenters art in that which is made but the form and species doth exist in the matter per motum ab illo by the motion or mutation which proceeds from him Now the soule in which the form and knowledge is moves the hands or other members by the motion of a certain quality which motion is either diverse in such as make a diverse thing or the same in such as make the same But the hands and instruments move the matter So the Nature of the Male which emitteth seed imployes that seed as an Instrument and having motion actually in it as in the productions of Art the Instruments are moved for in them in some sort the motion of Art is implanted By which words he seems to imply that Generation is made by the motion of a certain Quality As in Art though the first cause namely ratio operis the reason or ground of the work be in the soul of the Artist yet afterward the work is effected by the motion of the hands or other Instruments and though the first cause be removed as in automatis things that seem to move of themselves yet is it in some sort said to move that which at present it doth not touch but hath touched formerly so long as the motion goes on in the Instruments And in the following Book he hath these words The seed of the Male when now it hath access into the womb of the Female it doth coagulate and cause a consistence in the purest part of the excrement meaning the menstruous blood residing in the womb and doth transmute the matter which lies ready in the womb by such a motion or mutation that at last though the seed vanish after the motion is performed some part of the foetus is existent and that an animate part as the heart which now doth augment and dispose it self as a Son who is free from his Father and hath taken a house of his own It is necessary therefore that there be some principle by which afterwards the order of the members may be delineated and all things disposed which pertain to the absolution and complement of the Animal and from which growth and motion may arrive to the rest of the parts and be the author of all the similar and dissimilar parts and of their last aliment For that which is now an Animal doth increase but the last aliment of the Animal is blood or something proportionable to blood whose vessels and receptacles are the Veines Now the principle or original of the veines is the Heart But the Veines like Roots extend even to the womb by which the Foetus draweth his aliment The Heart also being the beginning of the whole nature and also the containing End ought to be made first as being a genital part of its own nature which must needs be the first as the original of the rest and of the whole Animal and of Sense in whose heat because all the parts are in the matter potentially since the principle of motion did abide that which follows afterwards is stirred up by it as in those self-moving miracles and the parts are moved not shifting their places but altering in softness hardness heat and other distinctions of similar parts being now actually made which were potentially before This is Aristotles opinion almost word for word by which he conceives the foetus to be made of seed by motion though it do not at present continue touching it but hath touched it formerly a nice opinion and of a fine thread and according to those things which are discovered in the order of the generation of the parts not improbable For the heart together with the ramifications of the Veins is discerned first as being an animate principle in which both sense and motion reside and being also like a free Son and a Genital part by which the order of the member is delineated and all things conducing to the accomplishment of an Animal are disposed and having all those attributes which Aristotle bestowes upon it But it seems impossible that the heart should be made in the egge by the males seed since that seed is neither in the egge nor doth touch nor ever did touch it because it neither enters the womb where the egge is made as Fabricius confesseth nor is any way attracted by it and besides this the mothers blood is not in the egge neither nor any other prepared
matter out of which the males seed might form this first genital part the author of all the rest Nor yet presently upon coition while the seed as yet remaines within and is tangent doth any particle of the chicken exist but many dayes after upon Incubation And it is likewise improbable too that in fishes where the males geniture only toucheth the egge on the outside but doth not enter into it that the geniture should have any more operation and power upon it since it is meerly an external Agent then the Cocks seed hath upon the Hennes egges which are now perfectly formed Again since presently after coition there is no track of the egge extant but that it is afterwards generated by the Henne by her self and that prolifical too when now the Cocks seed is clean gone and vanished it is unlikely that the foetus should be made by that seed in that egge by one single motion or by successive motions Nor do prolifical eggs differ from improlifical and subventaneons in this that the former contain the Cocks seed as Aldrovandus would have it nor is there found any thing done or coagulated in the egge by the seed of the male or any sensible alteration made for there is no sensible difference at all between a prolifical and an addle egge and yet a prolifical which is conceived a long time after coition contains in it the power of both Sexes and the capacity of being made and of making a chicken as if it had deduced its original from the coition of both Sexes and their consent and conspiring together in one as Aristotle would have it who being pressed by that argument as we have declared before concerning the generation of the egge did constitute a soul in the egge which if it be there must without scruple be the principle and efficient of all those things which are naturally met with in the egge For it is most certaine What thing soever at last it prove which doth procreate the chicken out of the egge in whose fabrick so much skill so divine contrivance and providence is required fitting eyes for sight the bill for reception of the meat the feet for walking the wings for flight and all the other Utensils for some emploiment or other that it is either a soul or else something more worthy and excellent then a soul working by wisdom and providence And by the generation of the chicken it is also manifest that whatsoever be the principium vitae the first cause of life and vegetation was first of all in the heart Wherefore if it be the soul of the Chicken it is plain that it also was in the Punctum saliens and in the Blood because we discover motion sense there for it moves and dances like an Animal so that if the soule do exist in the Punctum saliens building nourishing and enlarging the rest of the body as we have shewed in our History Then it flowes from the Heart as from the Spring-head into the whole body Likewise if the Egge be therefore Prolifical because it hath a soul or as Aristotle would have it a part of the Vegetative soul it is plaine that the Punctum saliens and the Genital animate part doe