ON GENERATION. 405 



He appears to have come nearer the truth where he says : J 

 " The other basis of the parts to be formed first or last is obtained 

 from nature, that is, from the vital principle by which the animal 

 body is ruled and directed. If there be two grades of this prin- 

 ciple, the vegetative and animal, the vegetative must be held prior 

 in point of nature and time, inasmuch as it is common to plants 

 and animals ; and assuredly the organs officiating in the vegeta- 

 tive office will be engendered and formed before those that belong 

 to the sensitive and motive principle, especially to the chief organs 

 which are in immediate relationship with the governing prin- 

 ciple. Now these organs are two in especial the liver and the 

 heart : the liver as seat of concupiscence, of the vegetative or nu- 

 tritive faculty; the heart, as the organ whose heat maintains and 

 perfects the vegetative and every other faculty, and in this way 

 has most intimate connexions and relations with the vegetative 

 force. Whence, if after the third day you see the heart palpi- 

 tating in the point where the chick is engendered, as Aristotle 

 bears witness to the fact that you can, you will not be surprised 

 but rather be disposed to admit that the heart belongs to the 

 vegetative degree and exists for its sake. It is also consonant 

 with reason that the liver should be engendered simultaneously 

 with the heart, but should lie perdue or hidden, as it does not 

 pulsate. And Aristotle himself admits that the heart and liver 

 exist in the animal body for similar reasons; so that where 

 there is a heart there also is a liver discovered. If the heart 

 and liver be the parts first produced, then, it is also fair to suppose 

 that the other organs subserving these two should be engen- 

 dered in the same manner, the lungs which exist for the sake 

 of the heart ; and, for the sake of the liver, almost all the vis- 

 cera which present themselves in the abdomen." 



Still is all this very different from the sequence we witness in 

 the egg. Nor is it true that the liver is engendered simulta- 

 neously with the heart ; nor does the salve avail with which he 

 would cover that infirmity where he says that the liver is con- 

 cealed because it does not palpitate ; for the eyes and vena 

 cava and carina are all conspicuous enough from the com- 

 mencement, although none of them palpitate. How come the 

 liver and lungs, if they be then extant, to be visible without 

 any palpitation ? And then Fabricius himself has indicated a 

 1 Op. cit. ut. sup. 



