|
On reaching the end of the last quoted words of Harvey's
polemic,
a physician or biologist of to-day may easily be conscious
of
disappointment, even of a mild despair; for the once celebrated
passage
from Aristotle, about the interpretation of which Harvey
gives battle, seems
at first the source of all the obscurities of
the controversy, rather than of
the promised light which shall clear
them away. Yet that light must come by
way of that rugged passage.
The gist of the first part of the Aristotelian
passage may be set
forth as follows: In the semen soul is potential, being
associated
therein with a "body" or "nature" which possesses a
"life-giving
principle" and is in the spirits, _i.e._, in the hot vapor,
within
the foam-bubbles of the semen. This body or nature is called
heat,
yet it is not that one of the four elemental bodies which is
known
as fire, nor yet a derivative of this, but is "a body other than
the
so-called elements and more divine," a "nature analogous to
the element of
the stars." What is this "element of the stars"?
It is clear that only from
the answer to this question can the
light which we are seeking begin to
shine. To find this celestial
element we must immediately take a rapid glance
at the Aristotelian
universe--that grand conception which the master mainly
accepted
from his predecessors and contemporaries, but owed, in part,
to
the work of his own mind. Let us swiftly scan what he styled
the
"Cosmos."
At the center thereof is the earth, spherical and
motionless. The
core of the universe consists not only of this central globe
with
everything in or upon it, but also of the atmosphere or,
more
correctly, of all which extends between the surface of the globe
and
the nearest of the distant revolving hollow spheres of heaven,
in some of
which spheres are set the heavenly bodies. Below the
heavenly spheres this
core of the universe is made up of the four
elements, earth, water, air, and
fire; and all things composed of
these are subject to opposed and limited and
compounded motions, to
generation, alteration, and corruption. The inclosing
heaven, on the
other hand, is unchangeable and eternal, has never been
created,
and will never be destroyed. Its many component hollow spheres
are
contiguous and concentric, and concentric also with our globe.
In a
single sphere, the outermost, called the "first heaven,"
all the fixed stars
are set. In separate spheres, nearer to the
earth, are set the seven bodies
which the astronomy of Aristotle's
day styled "planets." To these (here
designated by their present
names) that ancient astronomy assigned the
following order from the
earth outward toward the fixed stars: the moon, the
sun, Venus,
Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Each of the celestial
spheres
revolves with simple circular motion in one direction forever.
The
"first heaven," the sphere of the fixed stars, needs but the
one
simple motion which is its own, and it carries with it in its
daily
revolution all the inner spheres. These are more numerous than
the
seven planets; for though each planet is set in but a single
sphere,
each planet's complex course results from the combined
simple
motions of more spheres than one. In spite of these more or
less
intimate relations, the spheres of heaven are separate
existences,
self-moved, like animals; and, like animals, possess activity,
life,
and soul. But the motion and life of the heavenly existences
are
continuous and eternal, and hence these existences--the spheres,
and
the planets and fixed stars set therein--are all divine; much
more divine
than man, though man possesses a far larger share of the
divine than other
animals.[328]
Just as the troubled regions which lie below the sphere of
the moon
are contrasted with the serene heaven which incloses and
limits
them, so the changing forms of matter which compose our globe
and
its nearer surroundings are contrasted with the simple
unalterable
substance of the heavenly spheres. "Of necessity," says
Aristotle,
"there exists a simple body whose very nature it is to be
borne
on in circular motion."[329] Elsewhere he says that the men of
old
"would seem to have assumed that the body which moves forever
is
likewise divine by nature."[330] This is "an embodied
substance
different from the compounds here, more divine and prior to
them
all";[331] a body "of a nature the more precious the farther it
is
withdrawn from what is here."[332] After reasoning about this
body
Aristotle says:--
"If what has been laid down be accepted,
it is plain from the
foregoing why the first of bodies is eternal, and
shows neither
growth nor decay nor old age nor alteration, and is
affected by
nothing. The conception seems to testify to the phenomena
and
the phenomena to the conception.... Therefore, as the first
body
is something different from earth and fire and air and
water,
[the ancients] gave the name of ether to the region most
on
high, naming it from its moving always during all
eternity."[333]
The place in nature of "the first element," so grandly
conceived,
is fixed more definitely by Aristotle when he says "that the
whole
universe in the region of the courses on high is filled with
that
body."[334]
Now, therefore, we have attained the object of our
rapid quest;
at last we have reached "the element of the stars"; for
Aristotle
tells us that not only heaven, but all the heavenly bodies as
well,
consist of the ether, saying:--
"It is most reasonable and
consequent, in view of things already
said, for us to make each of the
stars out of that body in which
it has its course, since we have
declared the existence of
something of which the nature is to be borne
in a circle."[335]
At a later day the ethereal element of the stars was
distinguished
from the four inferior elements not by its Aristotelian name
of
first element but by that of fifth element, or fifth existence,
or
fifth "essence." Hence arose and was applied to the fifth element
the
name "quintessence"; a word which in its turn acquired
various
meanings.
