disposition for a body that is to be the porter of any simple motion which should always lie watching in great quietness to observe scrupulously and exactly the errand he is to carry So that for my part I cannot conceive nature intended any such effect by mediation of the sinews But Monsir des Cartes endeavours to confirm his opinion by what uses to fall out in Palsies when a man looses the strength of moving his hands or other members nevertheless retains his feeling which he imputes to the remaining intire of the strings of the nerves while the spirits are some way defective To this we may answer by producing examples of the contrary in some men who have had the motion of their limbs intire and no ways prejudiced but no feeling at all quite over their whole case of skin and flesh As particularly a servant in the Colledge of Physitians in London whom the learned Harvey one of his Masters hath told me was exceeding strong to labour and very able to carry any necessary burthen and to remove things dexterously according to the occasion and yet he was so void of feeling that he used to grind his hands against the walls and against course lumber when he was employ'd to rummage any in so much that they would run with blood through grating of the skin without his feeling of what occasion'd it In our way the reason of both these conditions of people the paralytike and the insensible is easie to be rendred For they proceed out of the diverse disposition of the animal spirits in these parts which if they thicken too much and become very gross are not capable of transmitting the subtile messengers of the outward world to the tribunal of the brain to judge of them on the otherside if they be too subtile they neither have nor give power to swell the skin and so to draw the muscles to their heads And surely Monsir des Cartes takes the wrong way in the reason he gives of the Palsie for it proceeds out of abundance of humors which clogging the nerves rendreth them washy and makes them lose their dryness and become lither and consequently unfit and unable in his opinion for sensation which requires stiffness as well as for motion Yet besides all these one difficulty more remains against this doctrine more insuperable if I mistake not then any thing or altogether we have yet said which is how the memory should conserve any thing in it and represent bodies to us when our fancy calleth for them if nothing but motions come into the brain For 't is impossible that in so divisible a subject as the Spirits motion should be conserv'd any long time as we see evidently in the air through which move a flaming Taper never so swiftly and as soon as you set it down almost in the very instant the flame of it leaves being driven or shaken on one side and goes quietly and evenly up its ordinary course Therby shewing that the motion of the air which for the time was violent is all of a sudden quieted and at rest for otherwise the flame of the Taper would blaze that way the Air were moved Assuredly the bodies that have power to conserve motion long must be dry and hard ones Nor yet can such conserve it very long after the cause which made it ceases from its operation How then can we imagine that such a multitude of pure motions as the memory must be stored withal for the use and service of man can be kept on foot in his brain without confusion and for so long a time as his memory is able to extend to Consider a lesson plaid upon the Lute or Virginals and think with your self what power there is or can be in nature to conserve this lesson-over continually playing and reflect that if the impressions upon the common fense are nothing else but such things then they must be actually conserved always actually moving in our head to the end they be immediately produced whenever it pleases our will to call them And if peradventure it should be replyed that 't is not necessary the motions themselvs should always be conserved in actual being but 't is sufficient there be certain causes kept on foot in our heads which are apt to reduce these motions into act whenever there is occasion of them All I shall say hereto is That this is merly a voluntary Position and that there appears no ground for these motions to make and constitute such causes since we neither meet with any instruments nor discover any signs wherby we may be induced to believe or understand any such operation It may be urged that divers sounds are by diseases oftentimes made in our ears and appearances of colours in our fantasie But first these colours and sounds are not artificial ones and disposed and order'd by choice and judgment for no story hath mention'd that by a disease any man ever heard twenty verses of Virgil or an Ode of Horace in his ears or that ever any man saw fair pictures in his fansie by means of a blow givin him upon his eye And secondly such colours and sounds as are objected are nothing else but in the first case the motion of humors in a mans eye by a blow of upon it which humours have the virtue of making light in such sort as we see Sea-water has when it is clash'd together and in the second case a cold vapour in certain parts of the brain which causes beatings or motions there whence proceeds the imitation of sounds so that these examples nothing advantage that party thence to infer that the similitudes of objects may be made in the common-sense without any real bodies reserv'd for that end Yet I intend not to exclude Motion from any commerce with the Memory no more then I have done from Sensation For I will not only grant that all our remembring is perform'd by the means of motion but also acknowledge that in men it is for the most part of nothing else but of motion For what are words but motion And words are the chiefest objects of our remembrance 'T is true we can if we will remember things in their own shapes as well as by the words that express them but experience tells us that in our familiar conversation and the ordinary exercise of our memory we remember and make use of the words rather then of the things themselvs Besides the impressions that are made upon all our other sense as well as upon our hearing are likewise for the most part of thing in motion as if we have occasion to make a conception of a Man or of a Horse we ordinarily conceive him Walking or Speaking or eating or using some motion in time And as these impressions are successively made upon the outward Organs so are they successively carried into the fantasie by like succession are deliver'd over into the memory from whence when they are call'd back