proceed from the Soul of the egge for nothing is the Author of it self and that the soul is derived from the egge into the Punctum saliens by and by into the Heart and at length into the Chicken Adde to these if the egge have a prolifical vertue and Vegetative soul by which it erects a Pullus and do owe them as it is plain it doth and all men confess it to the seed of the Cock it is then certain that this Seed is Animate For so Aristotle Whether the seed have a soul or no there is the same reason to be given for it as for the Parts For no soul can be in any thing but in that whose soul it is nor can there be any part which is not partaker of the soul unless it be an aequivocal part as the eye of a dead man That therefore the seed hath a soul and a being in potentiâ is clear It therefore follows out of what hath been said that the Male is the Primary Efficient in which Ratio forma the Reason and Form is which Efficient begets a prolifical seed or Geniture rather and that Geniture endowed with a Vegetative soul with which also its other parts are endowed he doth transmit into the female This Geniture being transmitted it moveth the Matter in the Hen that so an Animate egge may be produced by which means the first particle of the Chicken is animated and afterwards the whole Chicken So that according to Aristotle either the same soul is conveied by a Metempsychosis from the Cock into his Geniture from his Geniture into the substance of the Hen from thence into the egge and from the egge into the Chicken or else is raised up in the subsequent by the precedent things namely by the Male in his proper seed by the seed in the egg and at last by the egge in the Chicken tanquam lumen de lumine as light derived from light The Efficient therefore which is sought for in the egge from whence the Chicken is born is a soul and the soul of the Egge for according to Aristotle the soul is onely in that thing whose soule it is But it is manifest that the Seed of the Male is not the Efficient of the Chicken neither an Instrument by whose motion the Chicken might be formed as Aristotle would have it nor as an Animate substance as if the soul were its soul For in the egge there is no seed at all either now touching it or that ever did touch it and it is impossible that that should move which doth not touch or that any thing should be affected by that which doth not move it and therefore the seeds soul ought not to be said to be in it And yet though the soul be the Efficient in the Egge yet it doth not appear to be derived rather from the Cock or his seed then from the Hen. Nor is it transferred by a Metempsychosis or certain translation of the soul from the Cock and his seed into the egge and thence into the Chicken For how can it be translated into the Egges that are yet to come and to be conceived after Coition Unless some Animate Seed do lurke in the Hen all the while or else the soul onely without seed be translated that so it may be afterwards infused into the Egge when the Egg shall be made But neither of these is true For the seed is no where found in the Hen nor is it possible that the Hen should after Coition possess two souls namely her own and the soul of the future eggs and Chickens for the soul is never said to be but in that whose soul it is much lesse can one or more souls lye lurking in the Hen
of all other Animals but what kind of one it is we will here declare The first condition or qualification of the first and primary Efficient properly so called is that it be the first principal fructifier from whence all intermediate causes assume their derived fecundity For instance the chicken is derived from the Punctum saliens in the egg not only in regard of its bulk but also and that chiefly in regard of its soul the Punctum saliens or Heart is derived from the egg the egg from the Hens and the Hens fertility from the Cock Another requisite or condition of the primary Efficient is desumed ex opere facto from the production it self viz. the Chicken because that is the prime efficient in which the reason of the effect doth chiefly appear But because every Generative efficient doth generate its like and the issue is of a mixt nature the first efficient must needs be mixt too Now I therefore pronounce their issue to be of a mixt nature because the mixture of both parents is refulgent in it both in the figure and lineaments of the body and all its parts as in complexion or colors moles or spots diseases and other accidents of the body Likewise in the soul and actions and functions as in like manners docility gate and voice such a kinde of temperature is discoverable For as we say that a similar mixt body is made of the Elements because their virtues heat cold moisture and sâ—ccity are found compounded in the same similar body so likewise the paternal and maternal handy-work may be tracked and pointed out both in the body soul and other accidents of the Chicken which follow the temperature or happen unto it for instance In a Mule the soul body manners and voice of both parents viz. of the Mare and the Ass are apparent So also in those Chickens which are the Ofspring of the dunghill-hen and Cock-Pheasant and in that mungrel Curre which is produced by the sodomie of a Wolf and a Bitch Since therefore the Chicken resembles both parents and is a mixt Effect the generant primary cause which it resembles must needs be mixt likewise Therefore that which frames the Chicken in the Egge is a mixt nature as being united or compounded of both and the work of both parents And if any contagion do arise or remain in the female upon coition in which they two are mixt and become as it were one Animal that also will be of a mixt nature or power by which the egge shall afterwards become fertile and atchieve a plastical virtue which is an Agent of a mixt nature or a mixt efficient-Instrument producing a Chicken of a mixt nature also The contagion I say because Aristotles perswasion is altogether refractory to experience her self namely where he saith that some part of the Foetus is instantly made upon coition Nor is that true neither which some of the Moderns averre namely that the soul of the future chicken is in the egge for that is no whit the chickens soul which is in no part of the chickens body Nor can the soul be said either to be begotten or left behind presently upon coition for otherwise there should be two souls in a Woman with child Therefore till it be determined what the efficient of the egge is which is of a mixt nature and ought to remaine present upon coition give me leave to call it contagium Contact or contagion But where the contagion lurks in the female after coition and how it is communicated and derived to the egge requires a more exact Disquisition and we will afterwards fall upon it when we treat generally of the conception of females It shall suffice in the mean time to have taken notice that it must needs be the fate of the first efficient in which the reason of the future off-spring doth abide that since its off-spring is mixt to be of a mixt nature it selfe and either to proceed from both Parents or from something which makes use of both as animate