Ten years after Harvey's death Milton published his
description of
the creation of heaven; a description couched, however, in
terms of
the uncreated heaven of Aristotle. Milton wrote:--
"And
this ethereal quintessence of heaven
Flew upward, spirited with various
forms,
That roll'd orbicular, and turned to stars
Numberless, as
thou seest, and how they move;
Each had his place appointed, each his
course;
The rest in circuit walls this universe."[336]
We may now
return from this excursion through the "Cosmos," to bring
its light to bear
upon those high-sounding words of Aristotle which,
according to Harvey,
formed the basis of speculations about the
innate heat, the spirits, and the
blood, which were handed down by
"Scaliger, Fernelius, and others," and
affected the views of Harvey
himself. Aristotle had written:--
"The virtue or potency of every soul[316] seems to be associated
with a
body[317] other than the so-called elements, and more
divine."
And a little farther on:--
"For there exists in the
semen of all [animals] that which makes
their semen generative, the
so-called heat. Yet this is not
fire, nor any such power, but the
spirits[319] included in the
semen and in foaminess, and in the spirits
the nature which is
analogous to the element of the
stars."[337]
That generative heat which is not elemental fire, but a
"body" or
"nature" diviner than the lower elements, can be the analogue
of
nothing else than the celestial ether.
What led Aristotle to so
lofty a flight of speculation? He does not
tell. One may guess, however, that
it may well have been this: that
he had found himself obliged not only to
deny the identity of the
generative heat of the semen with elemental fire,
but also to deny
the identity with elemental fire even of the glowing sun, as
well
as of the other planets and the fixed stars; and to maintain that
all
the heavenly bodies consist of ether. These denials we have
read already;
they shall presently be commented on. Taking them for
granted: now, since the
life-giving sun is not elemental fire but
ether, would not the life-giving
seminal heat, which also is not
elemental fire, naturally be the analogue of
the ether? "Man and
the sun generate man," said Aristotle, in a famous
passage.[338]
He needed no knowledge of chlorophyll to teach him this. The
ether
is the element of the sun, moon, stars, and spheres; of it
consist
the bodies associated with the souls of the living,
unalterable,
immortal, divine existences of the eternal heaven. To
associate
a body analogous to this ether with the dormant soul of a
living
existence--a living existence alterable and mortal as an
individual,
but one of an immortal race--in the medium which shall
maintain
that racial immortality by begetting a new individual out of
the
lower elements--this is a stroke characteristic of the man
who
declared that "the race of men, and of animals, and of plants,
exists
forever";[339] the man who assigned to every bloodless animal
an analogue of
the blood and an analogue of the heart,[340] to the
octopus, an analogue of
the brain;[341] the man in whose eyes
the heavenly bodies were divine living
existences running eternal
courses and so, we may presume, were analogous in
some degree to the
living existences of the earth.[342]
Harvey in one
of the earlier Exercises of his treatise On Generation
had already followed
the ancient master's footsteps in this matter.