the operation of the understanding is nothing else but the inward superficies of a body that compasses and immediately conteines another Which ordinarily being of a rare body that doth not shew it self to us namely the Air is for the most part unknown by us But because nothing can make impression on our minds and cause us to give it a name otherwise then by being known therfore our understanding to make a compleat notion must add something else to this fleeting and unremarkable Superficies that may bring it to our acquaintance And for this end we may consider further that as this Superficies hath in it self so the bodie enclosed in it gains a certain determinate respect to the stable and immoveable bodies that environ it As for example we understand such a Tree to be in such a place by having such and such respects to such a Hill near it or to such a House that stands by it or to such a River that runs under it or to such an immoveable point of the Heaven that from the Suns rising in the Equinox is called East and such like To which purpose it imports not whether these that we call immoveable bodies and points be truly so or do but seem so to mankind For man talking of things according to the notions he frames of them in his mind speech being nothing else but an expression to another man of the images he hath within himself and his notions being made according to the seeming of the things he must needs make the same notions whether the things be truly so in themselvs or but seem to be so when that seeming or appearance is always constantly the same Now then when one body dividing another gets a new immediate clothing and consequently new respects to the stable and immoveable bodies or seeming such that environ it we vary in our selves the notion we first had of that thing conceiving it now accompanied with other circumstances and other respects then formerly it had Which notion we express by saying it has changed its place and is now no longer where it was at the first And this change of place we call Locall motion to wit the departing of a body from that hollow superficies which inclosed it and its changing to another wherby it gains new respects to those parts of the World that have or in some sort may seem to have immobility and fixed stableness So as hence 't is evident that the substance of Locall motion consists in Division and that the alteration of Locality follows Division in such sort as the becoming like or unlike of one wall to another follows the action whereby one of them becomes white And therefore in Nature we are to seek for any entity or special cause of applying the moved body to a place as place which is but a respect consequent to the effect of division but only to consider what real and physical action unites it to that other body which is called its place and truly serves for that effect And consequently they who think they have discover'd a notable subtilty by bringing in an Entity to unite a Body to its Place have strain'd beyond their strength and grasped but a shadow Which will appear yet more evident if they but mark well how nothing is divisible but what of it self abstracting from division is one For the nature of Division is the making of many which implies that what is to be divided must of necessity be not-many before it be divided Now Quantity being the subject of division 't is evident that purely of it self and without any force or adjoyned helps it must needs be one wherever some outward agent doth not introduce multiplicity upon it And whenever other things work upon quantity as quantity it is not the nature and power of their operation to produce unity in it and make it one for it is already one but contrariwise the immediate necessary effect that flows from them in this case is to make one quantity many according to the circumstances that accompany the divider and that which is to be divided And therefore although we may seek causes why some one thing sticks faster together then some other yet to ask absolutely why a body sticks together were prejudicial to the nature of quantity whose essence is to have parts sticking together or rather to have such unity as without which all divisibility must be excluded Out of which discourse it follows that in local motion we are to look onely for a cause or power to divide but not for any to unite For the very nature of quantity unites any two parts that are indistant from one another without needing any other cement to glue them together as we see the parts of water and all liquid substances presently unite themselves to other parts of like bodies when they meet with them and to solid bodies if they chance to be next them And therefore 't is vain to trouble our heads with Unions and imaginary Moods to unite a body to the place it is in when their own nature makes them one as soon as they are immediate to each other And accordingly if when we see a Boul move we would examine the causes of that motion we must consider the quantity of air or water it makes to break from the parts next to it to give place to it self and not speculate upon an intrinsecall relation from the body to a certain part of the imaginary space they will have to run through all things And by ballancing that quantity of air or water which it divides we may arrive to make an estimate of what force the Boul needs to have for its motion Thus having declar'd that the locality of motion is but an extrinsecall denomination and no reality in the thing moved we may now cast an eye upon a vast consequence that may be deduced out of what we have hitherto said For if we consider the nature of a Body that is that a Body is a Body by quantity and that the formall notion of Quantity is nothing else but Divisibility and that the adequate Act of Divisibility is Division 't is evident there can be no other Operation upon Quantity nor by consequence among Bodies but must either be such Division as we have here explicated or what must necessarily follow out of such division And Division as we have even now explicated being Locall Motion 't is evident that All operations among Bodies are either Local Motion or such as follow out of Local motion Which conclusion however unexpected and at first hearing appearing a Paradox will nevertheless by the ensuing work receive such evidence as it it cannot be doubted of and that not only by force of argumentation and by necessity of notions as is already reduced but also by experience and declaratiosns of particulars as they shall occur But now to apply what we have said to our proposed subject 't is obvious to every