Instruments cooperative and mixt and moulded into one by coition The third condition of the Primary Efficient is that either it impart motion successively to all its intermediate instruments or else employ them otherwise but that it selfe be subservient to none whence a doubt arises whether the Cock be the Primary Efficient in the Generation of the chicken or have any before or superior to him For all generation seems to be derived from Heaven and issue from the motion of the Sun and Moon But we wil be positive in this matter when we have first declared what an instrument or the instrumental efficient cause is and how divided Now Instrumental Efficients are of diverse kinds some according to Aristotle are factiva Making and some activa Doing some do not operate but when they are conjoyned with a prior efficient as the hand foot and genital parts others operate disjoined as the Geniture and the Egge some Instruments have not motion or action but what is given them by the first Efficient others have proper internal principles of their own to which nature affords no motion in generation but yet employs their faculties and sets them the rule and law of their performances as the Cook employes fire and the Physitian herbs and the vertues of medicines to cures Sennertus to maintain his conceipt concerning the soul in the Seed and the formative faculty in the Egge affirms that not onely the Egge but the Cocks seed also is indowed with the soul of the future Chicken and is not the Instrumental Agent but the principal absolutely denying that any separate Efficient is Instrumental but pronouncing that onely that is to be reckoned an Instrument in propriety of speech which is conjoined with the primary efficient and that that onely is an Instrumental efficient which hath no other motion or action then that which is immitted or continually and successively received from the primary efficient by whose power it acts And upon that account he rejects the instance concerning things cast or hurled which receiving their force from the thing that doth hurle do yet notwithstanding move even when they are separated from it As if the Sword and Speare were to be counted Instruments of War but not Arrows and Bullets Hee also rejects the instance drawn from a Republick and denies that the Magistrates Counsellors or Officers of a Common-wealth are the Instruments of a Nation And yet Aristotle reckons a Counsellor for an Efficient and calls on Officer an Instrument in plain termes He likewise decries the instance of the Automata and many other things that so he may ratifie the seed or egge to be Animals and not an Instrumental but a Principal Agent And yet as if he were enforced by the truth he laies down such conditions for a Principal Agent as do absolutely prove contrary to his own fore-mentioned opinion Whatsoever produceth a work or effect more noble then it selfe or else an effect lake
to it selfe is not an Efficient but an Instrumental cause Which being granted who will not conclude that Seed and an Egge are Instruments Since a chicken is an effect nobler then the egge and neither like an Egge nor Seed Wherefore when this most Learned Man denies the Seed or Egge to be an Instrument because they are separated from the Primary Agent he stands upon a false bottom For since the first generant produceth its off-spring by several mediums whether any of those mediums be conjoined to it as the Hand to the Artist or whether it be separated from it as the Arrow shot from the Bow yet both are called Instruments From these recited Conditions of the Instrumental cause it may seem to insue that the cock or at least the cock with the hen are the Primary efficients in the Generation of the chicken for the chicken is like them nor can it be thought to be more noble then its Efficients or Parents I shall therefore adde one condition more to the Primary efficient by which perhaps it may appear that the Male is not the Primary but the Instrumentall cause namely that it is required of the Primary efficient in the fabrick of the Chicken that he employ Skill Providence Wisdome Goodness and Understanding far above the capacity of our rational soules as that in which the Reason or Idea of the future work ought to consist and which ought likewise to act for some destinated end disposing and perfecting all parts forming the smallest and most inconsiderable appendixes of the Chicken for some use and employment not providing onely for the structure of the creature but for its wellfare ornament and defence Now the male or his seed either in or after coition is not so qualified that Art Understanding and Providence may be attributed to it Which things being pondered the Male seems to be an Instrumental efficient as well as his seed and the Hen likewise as well as the Egge she laies And therefore we must take our flight to a more Primary Superior and more excellent cause to which we may justly attribute Providence Understanding Art and Goodness and such a one as is as much superiour to its effects and Workmanship as an Architect is better then a Barn he sets up a Prince then his Officers or an Artist then his owne hands And therefore both Male and Female are but Instrumental efficients subservient to the high Creator or Protogenitor And in this sense it is truly said that the Sun and Man beget an Animal because the Spring and Autumn do insue upon the Approaching and Receding Sun at which times commonly the generation and corruption of Animals happen So the chiefest of Philosophers The first Movers motion is not the cause of generation and corruption but the motion of the Oblique circle for that is continual and hath also two Motions for if generation and corruption were to be always continual it were necessary that something should be always moved least those mutations should fail but yet it must have two motions least one onely of the two mutations should succeed The cause therefore of the continuity is the motion of the Universe but the declivity it selfe is the cause of the Approach and the Recesses For it comes to pass that He namely the Sun is sometimes neerer and sometimes farther from the earth And when the Interval is inequal the motion must be inequal too If then he therefore generate because he approaches neerer and cause corruption because he remotes and recedeth farther from the earth Then it follows that if he often do generate it is because he often approacheth and if he often cause corruption it is because he often recedeth For contraries have contrary causes And therefore in the Spring all things flourish and grow namely from the Approach of the Sun who is the Common Father and Parent or at least the immediate and Common Instrument in Generation imployed by the high Creator and that not Vegetables onely but Animals too nor they onely which are Spontaneous issues but those also which are generated by Male and Female As if at the approach of this noble Planet soft Venus did descend from the Skie with Cupid and the Graces entertained for her Retinue inciting and provoking all living things by their Allegeance to Love to propagate their kind Or as it is in the Fable as if