Discoursing of the endless
succession of generations the pupil says
that this
"makes the
race of fowls eternal; since now the chick and now
the egg, in an
ever-continued series, produce an immortal
species out of individuals
which fail and perish. We discern,
too, that in similar fashion many
lower things rival the
perpetuity of higher things. And whether or no we
say that
there is a soul in the egg, it clearly appears from the
cycle
aforesaid that there underlies this revolution from hen to
egg
and from egg again to hen, a principle which bestows
eternity
upon them. That same, according to Aristotle,[343] is
analogous
to the element of the stars; and it makes parents
generate,
makes their semen or eggs prolific, and, like Proteus, is
ever
present."[344]
Let us return now to Harvey's polemic. In it
he does not give
chapter and verse by which we can properly verify more than
a few of
his statements of the views of "Scaliger, Fernelius, and
others";
but the words of Aristotle which Harvey quotes go far to
justify
his intimation that the views which he states and combats, as
the
champion of the circulating blood, are largely derived from
those
Aristotelian words--whether by misinterpretation, as he roundly
but
indefinitely declares, or with deliberate modification of
doctrine,
need not now concern us.
At the very outset of Harvey's
discourse about the innate heat, the
first doctrine that he reprobates is a
striking one, viz.: that the
innate heat is one and the same thing with
spirits distinguishable
from the blood, though not separable from it. Of
these spirits he
stoutly denies the existence, on the true scientific ground
of
lack of all evidence from observation in their favor. Our
earlier
studies of ancient doctrines of respiration have brought
before
us, as supposed to exist in the blood, spirits variously
styled
"elemental," "aerial," "nourished by our common and elemental
air,"
"nourished and increased from the thinner part of the blood."
We
have even read Galen's words of spirits which are "the soul's
most
immediate instrument," viz.: the "animal spirits" in the brain
and
nerves. Indeed, during the eighteen centuries between the death
of
Aristotle and the boyhood of Fernelius and Scaliger, the
word
"_pneuma_"--"spirits" or "spirit"--did most varied duties in
the
service of physicians, philosophers, alchemists, and theologians;
and
this same word is of great importance in the scriptures.[345] It
is
noticeable that, although Harvey rejects the doctrine of spirits
in the
blood, even he himself talks of the blood being itself
spirits.[346] This
fact, however, should not militate against him
or lead to confusion. The word
"spirits" being a very comprehensive
technical term of his day, he does not
refuse to employ it as a
label for qualities of the blood after he has denied
the very
existence of what is properly denoted by the word "spirits."
He
simply behaves as we behave when we talk of the "sympathetic"
nerves,
though the theory is exploded which the adjective expresses;
or when we speak
of "animal cell," well knowing that no proper wall
necessarily surrounds the
living substance.
Despite the protean forms of the spirits it is not till
we have
reached Harvey's Exercise On the Innate Heat that we have
fallen
in with spirits in the blood which, for some of his
predecessors,
"constitute an innate heat more excellent and more divine, as
it
were"; nor with "a spirit, another innate heat, of celestial origin
and
nature." For this treatment of spirits within the blood and
of innate heat,
as convertible terms, the way may well have been
paved by the words in which
Aristotle intimates that the generative
heat of the semen resides in the
spirits therein, _i.e._, in hot
vapor produced within the body of the male
and included within the
films of foam-bubbles in the semen. Referring to "the
so-called
heat" the words of Aristotle are: "Yet this is not fire nor
any
such power, but the spirits included in the semen and in
foaminess,
and in the spirits the nature which is analogous to the element
of
the stars."[347] The transition can hardly have been too difficult
from
the view of Aristotle that in the spirits of the semen is heat
which is not
elemental fire, to the view combated by Harvey that the
spirits of the blood
are heat which is not elemental fire.