the spirits according to the condition they are in so as the passages which are ajusted to one kind of spirits will not admit any of another nature orelse the first motions of liking or disliking in the heart which as we have said cause a swelling or a contradiction of it against this or that part stops and hinders the entrance of the spirits into some sinews and opens others and drives the spirits into them so as in the end by a result of a chain of swellings and contractions of several parts successively one against another the due motions of prosecution or aversion are brought about As for example an object that affects the heart with liking by dilating the spirits about the heart sends some into the optick nervs and makes the living creature turn his eye towards it and keep it steady upon what he desires as contrariwise if he dislike and fear it he naturally turns his eye and head from it Now of this motion of the eye and head may depend the running to the thing in one case and the running from it in the other for the turning of the neck one way may open a passage for the spirits into those sinews which carry the rest of the body towards the object and the turning of it to the other side may open other sinews which shall work a contrary effect and carry the animal from the object And the moving of those sinews which at first turn the neck proceeds from the quality and number of the spirits that ascend from the heart and from the region of the heart whence they are sent according to the variety wherof there are divers sinews fitted to receive them To make up which discourse we call to mind what we have said a little above concerning the motions caused in the external parts of the body by passion moving within as when Fear mingled with hope gives a motion to the legs Anger to the arms and hands and all the rest of the body as wel as to the legs all of them an attention in the outward senses which neverthelessperverts every one of their functions if the passion be in extremity And then surely we may satisfie our selves that either this or some way like it which I leave to the curious in Anatomy to settle with exactness for 't is enough for my intent to shew in gross how these operations may be done without calling in some incomprehensible qualities to our aid is the course of nature in motions where no other cause intervenes besides the object working upon the sense which all the while it doth it is the office of the eye of fantasie or common sense to lie ever open still watching to observe what warnings the outward senses send to him that accordingly he may direct and chang the motions of the heart and whole body But if the object make violent impressions upon the sense and the heart being then vehemently moved therupon send abundance of spirits up to the brain this multitude of spirits thronging upon the common sense oppresses it as we have already said in such sort that the notice which the sense gives of particular circumstances cannot prevail to any effect in the brain and thus by the misguidance of the heart the work of nature is disordered Which when it happens we express in short by saying that Passion blinds the creature in whom such violent and disorderly motions have course for Passion is nothing else but a Motion of the Bloud and Spirits about the Heart and is the preparation or beginning of the Animals working as we have above particularly displai'd And thus you see in common how the circuit is made from the Object to the Sense and from it by the Common sense and Fantasie to the Heart and from the heart back again to the brain which then sets on work those Organs or parts the animal is to make use of in that occasion and they either bring him to or carry him from the object that at the first caused all this motion and in the end becomes the period of it CHAP. XXXVI Of some actions of Beasts that seem formal acts of reason as doubting resolving inventing IN the last Chapter the foundations are laid and the way is opened for discovering how all operations which proceed from nature and passion are perform'd among living creatures and therfore I conceive I have therby sufficiently compli'd with the obligation of my intention which is but to express and shew in common how all the actions of sensible bodies may be reduced to local motion and material application of one body to another in a like manner though in a different degree as those motions which we see in lifeless bodies Yet because among such animals as pass for irrational there happen some operations of so admirable a strain as resemble very much the higest effects which proceed from a man I think it not a miss to give some further light by extending my discourse to some more particulars than hitherto I have done wherby the course and way how they are performed may be more clearly and easily look'd into And the rather because I have met with some men who either wanting patience to bestow on thoughts of this kind so much time as is necessary for the due scanning of them or else through a promptitude of nature passing swiftly from the effect they look upon in gross to the most obvious seeming cause suddenly and strongly resolve that beasts use discourse upon occasions and are endued with reason Yet I intend not here to run through all the several species of their operations for that were to write the history of every particular animal but will content my self with touching the causes in common yet in such sort that the indifferent Reader may be satisfied of a possibility that these effects may proceed from material causes and that I have pointed out the way to those who are more curious and have the patience and leasure to observe diligently what passes among beasts how they may trace these effects from step to step till at length they discover their true causes To begin then I concieve we may reduce all those actions of Beasts which seem admirable and above the reach of an irrational animal to three or four several heads The first may be of such as seem to be the very practice of reason as doubting resolving inventing and the like The next shall be of such as by docility or practice beasts oftentimes arrive to In the third place we will consider certain continuate actions of a long tract of time so orderly perform'd by them as that discourse and rational knowledge seem clearly to shine through them And lastly we will cast our eye upon some others which seem to be even above the reason that is in man himself as the knowing of things which the sense never had impression of before a prescience of future events providences and the like As for
