EXERCISE THE SEVENTY-FIRST.
Of the innate heat.
As frequent mention is made in the preceding pages of the calidum innatum, or innate heat, I have determined to say a few words here, by way of dessert, both on that subject and on the humidum primigenium, or radical moisture, to which I am all the more inclined because I observe that many pride themselves upon the use of these terms without, as I apprehend, rightly understanding their meaning. There is, in fact, no occasion for searching after spirits foreign to, or distinct from, the blood; to evoke heat from another source; to bring gods upon the scene, and to encumber philosophy with any fanciful conceits; what we are wont to derive from the stars is in truth produced at home: the blood is the only calidum innatum, or first engendered animal heat; a fact which so clearly appears from our observations on animal reproduction, particularly of the chick from the egg, that it seems superfluous to multiply illustrations.
There is, indeed, nothing in the animal body older or more excellent than the blood; nor are the spirits which are distinguished from the blood at any time found distinct from it; for the blood without heat or spirit is no longer blood, but cruor or gore. “The blood,” says Aristotle,[343] “is hot in a certain manner, in that, namely, in virtue of which it exists as blood,—just as we speak of hot-water under a single term; as subject, however, and in itself finally, blood is blood, it is not hot: so that as blood is in a certain way hot per se, so is it also in a certain way not hot per se: heat is in its essence or nature, in the same way as whiteness is in the essence of a white man; but where blood is by affection or passion, it is not hot per se.”
We physicians at this time designate that as spirit which Hippocrates called impetum faciens, or moving power; implying by this whatever attempts aught by its own proper effort, and causes motion with rapidity and force, or induces action of any kind; in this sense we are accustomed to speak of spirit of wine, spirit of vitriol, &c. And therefore it is that physicians admit as many spirits as there are principal parts or operations of the body, viz. animal, vital, natural, visual, auditory, concoctive, generative, implanted, influent, &c. &c. But the blood is the first produced and most principal part of the body, endowed with each and all of these virtues, possessed of powers of action beyond all the rest, and therefore, κατ’ ἐξοχὴ—in virtue of its pre-eminence, meriting the title of spirit.
Scaliger, Fernelius, and others, giving less regard to the admirable qualities of the blood, have imagined other spirits of an aerial or ethereal nature, or composed of an ethereal or elementary matter, a something more excellent and divine than the innate heat, the immediate instrument of the soul, fitted for all the highest duties. Now their principal motive for this was the consideration that the blood, as composed of elements, could have no power of action beyond these elements or the bodies compounded of them. They have, therefore, feigned or imagined a spirit, different from the ingenerate heat, of celestial origin and nature; a body of perfect simplicity, most subtile, attenuated, mobile, rapid, lucid, ethereal, participant in the qualities of the quintessence. They have not, however, anywhere demonstrated the actual existence of such a spirit, or that it was superior to the elements in its powers of action, or indeed that it could accomplish more than the blood by itself. We, for our own parts, who use our simple senses in studying natural things, have been unable anywhere to find anything of the sort. Neither are there any cavities for the production and preservation of such spirits, either in fact or presumed by their authors. Fernelius, indeed, has these words:[344] “He who has not yet completely mastered the matter and state of the ingenerate heat, let him cast an eye upon the structure of the body, and turn to the arteries, and contemplate the sinuses of the heart and the ventricles of the brain. When he observes them empty, containing next to no fluid, and yet feels that he must own such parts not made in vain, or without a design, he will soon, I conceive, be brought to conclude that an extremely subtile aura or vapour fills them during the life of the animal, and which, as being of extreme lightness, vanished insensibly when the creature died. It is for the sake of cherishing this aura that by inspiration we take in air, which not only serves for the refrigeration of the body, by a business that might be otherwise accomplished, but further supplies a kind of nourishment.”
But we maintain that so long as an animal lives, the cavities of the heart and the arteries are filled with blood. We further believe the ventricles of the brain to be indifferently fitted for any so excellent office, and that they are rather formed for secreting some excrementitious matter. What shall we say, too, when we find the brain of many animals unfurnished with ventricles? And supposing it were true that any kind of air or vapour was found there, seeing that all nature abhors a vacuum, still it does not seem over probable that it should be of heavenly origin and possessed of such superlative virtues. But what we admire most of all is that a spirit, the native of the skies, and endowed with such admirable qualities, should be nourished by our common and elementary air; especially when we see it maintained that the elements can do nothing that is beyond their natural powers.
