ON GENERATION. 509 



bake, dig, pump, saw timber, sustain fire, support some things, 

 overwhelm others, and suffice for an infinite variety of other 

 and most admirable offices who shall say that they do not sur- 

 pass the powers of the elements ? In like manner what does 

 not fire accomplish ? in the kitchen, in the furnace, in the 

 laboratory, [in the steam-engine], softening, hardening, melt- 

 ing, subliming, changing, [and setting in motion], in an infi- 

 nite variety of ways ! What shall we say of it when we see 

 iron itself produced by its agency? iron " that breaks the stub- 

 born soil, and shakes the earth with war ! " iron that in the 

 magnet (to which Thales therefore ascribed a soul) attracts 

 other iron, " subdues all other things, and seeks besides I know 

 not what inane," as Pliny 1 says; for the steel needle only 

 rubbed with the loadstone still steadily points to the great car- 

 dinal points ; and when our clocks constantly indicate the hours 

 of the day and night, shall we not admit that all of these 

 partake of something else, and that of a more divine nature, 

 than the elements ? And if in the domain and rule of nature 

 so many excellent operations are daily effected surpassing the 

 powers of the things themselves, what shall we not think pos- 

 sible within the pale and regimen of nature, of which all art is 

 but imitation ? And if, as ministers of man, they effect such 

 admirable ends, what, I ask, may we not expect of them, when 

 they are instruments in the hand of God ? 



We must, therefore, make the distinction and say, that 

 whilst no primary agent or prime efficient produces effects be- 

 yond its powers, every instrumental. agent may exceed its own 

 proper powers in action ; for it acts not merely by its own vir- 

 tue, but by the virtue of a superior efficient. 



They, consequently, who refuse such remarkable faculties to 

 the blood, and go to heaven to fetch down I know not what 

 spirits, to which they ascribe these divine virtues, cannot know, 

 or at all events, cannot consider that the process of generation, 

 and even of nutrition, which indeed is a kind of generation, 

 for the sake of which they are so lavish of admirable proper- 

 ties, surpasses the powers of those very spirits themselves, nor 

 of the spirits only, but of the vegetative, aye, even the sensi- 

 tive, and I will venture to add, the rational soul. Powers, did 



1 Lib. xxxvi, cap. 16. 



