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.