This denial he soon repeats, adding the words: "and this is taught excellently well by our observations."
According to Aristotle the soul in the semen is associated with a body diviner than the four lower elements, viz.: the generative heat, an analogue of the element of the stars, which analogue resides in spirits, i.e., in hot vapor within bubbles of seminal foam. In the case of the blood, according to Harvey, it is the heat itself, the innate heat alias the blood, which is associated with "another body and that more divine," and Harvey, having denied the reality of the spirits, uses the word "spirits" as equivalent to "some power" in the blood, which power is "very conspicuous in the nourishing and preserving of the several parts of an animal." In the spirits, so understood, and the blood, dwells the soul; and it is the soul itself which Harvey states to be "a nature analogous [respondens not proportione respondens] to the element of the stars." Even as the word "spirits" has become, in effect, a label for powers of the blood, so the analogue of the ether becomes, in effect, a pious epithet applied to the soul; and only to the soul itself can Harvey have referred as "another body and that more divine." In the next page to the passage now under discussion he says:—
"The blood, therefore, is spirits, because of its extraordinary virtues and powers. It is also celestial, inasmuch as in the spirits aforesaid is lodged a nature, the soul, to wit, which is analogous to the element of the stars; something, that is, analogous to heaven, the instrument of heaven, vicarious of heaven....[362] The heat of the blood is psychical, inasmuch as it is governed in its operations by the soul;[363] it is also celestial, because subservient to heaven; and divine, because the instrument of God, the best and greatest....[364] The lower world, according to Aristotle, is so connected with the courses on high that all its motives and changes seem to take thence their origin and to be governed thence.[365] Truly, in that world which the Greeks called the 'Cosmos' from the beauty of its order,[366] lower and corruptible things are subject to other higher and incorruptible things; but all are beneath the highest, the omnipotent and eternal Creator, and obey Him."[367]
It is obvious that, although Harvey in dealing with the blood does not forego the use of the phrases used by the ancient master in dealing with the semen, nevertheless, the entities recognized by Harvey are not only fewer than those of Aristotle, but are differently disposed within the draperies of Aristotelian language. Harvey's entities are simply the innate heat alias the blood, and the soul which dwells therein; but he sincerely takes himself to be an interpreter of Aristotle's words, as appears a second time from an echo of those words which we meet in an earlier Exercise of Harvey's treatise On Generation. Here, pleading that it is true that the soul is in the blood, Harvey refers to Aristotle by name and immediately says:—
"Indeed, if he is constrained by the truth to acknowledge that there is a soul in an egg, even in a wind-egg;[368] and that in the semen and the blood also there is found something which is divine and analogous to the element of the stars and is vicarious of the omnipotent Creator; and if certain of the modems truly say," etc., etc.[369]
These zealous words show Harvey drawn into statements by no means warranted by the text of Aristotle. We have seen that the Aristotelian heaven was uncreated;[370] and, whatever Harvey in his day may have thought, no "omnipotent Creator" is revealed by more modern study of the Aristotelian philosophy. Whatever inferences Harvey may have drawn from Aristotle's words, Aristotle does not "acknowledge"[371] that the analogue of the ether exists in the blood. Moreover, when in Harvey's Exercise On the Innate Heat that analogue of the element of the stars which Aristotle associated with the soul is identified by Harvey with the soul itself, the change is almost as great as if one should declare that protoplasm is life, instead of styling it with Huxley "the physical basis of life." In a third Exercise of the treatise On Generation, the earliest of the three, Harvey had dealt in a better and more characteristic way with the analogue of the ether; though here, too, his exposition gives no accurate idea of Aristotle's doctrine. In discussing Aristotle's opinion as to how the semen of the cock causes the formation of the embryo Harvey says of Aristotle:—
"Indeed, where he appears to settle and determine with certainty what that may be in whatsoever seed, whether of plants or of animals, which renders the same fruitful, he rejects heat and fire as unfit for the work, but does not give recognition to any similar faculty, nor yet discover in the seed aught suitable for that duty; but is forced to admit something incorporeal, and coming from without, which shall act with understanding and foresight (like art or mind) to form the fœtus, and therein shall establish and order all things to a purpose and for the better. He betakes himself, I say, to something obscure and to us unknown, 'spirits included in the semen and in foaminess, and in the spirits the nature which is analogous to the element of the stars.' But what that may be he has nowhere taught us."[372]
We have found that Aristotle describes "the element of the stars" as a "body,"[373] and that in the passage about the semen which Harvey quotes Aristotle expressly applies the same term, "body," to the analogue of the element of the stars.[374] Yet to this analogue Harvey seems to refer as "something incorporeal" in his last-quoted words, which tend to confound it with soul. Harvey agrees with Aristotle, however, in calling fire a "body";[375] and where in his Exercise On the Innate Heat he extols at some length[376] fire, air and water in motion as flame, wind and flood, he also sets forth how they each claim the title of spirits "by virtue of their movement and perpetual flux,"[377] and says:—
"These three, therefore, in so far as they acquire a certain life, appear to act beyond the powers of the elements and to have a share[378] of another and diviner body; wherefore they were reckoned among the deities by the heathen. For that of which the outcome is some extraordinary work, exceeding the bare faculties of the elements, that same they held to proceed from some diviner agent; as though it were one and the same to act beyond the powers of the elements and to have a share of another and diviner body—diviner, because it does not derive its origin from the elements."[379]