It is admitted, moreover, that the spirits are in a perpetual state of flux, and most readily dissipated and corrupted; nor indeed can they endure for an instant unless renovated by due supplies of their appropriate nutriment,—they as much require incessant nourishing as the primum vivens, or first animate atom of the body. What occasion is there, then, I ask, for this extraneous inmate, for this ethereal heat? when the blood is competent to perform all the offices ascribed to it, and the spirits cannot separate from the blood even by a hair’s breadth without destruction; without the blood, indeed, the spirits can neither move nor penetrate anywhere as distinct and independent matters. And whether they are engendered and are fed and increased, as some suppose, from the thinner part of the blood, or from the primigenial moisture, as others imagine, all still confess that they are nowhere to be found apart from the blood, but are inseparably connected with it as the aliment that sustains them, even as the flame of a lamp or candle is inseparably connected with the oil or tallow that feeds it. The tenuity, subtilty, mobility, &c. of the spirits, therefore, bring no kind of advantage more than the blood, which it seems they constantly accompany, already possesses. The blood consequently suffices, and is adequate to be the immediate instrument of the soul, inasmuch as it is everywhere present, and moves hither and thither with the greatest rapidity. Nor can it be admitted that there are any other bodies or qualities of a spiritual and incorporeal nature, or any more divine kinds of heat, such as light, as Cæsar Cremoninus,[345] a great adept in the Aristotelian philosophy, strenuously contends against Albertus that there are.
If it be said that these spirits reside in the primigenial moisture as in their ultimate aliment, and flow from thence through the whole body to nourish its several parts, they propound a simple impossibility, viz. that the ingenerate heat, that primigenial element of the body, nourished itself, yet serves for the nourishment of the body at large. Upon such grounds the thing nourished and the thing that nourishes would be one and the same, and itself would both nourish and be nourished; which could in no way be effected; inasmuch as it is by no means probable that the nourishment should ever be mixed with the thing nourished, for things mixed must have equal powers and mutually act on one another; and, according to Aristotle’s dictum, “where there is nutrition, there there is no mixture.” But as nutrition takes place everywhere, the nutriment is one thing, and that which is nourished by it is another, and it is altogether indispensable that the one pass into the other.
But as it is thought that the spirits, and the ultimate or primigenial aliment, or something else, is contained in animals which acts in a greater degree than the blood above the forces of the elements, we are not sufficiently informed what is understood by the expression, “acting above the forces of the elements;” neither are Aristotle’s words rightly interpreted where he says,[346] “every virtue or faculty of the soul appears to partake of another body more divine than those which are called elements.... For there is in every seed a certain something which causes it to be fruitful, viz. what is called heat, and that not fire or any faculty of the kind, but a spirit such as is contained in semen and frothy bodies; and the nature inherent in that spirit is responsive in its proportions to the element of the stars. Wherefore fire engenders no animal; neither is anything seen to be constituted of the dense, or moist, or dry. But the heat of the sun and of animals, and not only that which is stored up in semen, but even that of any excrementitious matter, although diverse in nature, still contains a vital principle. For the rest, it is obvious from this that the heat contained in animals is not fire, neither does it derive its origin from fire.” Now I maintain the same things of the innate heat and the blood; I say that they are not fire, and neither do they derive their origin from fire. They rather share the nature of some other, and that a more divine body or substance. They act by no faculty or property of the elements; but as there is a something inherent in the semen which makes it prolific, and as, in producing an animal, it surpasses the power of the elements,—as it is a spirit, namely, and the inherent nature of that spirit corresponds to the essence of the stars,—so is there a spirit, or certain force, inherent in the blood, acting superiorly to the powers of the elements, very conspicuously displayed in the nutrition and preservation of the several parts of the animal body; and the nature, yea, the soul in this spirit and blood, is identical with the essence of the stars. That the heat of the blood of animals during their lifetime, therefore, is neither fire, nor derived from fire, is manifest, and indeed is clearly demonstrated by our observations.
But that this may be made still more certain let me be permitted to digress a little from my subject, and, in a few words, to show what is meant by the word “spirit,” and what by the phrases “superior in action to the forces of the elements,” “to have the properties of another body, and that more divine than those bodies which are called elements,” and “the nature inherent in this spirit which answers to the essence of the stars.”
