ON GENERATION. 511 



In the first place, and especially, it is possessed by a soul 

 which is not only vegetative, but sensitive and motive also ; it 

 penetrates everywhere and is ubiquitous ; abstracted, the soul 

 or the life too is gone, so that the blood does not seem to dif- 

 fer in any respect from the soul or the life itself (anima) ; at 

 all events, it is to be regarded as the substance whose act is the 

 soul or the life. Such, I say, is the soul, which is neither 

 wholly corporeal nor yet wholly incorporeal ; which is derived 

 in part from abroad, and is partly produced at home ; which 

 in one way is part of the body, but in another way is the be- 

 ginning and cause of all that is contained in the animal body, 

 viz. nutrition, sense, and motion, and consequently of life and 

 of death alike; for whatever is nourished, is itself vivified, 

 and vice versa. In like manner, that which is abundantly 

 nourished increases ; what is not sufficiently supplied shrinks ; 

 what is perfectly nourished preserves its health ; what is not 

 perfectly nourished falls into disease. The blood, therefore, 

 even as the soul, is to be regarded as the cause and author 

 of youth and old age, of sleep and waking, and also of respi- 

 ration; all the more and especially as the first instrument in 

 natural things contains the internal moving cause within itself. 

 It therefore comes to the same thing, whether we say that the 

 soul and the blood, or the blood with the soul, or the soul 

 with the blood, performs all the acts in the animal organism. 



We are too much in the habit, neglecting things, of wor- 

 shipping specious names. The word blood, signifying a sub- 

 stance, which we have before our eyes, and can touch, has 

 nothing of grandiloquence about it; but before such titles as 

 spirits, and calidum innatum or innate heat, we stand agape. 

 But the mask removed, as the error disappears, so does the 

 idle admiration. The celebrated stone, so much vaunted for 

 its virtues by Pipinus to Migaldus, seems to have filled not 

 only him but also Thuanus, an excellent historian, with wonder 

 and admiration. Let me be allowed to append the riddle: 

 " Lately," says he, " there was brought from the East Indies 

 to our king a stone, which we have seen, wonderfully radiant 

 with light and effulgence, the whole of which, as if burning 

 and in flames, was resplendent with an incredible brilliancy of 

 light. Tossed hither and thither, it filled the ambient air 

 with beams that were scarcely bearable by any eyes. It was 