Aristotle's striking biological
doctrine that the generative seminal
heat is a "nature which is analogous to
the element of the stars"
appears to be an obvious source of those seeming
fantasies, written
down eighteen centuries later, at which Harvey girds when
he says:
"For what we so commonly would fetch from the stars is born
at
home." If we use our judgment simply, upon Harvey's statement of
their
opinions, the men whom he castigates, having strayed from the
ancient
master's footsteps by making the spirits one and the same
with the innate
heat instead of the vehicle thereof, next stray
still more blindly by
identifying this heat, _alias_ these spirits,
not with an analogue of the
ether, but with a portion of the ether
itself. Therefore is it that we read
in the words of Harvey's
polemic, of "that foreign guest, ethereal heat"; of
those spirits
"aerial or ethereal, or composed of substance both ethereal
and
elemental"; of spirits "which draw their origin from heaven"
and
elicit Harvey's ironical wonder that they "should be nourished by
our
common and elemental air." Therefore, too, is he able to tell us
of that
amazing spirit, _alias_ innate heat, which is "a body" and
qualified by many
imposing adjectives and finally styled "ethereal
and sharing in the
quintessence." The doctrine of Aristotle that
in the semen there are spirits
which are the vehicle of generative
heat which is analogous to the element of
the stars, is a baseless
doctrine, but it is a subtle and far-reaching
speculation. The
doctrine stated and attacked by Harvey that in the blood
there are
spirits which are the innate heat, which consists as a whole or
in
part of the element of the stars, is not only a baseless doctrine,
as
Harvey vigorously shows, but certainly is lame as speculation
despite its
glittering appeal to the imagination. To make spirits
and innate heat
convertible terms may pass as but one among many
phases of speculation. But
to bring down actual ether from heaven to
earth, although attempted by
eminent thinkers[348] centuries before
Scaliger and Fernelius, is to bring
chaos into that conception
of the universe which requires the "first element"
to revolve
forever on high, above that lower world which lies beneath
the
sphere of the moon. To Aristotle such chaos surely would have
been
abhorrent; indeed, it runs counter to his expressed description
of
the ether.[349] Moreover, Aristotle's application of the term
"analogue" to
the generative heat is equivalent to a denial that the
generative heat is
actually ether; for analogues do frequent service
in his doctrines and he
explicitly states the analogue of a thing
to be something different from the
thing itself.[350] What that
mysterious analogue of the ether may be with
which the generative
heat is identified we are not explicitly told, as we are
not told
what the analogue of the heat may be in bloodless animals. We
are
left to judge for ourselves after deeper investigation of nature
or
deeper study of the Aristotelian writings. Had Aristotle been ready
to
define and describe the body which is more divine than the four
lower
elements, but is not the first element on high, he probably
would not have
chosen an analogue as the fittest vehicle for his
thought.
According
to Harvey the horse of battle of his criticized
predecessors was the argument
stated by him as follows: "That
nothing composed of the elements can work
beyond the powers of
these, unless it be associated at the same time with
another body
and that more divine; and ... therefore, that the spirits
aforesaid
consist in part of the elements, in part of some ethereal
and
celestial substance."[351] The "spirits aforesaid" are held to be
one
and the same with the innate heat and reside in the blood.
Aristotle had
written, we remember: "The virtue or potency of every
soul seems to be
associated with a body other than the so-called
elements and more
divine,"[352] viz.: the generative seminal heat,
which is not fire but an
analogue of the ether. It would seem fairly
probable that largely from this
doctrine of Aristotle was developed
the doctrine about the "powers of the
elements" which Harvey
sets forth in his polemic. Nothing can be more
emphatic than his
disagreement with the advocates of this doctrine. "Such
persons,"
he says, "seem to me to have drawn their conclusions ill. For
you
shall find scarcely any elemental body which, when in action, will
not
exceed its own proper powers."[353] On the same page with this
sweeping
statement we find it supported by the following very simple
line of
thought:--
"All natural bodies present themselves in a double
relation, to
wit: according as they are reckoned with apart and
comprehended
within the circuit of their own proper nature, or according
as
they are the instruments of some nobler and superior
authority.