then he will discern how these are but material instruments of a rational agent working by them from whose orderly prescriptions they have not power to swerve in the least circumstance that is Every one of which consider'd singly by it self hath a face of no more diffrently than that for example an Engineer should so order his matters that a Mine should be ready to play exactly at such an hour by leaving such a proportion of kindled match hanging our of one of the barrels of powder whiles in the mean time he either sleeps or attends to somthing else And when you have once gain'd thus much of your self to agree to an orderly course and generation of any single effect by the power of a material cause working in it raise but your discourse a strain higher and look with reverence and duty up-the Immensity of That Provident Architect out of whose hands these master-pieces issue and to whom it is as easy to make a chain of causes of a thousand or million of links as to make one link alone and then you will no longer stick at allowing the whole oeconomy of those actions to be nothing else but a production of material effects by a due ranging and ordering of material causes But let us return to our theam As we see that milk coming into the breasts of live-bearing female creatures when they grow very big heats and makes them seek the mouths of their young ones to disburthen and cool them so the carriage and bigness of the Eggs heats exceedingly the breasts and bodies of the Birds and this causes them to be still rubbing of their breasts against the sides of the nests wherto their unwieldiness then contines them very much and with their Beaks to be still picking their Feathers which being then apt to fall off and mew as we see the hair of women with child is apt to shed it happens that by then they are ready to lay their Eggs they have a soft bed of their own Feathers made in their Nests over their courser mattress of straws they first brought thither And then the Eggs powerful attracting of the annoying heat from the Hens breast whose imbibing of the warmth and stone-like shell cannot choose but cool her much invites her to sit constantly upon them till sitting hatches them And 't is evident that this sitting must proceed from their temper at that time or from some other immediate cause which works that effect and not from a judgment that doth it for a remote end for house-wives tells us that at such a season their Hens will be sitting in every convenient place they come to as though they had Eggs to hatch when never a one is under them so as it seems that at such time there is some inconvenience in their bodies which by sitting is eased When the Chickens are hatched what wonder is it if the little cryings of tender creatures of a like nature and language with their Dam move those affections or passions in her bosome which causes her to feed them and so defend and breed them till they be able to shift for themselvs For all this there needs no discourse or reason but only the motion of the blood about the heart which we have determin'd to be passion stir'd by the young ones chirpings so as may carry them to those actions which by nature the supreme intellect are order'd for their preservation Wherin the Birds as we have already said are but passive instruments and know not why they do those actions but do them they must whenever such and such objects which infallibly work in their due times make such and such impressions upon their fantasies like the allarum that necessarily strikes when the hand of the Dial comes to such a point or the Gun-powder that necessarily makes a ruine and breach in the wall when the burning of the match reaches to it Now this love in the Dam growing by little and little wearisome and troublesome to her and not being able to supply their encreased needs which they grow every day stronger to provide for of themselvs the strait commerce begins to die on both sides and by these degrees the Dam leaves her young ones to their own conduct And thus you see how this long series of actions may have orderly causes made and chain'd together by him that knew what was fitting for the work he went about Of which though 't is likely I have missed the right ones as it cannot choose but happen in all disquisitions where one is the first to break the Ice and so slenderly informed of the particular circumstances of the matter in question as I profess to be in this yet I concieve this discourse plainly shews that he who hath done more than we are able to comprehend and understand may have set causes sufficient for all these effects in a better order and in completer ranks than those we have here expressed and yet in them so coursely hew'd out appears a possibility of having the work done by corporeal agents Surely it were very well worth the while for some curious and judicious person to observe carefully and often the several steps of nature in this progress for I am strongly perswaded that by such industry we might in time arrive to very particular knowledge of the immediate and precise causes that work all these effects And I conceive that such observation needs not be very troublesome as not requiring any great variety of creatures to institute it upon for by marking carefully all that passes among our home-bred Hens I believe it were easy to guess very nearly at all the rest CHAP. XXXVIII Of Prescience of future events Providences the knowing of things never seen before and such other actions observed in some living creatures which seem to be even above the reason that is in man himself THe fourth and last kind of actions which we may with astonishment observ among beasts I conceive will avail little to infer that the creatures which do them are endew'd with reason and understanding for such they are as if we should admit that yet we should still be as far to seek for the causes whence they proceed What should move a Lamb to tremble at the first sight of a Woolf or a Hen at a Kite never before seen neither the grimest Mastiff nor the biggest Owl will at all affright them That which in the ordinary course of nature causes beasts to be afraid of men or of other beasts is the hurt and evil they recive from them which coming into their fantasie together with the Idea of him that did it is also lodg'd together with it in the memory from whence they come link'd or glew'd together when ever the stroke of any new object calls either of them back into the fantasie This is confirm'd by the tameness of the birds and beasts which the first discoverers of Islands not inhabited by men found in those they met with there