Saturne did then become an Eunuch and threw his masculine evidences into the Sea to raise a Foam which might give birth to Venus For in the Generation of Animals Superat tener omnibus humor A gentle dew doth moisten all as the Poet hath it and the genital parts doe foam and strut with Seed And therefore the cock and Hen are chiefly fruitfull in Spring as if the Sun or Heavens Nature the Soul of the Universe or the Omnipotent Deity for these are Synonoma's were a Superiour and Diviner cause of Generation then they So Sol homo generant hominem The Sun and Man beget a Man that is to say the Sun by Man as its Instrument And so the Creator of all things and the cock beget an egge and out of an egge a chicken namely by the constant approach and recesse of the Sun who according to the will and decree of the Almighty is emploied in the generation of all things We conclude therefore that the male though he be a Primary and more excellent efficient then the female is only an Instrumental Efficient and doth himselfe no less then the Female owe his fecundity or generative Virtue to the Sun his Creditour and therefore the artifice and providence which we discover in his workmanship doth not proceed from him but God For the Male uses neither counsel nor understanding in generation nor doe Men generate by any part of their reasonable soule but by a faculty of their vegetative which is not inrouled amongst the primary and more devine powers of the soule but the meanest and basest Since therefore in the structure of a chicken Art and Providence are no less visible then in the Fabrick of Man himselfe and the creation of the Universe we must needs acknowledge that in the generation of Man there is an Efficient cause more excellent then man himselfe or else that the vegetative faculty or that part of the soule which raiseth this pile of man and doth conserve it is much more divine and excellent and doth more personate the Image of God then the Rational part it selfe whose worth and dignity we more cry up then all the faculties of the soule beside though she were Regent and Empress of the rest and held them all as Tributaries to her Or at least wee must confess that there is neither prudence nor skill nor understanding in the workes of Nature but they seem such onely to our apprehensions who iudge of the divine productions of nature by our owne Arts and Faculties or copies drawne by our own fancies as if the active principles of
is also certain that the said Vesicula as also the Auricula cordis the deaf-eare of the Heart afterwards from whom the Pulsation first begins are incited to the constrictive motion by the blood distending them The Diastole or Dilatation is made by the blood boyling or swelling by the spirits within it And so Aristotles Opinion concerning the pulsation of the Heart namely that it is made by a kinde of Ebullition is in some sort true For as in Milk set upon the fire and in Beere we see dayly a Fermentation working or Intumescence so is it in the pulse of the Heart in which the blood as by a kinde of fermentation working up is distended and then ebbs or falls down againe and that which befalls them per accidens from an external agent namely an adventitious heat that is accomplished in the blood by its own internal heat or innate spirit and is also regulated by the soul in a natural way and for the preservation of living creatures The Pulse therefore is performed by a twofold Agent namely the Distention or Dilatation proceeds from the Blood and the Constriction from the membrane of the vesicula in the Egge but in the Foetus when it is born from the Deaf-eares and Ventricles of the Heart and by the mutual performance of this alternate and interchanging motion the blood is driven round the whole body and so our lives continued Nor is the Blood therefore onely to be called the Primigenial and principal part because that in and from it the fountain of motion and pulsation is derived but also because the Animal heat or vital spirit is first radicated and implanted and the soul takes up her first mansion in it For wheresoever the immediate and principal Instrument of the vegetative faculty is first found there in probability the soul first resides and takes her Beginning as being inseparable from the spirit and the calidum innatum For however in Artificial Operations as Fabricius rightly admonisheth the Artificer and the Instruments are separated yet in the works of Nature they are conjoyned and one and the same so the Stomack is both the Author and the Instrument of chylification So in like manner the Soul with the Spirit her Instrument is immediately conjoyned and therefore be it in what part it will that heat and motion first begin there also the Life doth first arise and last expire and out of question the most intimate domestick Deities and Soul it selfe are there enshrined Life therefore consists in the blood as we read in Holy Scripture because in it the Life and Soule do first dawn and last set For I have experimented in the dissection of many live Animals that when the body was now a dying and breathing done the Heart continued its pulse a while and kept up life in it And when the Heart hath now given over you shall discern a motion yet surviving in the Auriculae or Deaf-eares and though the other faile yet the Right will still be stirring and when that submits to Fate too yet you shall perceive a kinde of undulation or waving to and fro and obscure trepidation or palpitation in the champion blood proclaiming that he gave the last blow And any man may plainly see that the blood retaines heat that deriver of Life and Palsation when all the other parts are chilled and cold which heat when it is quite extinct as the blood is then no longer sanguis sed cruor Blood but Gore so now no longer hope of returning back to lise But both in an Egge and in gasping Animals after all pulsation is expunged if you apply a gentle warmth either to the Punctum saliens or the right Auricle of the Heart you shall presently see the motion pulsation and life set on foot again by the Blood except he have quite fore-gone all his innate heat and vital spirit By all which it is most evident that the blood is the Genital Part the fountain of Life Primum vivens ultimum moriens the First-born and the Longest Liver and the chief Palace and Court of the soul in which as in its Spring-head the heat doth first and chiefly flow and flourish and from which all the other parts of the Body derive their life and influent warmth For that heat streaming with the blood doth sprinckle cherish and preserve the whole as we have heretofore demonstrated in our Booke de Motu sanguinis And therefore Blood is found in every particle of the Body nor can you find footing for the point of a needle or the edge of your naile where you shall not immediately start the blood as if were it not for the blood the body would enjoy no heat nor life Therefore the blood being never so little concentrated and fixt Hippocrates calls it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as it is in Swouning frights extream cold weather and the approach of the Paroxysme or fit of an Ague you shall presently