For, as to their own proper powers, there is no doubt that
all
things which are subject to generation and corruption derive
their origin from the elements, and work according to the
standard
thereof. In so far, however, as all things so subject
are instruments of
a more excellent agent and are regulated
thereby, their works do not
proceed from their own proper nature
but from the rule of that other;
and, consequently, they seem to
be associated with another and more
divine body and to exceed
the powers of the elements."[354]
In
the very next Exercise, however, that On the Primitive Moisture,
the last
Exercise of Harvey's treatise On Generation, we come
suddenly upon a reason
why "the powers of the elements" must have
seemed to him something to be
treated rather as a convenient
form of words than as a serious doctrine,
despite his respectful
argument just quoted. Speaking of the "primitive
moisture," the
great observer says that he sees in the hen's egg that out
of
that "crystalline colliquament," that "simplest body" alone,
all the
parts of the embryo are made and increased;[355] and
proceeds bluntly to
question the reality of the elements, "namely,
the fire, air, water, and
earth of Empedocles and Aristotle; or
the salt, sulphur, and mercury of the
chemists; or the atoms of
Democritus."[356] Harvey says:--
"Therefore, the so-called elements do not exist prior to
whatever is
generated or arises; but rather are subsequent
thereto, being remains
rather than origins. Not even Aristotle
himself, nor any one else, has
ever demonstrated that elements
exist separately in nature, or give rise
to bodies which consist
of parts similar one to
another."[357]
Almost immediately after this tug at the foundations of
the
Aristotelian universe, Harvey brings his treatise On Generation to
an
end.
The admirable feature of Harvey's brief last-published
discussion
of the circulating blood is this, that the aged veteran
ever
strikes vigorous blows for observation, for the use of the senses,
in
the search for truth. But we have seen already that by his arm,
as by
another's, the blows are delivered both for better and for
worse. Rightly
does he drive out of court the spirits "ethereal
and elemental" which no man
can demonstrate. Wrongly does he
discredit the real complexity of that humor,
to the eye so simple
and crystal-clear, out of which he believes all the
diverse parts of
the living bird to be developed. In Harvey's present polemic
we find
no new appeal to nature; he vindicates the justice of his
former
appeals and maintains with vigor the doctrines already familiar
to
us, that the blood is the principal part of the body, is itself
the
innate heat, and is the seat of the soul. This relation of blood
and
soul he reaffirms very impressively in this, his final public
utterance; a
most important passage of which, about the presence
of the soul in the blood,
has been embodied in the chapter on that
subject of the present
paper.[358]
But evidently the main purpose of his polemical Exercise on
the
Innate Heat is to cast out of the blood the futile spirits
which
obscure the real relation of that heat to the circulating blood;
and
so to defend the thesis best set forth in the following words of
his
own:--
"In truth, the blood alone is the innate warmth, or
the first
born psychical heat; as is proved excellently well by
our
observations of the generation of animals, especially of the
chick in the egg; so that it were superfluous to multiply
entities....[359] What need, then, is there, say I, of that
foreign
guest, ethereal heat, since all can be accomplished by
the blood, even
as by it?"[360]
Harvey has expelled from the blood the mythical spirits
which had
stood in the way of the direct identification of the blood
with
the innate heat. But how does he interpret the famous words
of
Aristotle which he quotes, and declares not to have been
"rightly
interpreted" by the champions of ethereal spirits? When we seek
an
answer to this question, we do not find the veteran discoverer at
his
best. The ancient philosopher surely would have been as much
surprised at
Harvey's interpretation of his words as at any use of
them made by Scaliger
or Fernelius. We have seen that Harvey follows
up his quotation from
Aristotle by promptly applying its language,
literally or by paraphrase, to
the innate heat and the blood.[361]
Emphatic are the words which immediately
follow the words of
Aristotle. Harvey says:--
"I, too, would say
the same, for my part, of the innate heat and
the blood, to wit: that it
is not fire and does not take its
origin from fire, but is associated
with another body and that
more divine."