Their stories tell us that at their first arrival upon those coasts where it seems men had never been the birds would not flie away but suffer'd the Mariners to take them in their hands nor the beasts which with us are wild would run from them but their discourteous guests used them so hardly as they soon chang'd their confidence into distrust and aversion and by little and little grew by their commerce with men and receiving injuries from them to be as wild as any of the like kind in our parts From the Dams and Sires this apprehension and fear at the sight of men so deeply rooted in them is doubtless transmitted to their young ones for it proceeds out of the disposition of the body and the passion immediately made in the heart and that is as truly a material motion as any whatever can be and must have setled material instruments fitted to it if it be constant as well as any other natural operation whatever And this passion of the heart proceeds again from a perpetual connexion of the two objects in the memory which being a perpetually constant thing is as true a quality of that beasts brain in whom it is as the being of a quick or dull apprehension or apt to know one kind of meat from another which is natural to the whole species or any other quality whatever residing in that beast Wherfore 't is no wonder that it passes by generation to the off-spring which is a thing so common even in mankind as there can be no doubt of it and is at first made by a violent cause that greatly alters the body and consequently the seed must be imbew'd with a like disposition and so it passes together with the nature of the Sire or of the Dam into the brood From hence proceeds that children love the same meats and exercises that their Fathers and Mothers were affected with and fear the like harms This is the reason why a Grand-child of my Lord of Dorset whose honour'd name must never be mention'd by me without a particular respect and humble acknowledgment of the noble and steady friendship he hath ever been pleas'd to honour me with was always extremely sick if but the Nurse did eat any Capers against which my Lord's antipathy is famous whiles she gave suck to that pretty infant The Children of great Mathematicians who have been used to busie their fantasies continually with figures and proportions have been oftentimes observ'd to have a natural bent to those Sciences And we may note that even in particular gestures and in little singularities in familiar conversation children will oftentimes resemble their Parents as well as in the lineaments of their faces The young ones of excellent setting Dogs will have a notable aptitude to that exercise and may be taught with half the pains that their sire or dam was if they were chosen out of a race of Spaniels not trained to setting All which effects can proceed from no other cause but as we have touch'd already that the fantasy of the parent alters the temper and disposition of his body and seed according as it self is temper'd and disposed and consequently such a creature must be made of it as retains the same qualities as 't is said that sufficient Tartar put at the root of a tree will make the fruit have a winy taste But nothing confirms this so much as certain notable accidents wherof though every one in particular would seem incredible yet the number of them and the weight of the reporters who are the witnesses cannot choose but purchase a general credit to the kind of them These accidents are that out of some strong imagination of the parents but especially of the mother in the time of conception the children draw such main differences as were incredible if the testifying authority were not so great but being true they convince beyond all question the truth we have proposed of the parents imagination working upon and making an impression in the seed wherof children or young ones of their kind are made Some children of white parents are reported to havebeen black upon occasion of a Black-moors picture too much in the mothers eye Others are said to have been born with their skins all hairy out of the sight of St Baptist's picture as he was in the desart or of some other hairy image Another child is famed to have been born disformed so as Devils are painted because the sather was in a Devils habit when he got the child There was a Lady a kinswoman of mine who used much to wear black patches upon her face as was the fashion among young women which I to put her from used to tell her in jest that the next child she should go with whiles the sollicitude and care of those patches was so strong in her fantasy would come into the world with a great black spot in the midst of its forehead and this apprehension was so lively in her imagination at the time she proved with child that her daughter was born mark'd just as the mother had fansied which there are at hand witnesses enough to confirm but non more pregnant than the young Lady her self upon whom the mark is yet remaining Among other creatures 't is said that a Hen hatch'd a Chicken with a Kites bill because she was frighted with a Kite whiles the Cock was treading her The story of Jacol's Sheep is known to all and some write that the painting of beautiful colour'd pigeons in a Dove-house will make the following race become like them and in Authors store of such examples may be found To give a reasonable and fully satisfying cause of this great effect I confess is very difficult since for the most part the parents seed is made long time before the accoupling of the male and female and though it were not we should be mainly to seek for a rational ground to discourse in particular upon it Yet not to leav our Reader without a hint which way to drive his inquisition we will note thus much that Aristotle and other natural Philosophers and Physicians affirm that in some persons the passion is so great in the time of their accoupling that for the present it quite bereavs them of the use of reason and they are for the while in a kind of short fit of an Epilepsie By which 't is manifest that abundance of animal spirits then part from the head and descend into those parts which are the instruments of generation Wherfore if there be abundance of specieses of any one kind of object then strong in the imagination it must of necessity be carryed down together with the spirits into the seed and by consequence when the seed infected with this nature begins to separate and distribute it self to the forming of the several parts of the Embryon the spirits which resort into the brain of the child as to their proper Element and from thence finish all the
