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.
EXERCISE THE SEVENTY-SECOND.
Of the primigenial moisture.
We have now dignified the blood with the title of the innate heat; with like propriety, we believe, that the fluid which we have called the crystalline colliquament, from which the fœtus and its parts primarily and immediately arise, may be designated the radical and primigenial moisture. There is certainly nothing in the generation of animals to which this title can with better right be given.
We call this the radical moisture, because from it arises the first particle of the embryo, the blood, to wit; and all the other posthumous parts arise from it as from a root; and they are procreated and nourished, and grow and are preserved by the same matter.
We also call it primigenial, because it is first engendered in every animal organism, and is, as it were, the foundation of the rest; as may be seen in the egg, in which it presents itself after a brief period of incubation, as the first work of the inherent fecundity and reproductive power.
This fluid is also the most simple, pure, and unadulterated body, in which all the parts of the pullet are present potentially, though none of them are there actually. It appears that nature has conceded to it the same qualities which are usually ascribed to first matter common to all things, viz. that potentially it be capable of assuming all forms, but have itself no form in fact. So the crystalline humour of the eye, in order that it might be susceptible of all colours, is itself colourless; and in like manner are the media or organs of each of the senses destitute of all the other qualities of sensible things: the organs of smelling and hearing, and the air which ministers to them, are without smell and sound; the saliva of the tongue and mouth is also tasteless.
And it is upon this argument that they mainly rely who maintain the possibility of an incorporeal intellect, viz. because it is susceptible of all forms without matter; and as the hand is called the “instrument of instruments,” so is the intellect called “the form of forms,” being itself immaterial and wholly without form; it is, therefore, said to be possible or potential, but not passible.
This fluid, or one analogous to it, appears also to be the ultimate aliment from which Aristotle taught that the semen, or geniture, as he calls it, is produced.[350] I say the ultimate aliment, called dew by the Arabians, with which all the parts of the body are bathed and moistened. For in the same way as this dew, by ulterior condensation and adhesion, becomes alible gluten and cambium, whence the parts of the body are constituted, so, mutatis mutandis, in the commencement of generation and nutrition, from gluten liquefied and rendered thinner is formed the nutritious dew: from the white of the egg is produced the colliquament under discussion, the radical moisture and primigenial dew. The thing indeed is identical in either instance, if any credit be accorded to our observations; and in fact neither philosophers nor physicians deny that an animal is nourished by the same matter out of which it is formed, and is increased by that from which it was engendered. The nutritious dew, therefore, differs from the colliquament or primigenial moisture only in the relation of prior and posterior; the one is concocted and prepared by the parents, the other by the embryo itself, both juices, however, being the proximate and immediate aliment of animals; not indeed “first and second,” according to that dictum, “contraria ex contrariis,” but ultimate, as I have said, and as Aristotle himself admonishes us, according to that other dictum, “similia ex similibus augeri,” “like is necessarily increased by its like.” There is in either fluid a proximate force, in virtue of which, no obstacles intervening, it will pass spontaneously, or by the law of nature, into every part of the animal body.