behold the whole body freeze and grow stiff and languish in a pale and livid complexion but the blood being summoned back by applied Fomentations exercise or affections of the Mind as Joy or Anger how nimbly do all parts recover their Heat Floridnesse Vigour and Beauty And hereupon the ruddy sanguine parts alone are called the Hot parts as the Flesh but the white and bloodless parts as the Nerves and Ligaments the Cold. And as Sanguineous Animals exceed the bloodless so even in the parts those that are more liberally indowed with Blood are counted the Eminent parts And the Liver Spleen Reins Lungs and Heart it self if you strain all the blood out of them for whose sake they are chiefly called Viscera they presently grow pale and wan and are to be registered amongst the colder parts The Heart himselfe I say doth by the Coronary Arteries receive the Blood it s influent heat and life both which it enjoyes upon no other account then the meer bounty of the Blood Nor can the Liver proceed in its publick office without the influence of blood and heat from the Coeliacal Artery For there is no where any affluence of heat without an Influence or influx of blood by the Arteries And therefore in the first Confirmation of all the parts before they put themselves into publick undertakings they are to be discovered pale and blood-lesse hereupon the old Physitians and Anatomists supposed them to be spermatical parts and this speech was wont to obtain amongst them that in Generation Aliquot in Lacte dies absumuntur some daies are spent in the Milk that is about the Constitution of the white Spermatical parts The very substance of the Liver it self the Lungs and the Heart at their first appearance are exceeding white Nay the Cone of the Heart and the walls or sides of its Ventricles are even then white when the Auriculae are full and dyed with Scarlet-blood and the Coronary Vein looks ruddy So likewise the Parenchyma of the Liver is it selfe white when the
a Son set free by his Father and seated apart And therefore a Principle and that an Intrinsecal one must needs be had by which afterwards the order of the Parts is to be prescribed and all things relating to the complement of the Animal managed and disposed For if it were Extrinsecal at any time and afterwards began to enter in you would not only be in suspense and question when it went in but conclude that since each part is distinguished it was necessary that part should subsist out of which both growth and motion is conferred upon the other parts In another place he saith The first Principle is a part of the whole and not any separate thing which is contained apart from it For saith he when the Animal is now generated is that Principle corrupted or doth it remain Now nothing seems to be in which is not a part of the whole be it Plant or Animal And that it should be corrupted when it hath been at the expence of making all or some of the parts is very absurd for what shall make the remainder Wherefore he proceeds who side with Democritus saying That the exteriour parts of the Animal are first made and then the interiour as if they were to build a wodden or stony Animal do not say well for such a creature as that hath no Principle in it self But all Animals have and contain one within them Whereupon the Heart is first seen in all Animals in which there is blood for that is the Principle of the similar and dissimilar parts Now that thing which requires Aliment ought already to have received that principle of an Animal and constituted Foetus Which words do plainly declare that Aristotle did conclude of an Order in the Generation of Animals and of a Principal part namely the Heart which like a Son at liberty is the first animate and primogenit part of the Animal contained and abiding in it whence not onely the method of the parts is set down but the Animal it self preserved and relyes upon it receiving continual life and sustenance and that thence whatsoever is necessary to the perfection of the Animal is derived For as Seneca saith in the Seed is the whole accompt of the future Man comprehended And the Infant yet unborn hath a Standard and Commission for a Beard and a Gray-head For the dimension of his body and ensuing yeares are already deciphered in a small mysterious character Now whether the Heart be the Primigenial part or no we have determined above To wit if Aristotles speech be understood of that part which in the Anatomy of Living creatures is seen by the eye to be before the rest that is of the Punctum saliens together with the Veines streaming with blood we cheerfully embrace his judgement For we believe that the Blood together with the Vessels and Instruments namely the Umbilical Veines by which as by Roots the Nutriment is attracted and Vesiculae pulsantes to whom it is distributed for the life and growth of the parts is constituted before any other For as Aristotle saith the matter by which any thing is augmented and out of which it is first made is one and the same But they are much abused who conceive that the diverse parts of the Body are sustained with a diverse aliment As though Nutrition were nothing but a bare choice and attraction of aliment and that no concoction assimilation apposition and transmutation were required of the particular parts which are to be nourished which was the opinion of Anaxagoras of old Principium Rerum qui dixit Homoeomeriam Ossa videlicet è pauxillis atque minutis Ossibus sic de pauxillis atque minutis Visceribus Viscus gigni sanguenque creari Sanguinis inter se multis coeuntibu ' guttis Who said that Things from their Likeparts begin That Bones from less and fewer Bones do spring And Intrals rise from Intrals Blood from Blood Where the Confederate drops make up the Flood But Aristotle most truly saith Distinction of parts is not as some suppose upon that ground that Like is of its own nature tending to its Like for besides many other difficulties which beset that opinion it will follow that every similar part must be ordained apart by it self as for instance Bones by themselves Nerves and Flesh by themselves in case that opinion be admitted But indeed the Nutriment of all parts is common and similar as the Yolk in the Egge and not heterogeneous and compounded of diverse parts And therefore what we have said concerning the matter out of which the Parts are made we pronounce the same of the matter out of which they are augmented namely that the parts do assume their Nourishment out of that matter in which all the Parts are in potentiâ but none actu As out of the same Showre all kinds of Plants take growth because that moisture which was before like in potentiâ to them all is now made like them actu being transformed into their substance And is also bitter in Rue sharp in the Mustard and sweet in Licorise and so in the rest He goes on to explain what Parts are generated before others and that with a reason not much unlike Fabricius his Fundamentum secundum his second ground or foundation saying Id cujus causâ quod ejus causâ differunt alterum generatione alterum essentiâ prius est namely the End is first in Nature and Essence in respect of that thing which