SECT. 3] AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 129 



then maintains with them that the soul is the principle which 

 organises the body from within, arranging an organ for each of 

 its faculties and preparing a residence for itself, not merely allowing 

 itself to be breathed into a being which has already organised 

 itself "The conformation of the foetus is a vital, not a natural, 

 action", he says. He develops this idea in the remainder of the 

 book; according to him, the seed first coagulates the menstrual 

 blood into an amorphous cake, taking three days to do so, after 

 which, the rational (not vegetative or sensitive) soul (entelechy), 

 which has entered the uterus with the seed, finding a suitable 

 mass of shapeless material, enters into it and begins to give it a 

 shape. Fienus was attacked by several writers, and published a 

 defence of his views. 



Later writers on the same subject included Fidelis, Teichmeyer, 

 Albertus, de Reies, Torreblanca and de Mendoza. The Spanish 

 influence here is perhaps significant. Hieronymus Florentinus, who 

 adopted the same standpoint as Fienus in 1658 was forced to recant it. 



In 1625 Joseph de Aromatari, a Venetian, included in his epistle 

 on plants the first definite statement of the preformationist theory 

 since Seneca, but he did not develop the idea. He had noted that 

 in bulbs and some seeds the rudiments of many parts of the adult 

 plant can be seen even without glass or microscope, and this led him 

 to suggest that probably in all animals as well as plants a similar 

 thing was true. "And as for the eggs of fowls", he said, "I think the 

 embryo is already roughly sketched out in the egg before being formed 

 at all by the hen [quod attinet ad ova gallinarum, existimamus quidem 

 pullum in ovo delineatum esse, antequam formatur a gallina].'' This sug- 

 gestion did not begin to bear its malignant fruits till the time of 

 Swammerdam and Malpighi. 



Johannes Sinibaldi's Geneanthropia might be mentioned as belonging 

 to this time. It was a compilation of facts relating to the generation 

 of man, but it expressly excluded from its field any discussion of the 

 embryo. It is no more important for our subject than the queer 

 Ovi Encomium of Erycius Puteanus, another of Gassendi's friends, which 

 has already been referred to (p. 8). 



3-2. Kenelm Digby and Nathaniel Highmore 



Much more significant was the controversy between Sir Kenelm 

 Digby and Nathaniel Highmore. In 1644, Sir Kenelm, whose in- 