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]
Nowhere but in the third chapter of the second book of
Aristotle's
treatise On Generation does he refer to the analogue of the
ether;
and the complete text of this chapter--rugged, here and
there,
especially in Gaza's Latin translation--may help us perhaps
to
account for some of Harvey's efforts at exposition.[380] But when
these
and his reports of his predecessor's doctrines are compared
with the words of
Aristotle, Harvey and those other biologists of
the Renaissance seem like
sturdy children reaching forward in the
dust, each still clasping a finger of
the strong old father who
strides among them.
CHAPTER
XI
THE INNATE HEAT NOT DERIVED FROM ELEMENTAL FIRE
So Harvey
denies the doctrine falsely based upon Aristotle's words,
the doctrine of the
ethereal nature of the innate heat; but he
affirms and adopts as his own the
Aristotelian distinction between
the heat which is sterile and the heat which
gives life. This
weighty affirmation obliges us who study Harvey to examine
this
impressive distinction further.[381]
Aristotle says, we remember:
"The heat in animals is not fire and
does not take its origin from fire." We
remember also that Harvey
says: "I, too, would say the same, for my part, of
the innate heat
and the blood, to wit: that it is not fire and does not take
its
origin from fire." This doctrine is based by both Aristotle and
Harvey
upon observation; and Aristotle's argument is contained in
the passage which
Harvey quotes, a passage obscure in the Latin
and rugged in the Greek.
Briefly, Aristotle's argument is this:
Observation shows that fire is
sterile, but that the heat of the sun
is generative and the heat of animals
likewise; therefore, the heat
of animals is not fire. Harvey declares that
this same conclusion
"is taught excellently well" by his observations
also--by which he
does not expressly say. That Aristotle, in drawing the
distinction
aforesaid between the heat of fire and the heat of the sun,
was
playing at hide and seek with a great truth of biology, would soon
be
apparent to whosoever should take a flourishing green plant from
a window
warmed by sunshine and try to make the same plant flourish
in a dark room
warmed by a hidden fire.
At this point let us scan further the words of
Aristotle which
Harvey has quoted.[337] Aristotle says:[318]--
"For there exists in the semen of all [animals] that which
makes their
semen generative, the so-called heat. Yet this is
not fire, nor any such
power, but the spirits[319] included
in the semen and in foaminess, and
in the spirits the nature
which is analogous to the element of the
stars.[320] Wherefore
fire generates no animal, nor does anything
[animal] appear in
process of formation in that, whether moist or dry,
which is
undergoing the action of fire;[321] whereas the heat of the
sun
and that of animals--not only that [which acts] through the
semen,[322] but also, should there occur some excretion of a
different
nature[323]--even this, too, possesses a life-giving
principle. It is
patent, then, from such [facts] as these that
the heat in animals is not
fire and does not take its origin
from fire."[324]
In this
passage a forcible presentment is made of the sterilizing
power of fire, and
elsewhere we are told by Aristotle that "only in
earth and in water are there
animals; there are none in air and in
fire."[382] That by the word "fire" we
are to understand elemental
heat of greater or less intensity is sufficiently
shown perhaps by
the context. But no doubt will linger if we glance at two
lines from
another treatise in which, referring expressly to the four
elements,
Aristotle speaks of earth, water, air, and "what as a matter
of
custom we call 'fire' but it is not fire; for fire is an excess,
a
boiling, as it were, of heat."[383]
Harvey, looking askance as he
did at the four ancient elements and
even bluntly questioning the elementary
constitution of matter,
felt himself free to reduce the analogue of the ether
to a pious
epithet, and yet to accept with emphasis the Aristotelian
doctrine
that the heat of animals "is not fire." At the end of his
Exercise
On the Primitive Moisture he says: "Nor, lastly, do we find
that
anything is naturally generated out of fire, as out of
something
capable of mixture, and the thing is perhaps impossible."
