398 ON GENERATION. 



for the major part without the egg, though they are begun and 

 also perfectly performed within it. Now these actions, as they 

 flow from three faculties, the generative, the nutritive, and 

 auctive, so do three operations follow them. From generation 

 all the parts of the chick result ; from increase and nutrition, 

 the growth and maintenance of its body. From studying the 

 formation of the chick, we perceive that, under the influence of 

 the generative faculty, the parts of the creature which formerly 

 had no existence are produced : the matter of the egg is changed 

 into the organized body of a chicken. But whilst any part or 

 substance undergoes transmutation into another, it must needs 

 be that its proper essence undergoes change, otherwise would 

 it still remain as it was and unaltered ; it must at the same time 

 receive figure, position, and dimensions apt and convenient to 

 its new nature ; and indeed it is into these two states or circum- 

 stances that procreation of matter resolves itself, viz. trans- 

 formation and conformation. The transformative and the 

 formative faculties would therefore be the cause of these func- 

 tions ; and whilst one of them has produced every individual 

 part of the chick, such as we see it, from the chalaza of the 

 egg, the other has given it figure, articulations, and position, 

 fitting it for its destined uses. The first, the transformative or 

 alterative faculty, is entirely natural, and acts without all con- 

 sciousness ; and taking the hot, the cold, the moist, and the 

 dry, it alters all through the substance of the chalaza, and in 

 altering this substance changes it into the component parts of 

 the chick, that is to say, into flesh, bones, cartilages, ligaments, 

 veins, arteries, nerves, and all the other similar and simple parts 

 of the animal, and these, through the proper and innate heat 

 and spirit of the semen of the cock, out of the substance of the 

 egg, that is to say, its chalaza; by altering and commuting, it 

 engenders, creates, produces the proper substance of the chick, 

 imparting at the same time to every substance its appropriate 

 quality. The other, which is called the formative faculty, 

 and which out of similar forms dissimilar parts, namely, 

 giving them elegance through figure, due dimensions, proper 

 position, and congruous number is much more noble than the 

 former, is possessed of consummate sapience, and acts not na- 

 turally [or instinctively], but with election, and consciousness, 

 and intelligence. For the formative faculty appears to have 