We have already had occasion to say something both of the nature of” spirit” and “ the vital principle,” and we shall here enter into the subject at greater length. There are three bodies—simple bodies—which seem especially entitled to receive the name, at all events, to perform the office of “spirit,” viz. fire, air, and water, each of which, by reason of its ceaseless flux and motion, expressed by the words flame, wind, and flood, appears to have the properties of life, or of some other body. Flame is the flow of fire, wind the flow of air, stream or flood the flow of water. Flame, like an animal, is self-motive, self-nutrient, self-augmentative, and is the symbol of our life. It is therefore that it is so universally brought into requisition in religious ceremonies: it was guarded by priestesses and virgins in the temples of Apollo and Vesta as a sacred thing, and from the remotest antiquity has been held worthy of divine worship by the Persians and other ancient nations; as if God were most conspicuous in flame, and spoke to us from fire as he did to Moses of old. Air is also appropriately spoken of as “spirit,” having received the title from the act of respiration. Aristotle[347] himself admits, “that there is a kind of life, and birth, and death of the winds.” Finally, we speak of a running stream as “living water.”
These three, therefore, inasmuch as they have a kind of life, appear to act superiorly to the forces of the element, and to share in a more divine nature; they were, therefore, placed among the number of the divinities by the heathen. When any excellent work or process appeared, surpassing the powers of the naked elements, it was held as proceeding from some more divine agent. “To act with power superior to the powers of the elements,” therefore, and, on that account, “to share in the properties of some more divine thing, which does not derive its origin from the elements,” appear to have the same signification.
The blood, in like manner, “acts with powers superior to the powers of the elements” in the fact of its existence, in the forms of primordial and innate heat, in semen and spirit, and its producing all the other parts of the body in succession; proceeding at all times with such foresight and understanding, and with definite ends in view, as if it employed reasoning in its acts. Now this it does not, in so far as it is elementary, and as deriving its origin from fire, but in so far as it is possessed of plastic powers and endowed with the gift of the vegetative soul, as it is the primordial and innate heat, and the immediate and competent instrument of life. Αίμα, τὸ ζωτικὸν τοῡ ἀνθρωπου: The blood is the living principle of man, says Suidas; and the same thing is true of all animals; an opinion which Virgil seems to have wished to express when he says:
“Una eademque via sanguisque animusque sequuntur.”
And by one path the blood and life flowed out.
The blood, therefore, by reason of its admirable properties and powers, is “spirit.” It is also celestial; for nature, the soul, that which answers to the essence of the stars, is the inmate of the spirit, in other words, it is something analogous to heaven, the instrument of heaven, vicarious of heaven.
In this way all natural bodies fall to be considered under a twofold point of view, viz. either as they are specially regarded, and are comprehended within the limits of their own proper nature, or are viewed as the instruments of some more noble agent and superior power. For as regards their peculiar powers, there is, perhaps, no doubt but that all things subject to generation by birth, and to death and decay, derive their origin from the elements, and perform their offices agreeably to their proper standard; but in so far as they are the instruments of a more excellent agent, and are governed by that, not acting of their own proper nature, but by the regimen of another; therefore is it, therein is it, that they seem to participate with another and more divine body, and to surpass the powers of the ordinary elements.
In the same way, too, is the blood the animal heat, in so far, namely, as it is governed in its actions by the soul; for it is celestial as subservient to heaven; and divine, because it is the instrument of God the great and good. But this we have already spoken of above, where we have shown that male and female were the instruments of the sun, heaven, and Supreme Preserver, when they served for the generation of the more perfect animals.
The inferior world, according to Aristotle, is so continuous and connected with the superior orbits, that all its motions and changes appear to take their rise and to receive direction from thence. In that world, indeed, which the Greeks called Κόσμος from its order and beauty, inferior and corruptible things wait upon superior and incorruptible things; but all are still subservient to the will of the supreme, omnipotent, and eternal Creator.
