402 ON GENERATION. 



in the slender body of the pullet, and in every one of its actions, 

 does the finger of God or nature no less obviously appear. 



Wherefore, if from manifestations it be legitimate to judge 

 of faculties, we might say that the vegetative acts appear 

 rather to be performed with art, election, and foresight, than 

 the acts of the rational soul and mind ; and this even in the 

 most perfect man, whose highest excellence in science and art, 

 if we may take the God for our guide, is that he KNOW HIM- 

 SELF. 



A superior and more divine agent than man, therefore, appears 

 to engender and preserve mankind, a higher power than the 

 male bird to produce a young one from the egg. We acknow- 

 ledge God, the supreme and omnipotent creator, to be present 

 in the production of all animals, and to point, as it were, with 

 a finger to his existence in his works, the parents being in 

 every case but as instruments in his hands. In the generation 

 of the pullet from the egg all things are indeed contrived and 

 ordered with singular providence, divine wisdom, and most ad- 

 mirable and incomprehensible skill. And to none can these 

 attributes be referred save to the Almighty, first cause of all 

 things, by whatever name this has been designated, the Divine 

 Mind by Aristotle ; the Soul of the Universe by Plato ; the 

 Natura Naturans by others ; Saturn and Jove by the ancient 

 Greeks and Romans ; by ourselves, and as is seeming in these 

 days, the Creator and Father of all that is in heaven and earth, 

 on whom animals depend for their being, and at whose will and 

 pleasure all things are and were engendered. 



Moreover, as I have said, I neither hold this arrangement 

 of the faculties of the vital principle, which Fabricius has placed 

 at the head of his account of the organs of generation, as cor- 

 rect in itself, nor as useful or calculated to assist us in the 

 matter we have in hand. For we do not attain to a knowledge 

 of effects from a discussion of actions or faculties ; the contrary 

 is rather the case : from actions we ascend to a knowledge of 

 faculties, inasmuch as manifestations are more cognizable to us 

 than the powers whence they proceed, and the parts which we 

 investigate already formed are more readily appreciated than 

 the actions whence they proceed. 



Neither is it well from the generation of a single chick from 

 an egg, to venture upon general conclusions, which can in fact 



