ON GENERATION, 401 



dering cause itself would be forced to make use of various in- 

 struments in order to accomplish its various operations. 



Fabricius, therefore, asserts erroneously that the transmutative 

 force works with the properties of the elements, hot, cold, moist 

 and dry as its instruments ; whilst the formative faculty acts 

 independently of these and by a more divine power, performing 

 its task with consciousness, as it seems, with foresight and elec- 

 tion. But if he had looked more closely at the matter he 

 would have seen that the formative as well as the metamorphic 

 force made use of the hot and the cold, the moist and the dry, as 

 instruments; nor would he have been less struck with indications 

 of the Supreme Artificer's interference in the p'rocesses of nutri- 

 tion and transformation than in that of formation itself. For 

 nature ordained each and all of these faculties to some definite 

 end, and everywhere labours with forethought and intelligence. 

 Whatever it is in the seeds of plants which renders them fertile 

 and exercises a plastic force in their interior; whatever it is 

 which in the egg performs the duty of a most skilful artificer, 

 producing and fashioning the parts of the pullet, warming, 

 cooling, moistening, drying, concocting, condensing, hardening, 

 softening and liquefying at once, impressing distinctive characters 

 on each of them by means of configuration, situation, constitu- 

 tion, temperament, number and order, still is this something 

 at work, disposing and ordering all with no less of foresight, 

 intelligence, and choice in the business of transmuting, than in 

 the processes of nutrition, growth, and formation. 



The concoctive and metamorphic, the nutritive and augmentive 

 faculties, which Fabricius would have it act through the quali- 

 ties of hot, cold, moist and dry, without all consciousness, I 

 maintain, on the contrary, work no less to a definite end, 

 and with not less of artifice than the formative faculty, which 

 Fabricius declares has knowledge and foresight of the future 

 action and use of every particular part and organ. In the same 

 way as the arts of the physician, cook and baker, in which heat 

 and cold, moisture and dryness, and similar natural properties 

 are employed, require the use of reason no less than the mecha- 

 nical arts in which either the hands or various instruments are 

 employed, as in the business of the blacksmith, statuary, potter, 

 &c. ; in the same way, as in the greater world, we are told 

 that " All things are full of Jove," Jovis omnia plena so 



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