is made for the Ends sake but That which is made for the Ends sake must needs be first in Generation And by that Argument Fabricius rightly inferrs that those Parts which are subservient to the Vegetative soul are all made before those which are instrumental to the sensative because that is subordinate to this After this he subjoines the differences of such things as are made for any End namely that some things are instituted for some End by nature because the End doth ensue upon them but some because they are Instruments which the End makes use of and those he calls Genitalia but these Instrumentalia For the End saith he in some things is after and in some before those things which are their causes For the Generant himself and that which he imployes in Generation must needs exist before that which is generated by them And therefore the Parts subservient to the Vegetative soul are before those which are retained by Sense and Motion But the Parts dedicated to Motion and the Senses are after the sensitive and motive Faculties as being instrumental and made use of by the sensitive and motive Faculty For by Natures Law no Parts or Instruments are made and constituted before there be imployment for them and a faculty be ready at hand to set them to work So neither the Eye nor the Instruments of Motion are set up till the Brain is built or the faculty be already provided which is to See or Move
work about the Generation of other parts or else to remove some Obstructions in her proceedings which in case they continue the Generation may be retarded and others are under another capacity therefore it comes to pass that according to the disposition of the matter and other requisites the parts are diversly made some after other and some of them are in hand before but are not finished till afterwards some are begun and finished before others are begun and others are as soon begun as their fellows but finished after them And therefore in the generation of some Animals the same order is not always observed but it is much different and various and in some no order at all but all the parts are begun and finished at a heat namely by a Metamorphosis as we shewed And lastly hence it happens that the Primogenit part is such that in it is concluded both the Beginning and the End as well that for whose sake all are made namely the soul as also that which is its cause in chief and Genital part The Heart therefore or according to my perswasion the Blood is the first throne of the Soul the fountain of life the Vestal fire the Genital warmth and the very Calidum Innatum the first Efficient of all his ministring parts having atcheived the soul for his end which commands them all as her leige-people The Heart I say as Aristotle will have it is he for whose sake the whole Fabrick and Family of the parts are provided and who also is the Fountain and Father of them all Of the Order of Parts in Generation as it appears by our Observations EXER LVI THat we may at last propose our own opinion of the Order of Parts as we have collected it out of several Observations of our own we intend to distinguish the whole work of Generation in all Animals whatsoever into two Fabricks Whereof the first is that of the Egge namely of the Conception and Seed or of that whatsoever it is which in Spontaneous productions answereth in proportion to Seed whether we understand it under the notion of Calidum nativum coeleste in humido primigenio the Innate celestial substance in the Primigenial moist with Fernelius or with Aristotle of Calor Vitalis in humors comprehensus the vital heat concluded in moisture For the Conception in Viviparous Animals as we have said is answerable to the Seed and Fruit of Plants as also the Egge in Oviparous in Spontaneous productions the Worme or some Bulla teeming by the Vital heat of the conteined moisture In all which the same thing is comprehended which may truly call them Seeds namely out of which and by which as the matter and Efficient and pre-existent Organ every Animal is first made and borne The Other Fabrick is of the Foetus born out of the Seed or Conception For the Matter and the Final and Efficient causes and the Instruments necessary to the worke must first be before any part of the Production can begin The Fabrick of the Egge we have already seen but that of the Foetus so far as we could discover out of dissections is perfected especially in the more perfect race of Animals and such as have blood chiefly by four degrees or processions which according to the several times of generation we shall reduce into as many Orders demonstrating withall that the same thing which is discerned in the Egge is alike in every conception and seed The First progress is of the Primogenit and Genital part namely of the blood with its receptacles or if you will have it so of the Heart and his Veins Now this part is first begotten chiefly for two reasons both because it is the principal part which makes use of all the rest as its Instruments and for whose sake the other parts seem to be produced as also because it is the Chiefe Genital part the Fountain and Author of the rest The part in which is concluded both the Beginning and End of Generation the same being Pater Rex Parent and Sovereign In the Generation of these Parts which is determined in the Egge the Fourth day though I could not observe any Order because all its particles Blood Veins and Vesicula pulsans appear at once yet I believe as I said that the blood is in it before the Pulse and that it also in Natures Law is before it receptacles the Veins for the substance and structure of the Heart namely the one with its Ventricles and Auricles as it is generated long after with the other Intrals so ought it to be registered in their Classis which is the Third In this structure the veines are conspicuous before the Arteries at least as farre as we could observe The Second Journal which sets out after the fourth day discovers a certain Concrementum or coagulated substance which I call Vermiculum seu Galbam the litle Worm or Magot for it seems to enjoy the life and obscure motion of a Galba and this as it congeals into a gelly is divided into two parts whereof the upper and the larger is conglobated and distinguished into three Vesicles namely that of the Brain After-brain and one of the Eyes but the lesser carinam referens resembling the Keel of a Ship is superinduced upon the Vena Cava and is extended according to its length In the structure of the Head the Eyes are first discerned and anon a white spot starts up for the Bill and the filme drying about it becomes protected by a membrane At this time also the adumbration or rough draft of the rest of the Body seems to succeed where first upon the Carina the sides or plancks as it were of a Boat seem to arise being at first of a similar consistence but afterwards by most white streaks they are signified to be the lines of the Ribs After this the members of Motion namely the Wings and Legs do appear and at last the Keel and Limbs born by a kinde of Superfoetation are distinguished into Muscles Bones and Joints Those two first mishapen materials of the Head and Body do together appear and are together distinguished but afterwards when they tend towards growth and perfection the body gets the start and is much sooner grown and shaped so that the Head which did at first out-strip the whole body beside in bulk and magnitude is now very much short of it And this is likewise natural to humane productions The like Disparity is between the Body it selfe the Limbs for in an Infant from that time that the Embryo exceeds not the length of the Nail of the litle Finger till he be encreased to the stature of a Frog or a Mouse his Arms are so short that if you stretch out his fingers over his breast to their farthest extent they will not be able to touch one another and his thighs are so short that being reflected upon his Abdomen they will hardly reach to his Navel Nay in Children lately born the