outward cast of its body as we have above described somtimes happen to fill certain places of the childs body with the infection and tincture of this object and that according to the impression with which they were in the mothers fantasy for so we have said that things which come together into the fantasy naturally stick together in the animal spirits The hairiness therfore will be occasioned in those parts where the Mother fansied it to be the colour likewise and such extancies or defects as may any way proceed from such a cause will happen to be in those parts in which they were fansied And this is as far as is fit to wade into this point for so general a discourse as ours is and more than was necessary for our turn to the serving wherof the verity of the fact only and not the knowledg of the cause was required for we were to shew no more but that the apprehensions of the parents may descend to the children Out of this discourse the reason appears why beasts have an aversion from those who use to do them harm and why this aversion descends from the old ones to their brood though it should never have hapned that they had formerly encountred with what at the first sight they fly from and avoid But yet the reason appears not why for example a Sheep in England where there are no Wolves bred nor have been these many ages should be afraid and tremble at sight of a Wolf since neither he nor his dam or sire nor theis in multitudes of generations ever saw a Wolf or receiv'd hurt by any In like manner how should a tame Weasell brought into England from Ireland where there are no poisonous creatures be afraid of a Toad as soon as he sees one Neither he nor any of his race ever had any impressions of following harm made upon their fantasies and as little can a Lion receive hurt from a houshold Cock therfore we must seek the reasons of these and such like Antipathies a little further and we shall find them hanging upon the same string with Sympathies proportionable to them Let us go by degrees We daily see that Dogs will have an aversion from Glovers that make their ware of Dogs skins they will bark at and be churlish to them and not endure to come near them though they never saw them before The like hatred they will express to the Dog-killers in the time of the Plague and to those that flea Dogs I have known of a man that used to be imploid in such affairs who passing somtimes over the grounds near my Mothers house for he dwellt at a Village not far off the Dogs would wind him at a very great distance and all run furiously out the way he was and fiercely fall upon him which made him go always well provided for them and yet he has been somtimes hard put to it by the fierce Mastiffs there had it not been for some of the Servants coming in to his rescue who by the frequent hapning of such accidents were warned to look out when they observ'd so great commotion and fury in the dogs and yet perceiv'd no present cause for it Warreners observe that vermin will hardly come into a trap wherin another of their kind hath been lately kill'd and the like happens in Mouse-traps into which no Mouse will come to take the bait if a Mouse or two have already been kill'd in 't unless it be made very clean so that no scent of them remain upon the Trap which can hardly be done on the sudden otherwise than by fire 'T is evident that these effects are to be refer'd to an activity of the object upon the sense for some smell of the skins or of the dead dogs or of the vermine or of the Mice cannot choose but remain upon the Men and Traps which being alter'd from their due nature and temper must needs offend them Their conformity on the one side for somthing of the canine nature remains makes them have easy ingression into them and so they presently make a deep impression but on the other side their distemper from what they should be makes the impression repugnant to their nature and be disliked by them and to affect them worse than if they were of other creatures that had no conformity with them As we may observe that stinks offend us more when they are accompanied with some weak perfume than if they set upon us single for the perfume gets the stink easier admittance into our sense and in like manner 't is said that poisons are more dangerous when they are mingled with a cordial that is not able to resist them for it serves to convey them to the heart though it be not able to overcome their malignity From hence then it follows that if any beast or bird prey upon some of another kind there will be some smell about them exceedingly noisom to all others of that kind and not only to beasts of that same kind but for the same reason even to others likewise that have a correspondence and agreement of temper and constitution with that kind of beast whose hurt is the original cause of this aversion Which being assented to the same reason holds to make those creatures whose constitutions and tempers consist of things repugnant and odious to one another be at perpetual enmity and fly from one another at the first sight or at least the sufferer from the more active creature as we see among those men whose unhappy trade and continual exercise it is to empty Jakeses such horrid stinks are by time grown so conformable to their nature as a strong perfume will as much offend them and make them as sick as such stinks would do another man bred up among perfumes and a Cordial to their spirits is some noysome smell that would almost poison another man And thus if in the breach of the Wolf or the steam coming from his body any quality be offensive to the Lamb as it may very well be where there is so great a contrariety of natures it is not strange that at the first sight and approach of him he should be distemper'd and flie from him as one fighting Cock will do from another that hath eaten Garlike and the same happens between the Weasel and the Toad the Lion and the Cock the Toad and the Spider and several other creatures of whom like enmities are reported All which are caus'd in them not by secret instincts and Antipathies and Sympathies wherof we can give no account with the bare sound of which words most men pay themselvs without examining what they mean but by downright material qualities that are of contrary natures as fire and water are and are either begotten in them in their original constitution or implanted afterwards by their continual food which nourishing them changes their constitution to its complexion And I am perswaded this would go so far that if one