They, therefore, who think that nothing composed of the elements can show powers of action superior to the forces exercised by these, unless they at the same time partake of some other and more divine body, and on this ground conceive the spirits they evoke as constituted partly of the elements, partly of a certain ethereal and celestial substance—these persons, I say, appear to me to reason indifferently. In the first place you will scarcely find any elementary body which in acting does not exceed its proper powers: air and water, the winds and the ocean, when they waft navies to either India and round this globe, and often by opposite courses, when they grind, 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 surpass 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, melting, subliming, changing, [and setting in motion], in an infinite variety of ways! What shall we say of it when we see iron itself produced by its agency?—iron “that breaks the stubborn 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[348] says; for the steel needle only rubbed with the loadstone still steadily points to the great cardinal 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 possible 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 beyond its powers, every instrumental agent may exceed its own proper powers in action; for it acts not merely by its own virtue, 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 properties, surpasses the powers of those very spirits themselves, nor of the spirits only, but of the vegetative, aye, even the sensitive, and I will venture to add, the rational soul. Powers, did I say? It far exceeds even any estimate we can form of the rational soul; for the nature of generation, and the order that prevails in it, are truly admirable and divine, beyond all that thought can conceive or understanding comprehend.
That it may, however, more clearly appear that the remarkable virtues which the learned attribute to the spirits and the innate heat belong to the blood alone, besides what has already been spoken of as conspicuous in the egg before any trace of the embryo appears, as well as in the perfect and adult fœtus, the few following observations are made by way of further illustration, and for the sake of the diligent inquirer. The blood considered absolutely and by itself, without the veins, in so far as it is an elementary fluid, and composed of several parts—of thin and serous particles, and of thick and concrete particles called cruor—possesses but few, and these not very obvious virtues. Contained within the veins, however, inasmuch as it is an integral part of the body, and is animated, regenerative, and the immediate instrument and principal seat of the soul, inasmuch, moreover, as it seems to partake of the nature of another more divine body, and is transfused by divine animal heat, it obtains remarkable and most excellent powers, and is analogous to the essence of the stars. In so far as it is spirit, it is the hearth, the Vesta, the household divinity, the innate heat, the sun of the microcosm, the fire of Plato; not because like common fire it lightens, burns, and destroys, but because by a vague and incessant motion it preserves, nourishes, and aggrandizes itself. It farther deserves the name of spirit, inasmuch as it is radical moisture, at once the ultimate and the proximate and the primary aliment, more abundant than all the other parts; preparing for and administering to these the same nutriment with which itself is fed, ceaselessly permeating the whole body, cherishing and keeping alive the parts which it has fashioned and added to itself, not otherwise assuredly than the superior stars, the sun and moon especially, in maintaining their own proper orbits, continually vivify the stars that are beneath them.
Since the blood acts, then, with forces superior to the forces of the elements, and exerts its influence through these forces or virtues, and is the instrument of the Great Workman, no one can ever sufficiently extol its admirable, its divine faculties. 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 differ 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 beginning 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 respiration; 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 worshipping specious names. The word blood, signifying a substance, 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 also extremely impatient of the earth; if you essayed to cover it, it forthwith and of itself burst forth with violence, and mounted on high. No man could by any art contain or inclose it in any confined place; on the contrary, it appears to delight in free and spacious places. It is of the highest purity, of the greatest brightness, and is without stain or blemish. It has no certain shape, but a shape uncertain and changing every moment. Of the most consummate beauty, it suffers no one to touch it; and if you persist too long or obstinately, it will do you injury, as I have observed it repeatedly to do in no trifling measure. If anything be by chance taken from it by persevering efforts, it is (strange to say) made nothing less thereby. Its custodier adds farther, that its virtues and powers are useful in a great variety of ways, and even—especially to kings—indispensably necessary; but these he declines to reveal without being first paid a large reward.” The author might have added of this stone that it was neither hard nor soft, and exhibited a variety of forms and colours, and had a singular trick of trembling and palpitating, and like an animal—although itself inanimate—consumed a large quantity of food every day for its nutrition or sustenance. Farther, that he had heard from men worthy of credit, that this stone had formerly fallen from heaven to earth; that it was the frequent cause of thunder and lightning, and was still occasionally engendered from the solar beams refracted through water.
Who would not admire so remarkable a stone, or believe that it acted with a force superior to the forces of the elements, that it participated in the nature of another body, and possessed an ethereal spirit? especially when he found that it responded in its proportions to the essence of the sun. But with Fernelius[349] for Œdipus, we find the whole enigma resolving itself into “Flame.”
In the same way, did I paint the blood under the garb of a fable, and gave it the title of the philosopher’s stone, and propose all its wonderful faculties and operations in enigmatical language, many would doubtless think a great deal of it; they would readily believe that it could act with powers superior to those of the elements, and they would not unwillingly allow it to be possessed of another and more divine body.