onely imitations of the natural are thus produced by the Braine how much more probable is it that the Exemplars of Animal Generation and conception are in like manner produced by the Uterus And because Nature all whose works are admirable and divine doth institute such an Organ namely the Braine by whose sensitive faculty and virtue the conceptions of the rational soule doe exist namely Desires and Arts and the Principles and Causes of so many several productions whereof man by the motive faculty of the Braine is the Author by Imitation why shall we not think that the same Nature which hath contrived the Womb which is a no lesse admirable Organ then the Braine and hath framed it of a like constitution to execute the office of Conception hath designed it also to a like function or at least to one which beareth an Analogy with it and that Nature did intend an Organ which is every way like the Braine to an imployment like to that to which the Braine is assigned For since a skilful Artificer doth accomplish his Workmanship by his ingenious proportioning one Instrument to one thing and the same to the same and the like to the like So that by the materials and shape of his Instruments a man may easily judge of their use and actions no less then Aristotle hath instructed us to know the nature of Natural Bodies by their conformation and the Fabrick of their Parts and the Art of Physiognomy doth by lineaments and parts of the face as the Eye Nose Fore-head c. give judgement of the manners and dispositions of Men What shall hinder us out of the same fabrick of parts to pass our conjecture that their Office is also the same But such is the preposterous success of things that when we come to debate customary and familiar things their frequency doth diminish their greatness and admiration which is due unto them but when matters of less consequence but such as are more unusual do present themselves wee instantly magnifie them because of their novelty and rarity Whosoever shall weigh with himself how the brain of the Artist or the Artist himself by virtue of his brain doth form things which are not present with him but such as he only hath formerly seen so much to the life and how litle birds which immure themselves all winter long do exactly chant and recall to minde those Ditties the next Spring which they had learned the Summer before though they did never practise them all the while and which is yet more strange how a litle bird will most artificially contrive a Nest whereof shee never saw any platform before and that not from her memory or any habit implanted in her but onely by meere phansie and how a young Spider without any pattern or brain by the help of phansie onely doth dispose her web whosoever I say doth diligently ponder these things will I conceive not think it an absurd or monstrous matter for a woman to become the efficient cause of Generation being impregnated by the conception of a generall immateriall Idea I know full well that some scoffing persons will laugh at these conjectures approving nothing but their owne private inventions Yet this is the wont of Philosophers when they cannot clearly discover how things themselves are brought about to conceive some way consonant to the course of nature and the next borderer upon truth her selfe how such matters may be atchieved And indeed all those Opinions which we now cry up were at first meere figments and imaginations untill they wrought a solid credit in us by sensible experiment and were ratified by their necessary knowne causes Aristotle saith That Philosophers are in some sort lovers of Fables because a Fable doth consist of strange things And indeed those who were first possessed with the admiration of things did advance Philosophy And for my owne particular since I plainly see that nothing at all doth remaine in the Uterus after coition whereunto I might ascribe the principle of generation no more then remaines in the braine after sensation and experience whereunto the principle of Art may be reduced but finding the constitution to be alike in both I have invented this Fable Let the Learned and ingenious stock of men consider of it let the supercilious reject it and for the scoffing ticklish generation let them laugh their swinge Because I say there is no Sensible thing to be found in the Uterus after coition and yet there is a necessity that something should be there which may render the female fruitfull and that in probability can be no corporeal essence we have no refuge left us but to fly to meere Conception and reception of Species without any matter namely to apprehend that the same thing is effected in the womb as in the Braine unless some cunning Philosopher whom the Gods have better provided for can finde out some efficient cause which is not concluded in our recapitulation Some Philosophers even of our owne time have furbushed over the old opinion concerning the Atomes and doe therefore conceive that this Contagion as also all other doth proceed from the most subtle effluviums or emanations of the masculine seed which do easily transpire after the manner of Odours and so are shot into the Uterus at the time of coition Some againe raise up certaine incorporeal spirits like so many Agents Angels or Daemons Others understand a Contagion like to a kinde of ferment or sower levening Others phansie and imagine otherwise Allow therefore amongst others some place for this conjecture of mine untill there be some certainty established in the business I have observed many things which will easily extirpate the recited opinions of other men so that now it is much more obvious to say what it is not then what it is but those Observations relate not to this place but must be proposed elsewhere At the present I shall say this onely If that which we commonly call Contagion as being derived from the spermatical contact in coition and remaining behinde in the female when the Geniture it selfe is not then in presence is the efficient and operatour of the future procreation if I say this Contagion whether it be Atomes or Odour or Ferment or whatsoever else be free from the nature of a body it must of necessity be an incorporeal thing And if moreover upon enquiry it do appear to be neither a Spirit nor a Daemon nor a Soul nor any part of a Soul nor yet something which hath a Soul as I conceive I can demonstrate by several arguments and experiments What remains since I can imagine nothing else nor no man hath hitherto dreamed of any other thing but freely to profess my self to be at a stand But He that doubts admires saith Aristotle doth confess he doth not know Wherefore if to avoid the stain of Ignorance ingenuous Men turn Philosophers it is cleare that they pursue Knowledge for Knowledge sake and not