driness and the like which by much mixstion and consequent alteration may in the end become such as constitute a living creature of such a kind And thus it appears that although other substances and liquors and steams are from time to time mingled with the seed and then with the heart and afterwards with the other parts as they grow on and encrease yet the main virtue of the ensuing Animal is first in the seed and afterwards in the heart Whence the reason is evident why both defects and excrescences pass somtimes from the parents to the children to wit when nothing supplies the defect or corrects the exorbitancy Rather after this which we have said the difficulty will appear greater in that such accidents are not always hereditary from the parents but happen only now and then some rare times But the same grounds we have laid wil likewise solve this objection For seeing that the heart of the Animal from whence the seed receives its proper nature as we have declared is impregnated with the specifick virtue of each several part of the body it cannot be doubted but that the heart will supply for any defect hapned in another part after it hath been imbued with that virtue and is grown to a firmness and vigorous consistence with that virtue moulded and deeply imbibed into the very substance of it And although the heart should be tincted from its first origine with an undue virtue from some part as it seems to have been in the mother of those daughters that had two thumbs upon one hand yet it is not necessary that all the off-spring of that parent should be formed after that model for the other partners seed may be more efficacious and predominant in the geniture over the faulty seed of the other parent and then it will supply for and correct the others deviation from the general rule of nature Which seems to be the cause of that womans male children for in them the fathers seed being strongest all their fingers imitated the regularity of their Fathers wheras the daughters whose sex implies that the fathers seed was less active carried upon some of theirs the resemblance of their mothers irregularity And in confirmation of this doctrine we daily see that the Children of Parents who have any of their noble parts much and long distempred wherby there must be a great distemper in the bloud which is made and concocted by their assistance seldom fail of having strong inclinations to the distempers and diseases that either of their parents were violently subject to Scarce any Father or Mother dyes of the Consumption of the Lungs but their children inherit that disease in some measure the like is of the Stone the like of the Gout the like of diseases of the brain and of sundry others when they infested the parents with any notable eminency For the bloud coming continually to the heart from such ill-affected parts by its circulation through the whole body must needs in process of time alter and change the temper of the heart and then both the heart gives a tainted impression to the blood that must be boyl'd into seed and the parts themselvs communicate their debilites and distempers to it so that it is no wonder if the seed partake of such depraved qualities since it is a maxime among Physicians that subsequent concoctions can never amend or repair the faults of the precedent ones Having waded thus far into this matter and all experience agreeing that the whole Animal is not formed at once I conceive there can be no great difficulty in determining what part of it is first generated which we have already said to be the heart but peradventure the Reader may expect some more particular and immediate proof of it 'T is evident that all the motions and changes we have observ'd in the Egg and in the Doe proceed from heat and t is as certain that heat is greatest in the centre of it from whence it disperses it self to less and less It must then necessarily follow that the part in which heat most abounds and which is the interiour fountain of it from whence as from a stock of their own all the other parts derive theirs must be formed first and the others successively after it according as they partake more or less of this heat which is the Architect that moulds and frames them all Undoubtedly this can be none other but the heart whose motion and manner of working evidently appears in the twinckling of the first red spot which is the first change in the Egg and in the first matter of other living creatures Yet I do not intend to say that the heart is perfectly framed and compleatly made up with all its parts and instruments before any other part be begun to be made but only the most vertuous part and as it were the marrow of it which servs as a shop or hot forge to mold spirits in from whence they are dispers'd abroad to form and nourish other parts that stand in need of them to that effect The shootings or little red strings that stream out from it must surely be arteries through which the bloud issuing from the heart and there made and imbued with the nature of the seed runs till encountering with fit matter it engrosses it self into brain liver lights c. From the brain chiefly grows the marrow and by consequent the bones containing it which seem to be originally but the outward part of the marrow baked and hardned into a strong crust by the great heat that is kept in as also the sinews which are the next principal bodies of strength after the bones The marrow being very hot dries the bones and yet with its actual moisture it humects and nourishes them too in some sort The spirits that are sent from the brain do the like to the sinews And lastly the arteries and veins by their bloud cherish and bedew the flesh And thus the whole living creature is begun framed and made up CHAP. XXV How a Plant or Animal câ—mes to that figure it hath BUt before we go any further and search into the operations of this Animal a wonderful effect calls our consideration to it which is how a Plant or Animal comes by the figure it hath both in the whole and in every part of it Aristotle after he had beaten his thoughts as far as he could upon this question pronounced that this effect could not possibly be wrought by the virtue of the first qualities but that it sprung from a more divine origine And most of the contemplatours of Nature since him seem to agree that no cause can be render'd of it but that it is to be refer'd merely to the specifical nature of the thing Neither do we intend to derogate from either of these causes since both Divine Providence is eminently shown in contriving all circumstances necessary for this work and likewise the first temperament that is
