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.