all other parts of the body yet it hath not been so in the Genitals but that it commonly proves either Male or Female and very seldom an Hermaphrodite Lastly many things are in the foetus ere they appear at all and some things are begun with the first but perfected with the last as the Eyes Genitals and Bill And hence there arise debates concerning the pre-eminence or dignity of the Parts in which the Wits of such as are curious in these cases may imploy themselves As Whether the Heart bestow life and vigour upon the blood or the blood rather upon the Heart Whether the blood be made for the bodyes sake as the Matter Nutriment and Instrument or else the body and all its parts for the blood and the soul which doth first and principally reside in it Likewise Whether the Ventricles or Auricles of the Heart are most honourable For we finde that the Auricles have life and pulse first and do expire last And farther Whether the left Ventricle of the Heart which is deeper in a Man and is fenced with a thicker and more carnous wall and is conceived to be the fountain of the Spirts be the more excellent hotter more fraught with Spirits and livelyer of the two or the Right which doth last languish and subscribe to Death containing a large quantity of blood and where the Dying mans blood doth last congeal and is deprived of life and spirit and whether also the Umbilical Vessels do transport the blood as to their fountain and whence also they derive their extraction Now these things do result out of the Observation of the Order of the Generation of the Parts as also other things which may be hence deduced and do not a litle clash against the Physiology commonly approved Namely when we plainly see that there is both Sense Motion before the brain is begotten it is evident that all Sense and Motion is not derived from the brain for it appeares by our History that Sense and Motion do clearly discover themselves in the first small drop of blood in the Egge before any particle of the body is framed And likewise the first platform or constitution which we call gelly is laid before any part is discerned and when the brain is now nothing but a clear water which first rudiment of the Body if it be lightly pricked will like a Worm or Magot obscurely move and contract it self which is a plain testimony of its sense There are also other Arguments deduced from Sense and Motion by which we may conclude with Aristotle That the Heart and not with Physitians that the Brain is the first Principle Those Motions and Actions which Physitians call Natural because they proceed whether we will or no and we cannot moderate accelerate retard or refrain them at our own pleasure which therefore are Independent in regard of the brain yet even they are not performed without all sense but do imply sense as by which they are excited provoked and altered For we conceive that in the Heart it self its Palpitation Trembling Fainting Sowning and all the changes in the pulse either in magnitude celerity order rhythme or the like do proceed from morbifical causes indisposing it and offensive to its sense For whatsoever by diversity of motions makes warre against those things that enrage and molest it must needs be indowed with sense The Stomack and Guts provoked by injurious humours do raise a Nauseating Belching Rumbling Vomiting and Flux and as it is beyond our power either to raise or lay these combustions so are we to seek for any such sense retaining to the brain which should excite those parts to such Expressions It is very strange that upon the Infusion of Antimony taken in a Vomit though we neither distinguish it by taste nor finde any disgust in it either swallowing it down or in returning it back again yet there passeth a censure upon it by the Stomack which discerns between what is usefull and prejudicial and so provokes to Vomit Nay the Flesh it self doth easily distinguish a poisonous wound from one that is not poisonous and thereupon contracts it self and condenseth upon which enflamed tumours arise as we may see in the stingings of the Bee the Gnat and the Spider I my selfe once for experiment sake pricked my hand with a needle and presently rubbing the same needle upon a Spiders tooth I pricked my hand in another place so that I my self could not distinguish between the two pricks But there was something in my Skin that did distinguish for in that place where the poisoned prick fell it presently contracted it self into a pimple and presently grew red hot and inflamed as if it fortified it self and stood upon its guard to oppose and subdue the malice of the Venom The Offences undergone by the Matrix as its Contorsion Descension Falling down Rising Suffocation and other Maladies and Provocations do no whit depend upon the Brain or Common sense nor yet can they be conceived to befall it insensibly For that which is plainly void of Sense cannot seem any way to be porovked or heightened into any motion or action Nor have we any other signs to distinguish an animate and sensitive creature from a dead and senseless one then by its motion provoked from some offensive object which doth alwaies follow and argue Sense But of this more at large when we treat of the Actions and Use of the Brain But the Reverence due to the Antients and Antiquity her self doth advise us to uphold their doctrines so farre as they are true Nor can it beseem us rashly to reject and discountenance their Labours and Decrees whose light hath been our direction to the Shrines of Philosophy wherefore I conceive we ought to think thus We perceive we have Five Senses by which we give judgement upon outward things but because it is not the same sense by which we perceive and by which we perceive our own perception for we see with our Eyes but we do not by them know we see but by another sense which employes another sensitive Organ namely the Internal Common sense by which we give judgement upon all those things which we perceive by our external Organs and so distinguish white from sweet and hard This common Sensorium or Organ of Sense whither all Species are conveyed from the outward Organs is plainly the Head which together with all his Nerves and outward Organs adjoined to them is understood to be the adequate Organ of Sensation And it is like the Sensitive Root from which several Fibers result whereof one sees another hears a third toucheth and the other smell and taste Yet as there are certain Actions and Motions whose Regiment or Jurisdiction relates not to the Brain and they therefore are called Natural so also must we conclude that there is a certain sense of Touching which is not conveyed to the Common sense or any way communicated to the brain and therefore in that kinde of