in the seed must needs be the principal immediate cause of this admirable effect This latter then being supposed our labour and endeavour will be to unfold as far as so weak and dim eyes can reach the excellency and exactness of Gods Providence which cannot be enough adored when it is reflected on and mark'd in the apt laying of adequate causes to produce such a figure out of such a mixture first laid From them so artificially ranged we shall see this miracle of nature to proceed and not from an immediate working of God or nature without convenient and ordinary instruments to mediate and effect this configuration through the force and virtue of their own particular natures Such a necessity to interest the chief workman at every turn in particular effects would argue him of want of skill and providence in the first laying of the foundations of his designed Machine He were an improvident Clockmaker that should have cast his work so as when it were wound up and going it would require the Masters hand at every hour to make the Hammer strike upon the Bell. Let us not then too familiarly and irreverently ingage the Almighty Architect's immediate handy-work in every particular effect of nature Tali non est dignus vindice noduâ— But let us take principles within our own kenning and consider how a body hath of its own nature three dimensions as Mathematicians use to demonstrate and that the variety we see of figures in bodies proceeds out of the defect of some of these dimensions in proportion to the rest As for example that a thing be in the form of a Square Tablet is for that the cause which gave it length and breadth could not also give it thickness in the same proportion for had it been able to give profundity as well as the other two it had made a Cube instead of a Tablet In like manner the former of a lamine or very long square is occasion'd by some accident which hinders the cause from giving breadth and thickness proportionable to the length And so other figures are made by reason that their causes are some ways bound to give more of some dimension to one part then another As for example when water falls out of the skie it hath all the little corners or extancies of its body grated off by the air as it rolls and tumbles down in it so that it becomes round and continues in that form till setling on some flat body as Grass or a Leaf it receives a little plainness to the proportion of his weight mastering the continuity of it And therfore if the drop be great upon that plain body it seems to be half a Sphere or some less portion of one but if it be a little drop then the flat part of it which is that next the grass is very little and undiscernable because it hath not weight enough to press it much and spread it broad upon the grass and so the whole seems in a manner to be a Sphere But if the extern causes had press'd upon this drop only broadways and thick ways as when a Turner makes a round Pillar of a square one then it would have proved a Cylinder nothing working upon it to grate off any of its length but only the corners of the breadth and thickness of it And thus you see how the fundamental figures upon which all the rest are grounded are contrived by nature not by the work of any particular Agent that immediately Imprints a determinate figure into a particular body as though it wrought it there at once according to a foreconceiv'd design or intelligent aim of producing such a figure in such a body but by the concurrence of several accidental causes that all joyn in bringing the body they file and work upon into such a shape Only we had like to have forgotten the reason and cause of the concave figure in some parts of Plants which in the ordinary course of nature we shall find to grow from hence That a round outside being filled with some liquor which makes it grow higher and higher it happens that the succeeding causes contract this liquor and harden the outside and then of necessity there must be a hollow Cylinder remaining in lieu of the juice which before fill'd it As we see every day in corn and in Reeds and in Canes and in the stalks of many herbs which whilst they are tender and in their first growth are full of juice and become afterwards hallow and dry But because this discourse may peradventure seem too much in common it will not be amiss to apply it to some particulars that seem very strange And first let us examine how the rocking of concrete juices which seems to be such an admirable mystery of Nature is performed Allom falls down in lumps Saltpeter in long icicles and common Salt in squares and this not once or somtimes now or then but always constantly in the same order The reason of these effects will easily be deduced out of what we have said For if all three be dissolv'd in the same water Allom being the grossest falls first and fastest and being of an unctious nature the first part which falls doth not harden till the second comes to it wherby this second sticks to the first and crushes it down and this is serv'd in the same manner by the third and so it goes on one part squeezing another till what is undermost grow hard enough to resist the weight of new falling parts or rather till no more fall but the liquor they were dissolv'd in is deliver'd of them all and then they harden in that figure they were compress'd into As for Salt which descends in the second place that swims first upon the water and there gets its figure which must be equally long and broad because the water is indifferent to those two positions but its thickness is not equal to its other two dimensions by reason that before it can attain to that thickness it grows too heavy to swim any longer and after it is encreas'd to a certain bulk the weight of it carries it down to the bottom of the water and consequently it can encrease no more for it encreases by the joyning of little parts to it as it swims on the top of the water The Saltpeter falls last which being more difficult to be figured then the other two because it is more dry then either of them as consisting chiefly of earthy and of fiery parts is not equally encreased neither in all three nor in two dimensions but hath its length exceeding both its breadth and thickness and its lightness makes it fall last because it requires least water to sustain it To give the causes of the figures of divers mixts and particularly of some precious stones which seems to be cast by Nature in exactest moulds would oblige us to enter into the particular manner of their generation which were exceeding hard if