Here,
however, he is not dealing merely with the generation of
living
beings, but with a subject deeper yet, the possibility of
fire
acting as an element at all.[384]
The drift of those sentences
which Harvey quotes is lighted up,
better perhaps than by any modern
commentary, by a passage of
Cicero's treatise On the Nature of the Gods, a
treatise mentioned by
Harvey in his lecture notes,[385] as we have seen. In
the orator's
lucid Latin we may read what purports to be a quotation from
the
Greek philosopher Cleanthes, who was a child when Aristotle died
in
322 B.C., and who became the second head of the Stoic school,
the
powerful younger rival of the school of Aristotle. Let us listen
to
the Roman stoic of 45 or 44 B.C., who is set up by Cicero to quote
and
expound Cleanthes as follows:--
"Cleanthes says: 'Since the sun is
fiery and is nourished by
the humors of Ocean (seeing that no fire can
last without some
kind of food), therefore, the sun must needs be
similar either
to the fire which we use and apply in our daily life, or
to that
fire which is contained in the bodies of animate beings.
But
this fire of ours, which is requisite for the uses of life,
is
the destroyer and consumer of all things, and wheresoever it
has
made its way disturbs and dissipates everything; whereas
that
fire of the body is vital and salutary and by it everything
is
preserved, nourished, increased, sustained, and endowed with
sense.' Cleanthes denies, therefore, that it is doubtful to
which of
these two fires the sun is similar, seeing that the
sun likewise makes
all things flourish and ripen, each after
its kind. Wherefore, since the
sun's fire is similar to those
fires which exist in the bodies of
animate beings, the sun,
too, must be an animate being and, indeed, the
rest of the
stars that arise in the celestial ardor which is named ether
or
heaven."[386]
Unlike Aristotle, Cicero's stoic admits that the
sun and even the
heavenly ether are fire. But we see him to be no less
impressed
than Aristotle by the difference between the killing heat of
flame
and the life-giving heat of heaven and of living things. It
is
interesting to find this difference expressly given as a reason
for
believing the heavenly bodies to be alive; and one wonders
whether
this difference may not have had some share in convincing
Aristotle
that the ether is an element distinct from fire and the other
three
elements, and more exalted than they. It must be said, however,
that
Aristotle's habitual use of language about "the heat contained
in
animals" prepares us ill for the momentous distinction drawn by
him
between this and elemental heat.
We have found him speaking of
"the soul being, as it were, afire"
within the heart;[387] and he says also
that "the concoction through
which nutrition takes place in animals does not
go on either in the
absence of soul or in the absence of heat, seeing that
everything
is done by fire."[388] Moreover, there is in his treatise On
Soul
a passage deserving immediate quotation, no less as a picture of
the
nascent stage of biological thought, than as showing a phase of
Aristotelian
doctrine contrasting with the doctrine of the analogue
of the ether. He
says:--
"By some the nature of fire is held to be quite simply the
cause
of nutrition and growth; for fire alone among bodies or
elements
is seen being nourished and growing; wherefore one might
assume
it to be that which does the work both in plants and in
animals.
It is, in a way, the contributing cause[389] but not the
cause
in the simple sense, the soul rather being that; for the
growth
of fire is limitless, so long as there are combustibles, but
in
the case of all natural organisms[390] there is a limit to
size
and growth, and a rationale[391] thereof; these things
depending
upon the soul, not upon fire, and upon reason rather than
upon
matter."[392]
Nevertheless, in spite of seeming
inconsistencies, we find Aristotle
declaring that the heat of fire
sterilizes, but the heat of the
sun and of animals gives life. Moreover, when
he tells us in the
passage quoted by Harvey[393] that not only the heat of
the sun and
of semen, but also the heat of other animal excretions
possesses
a "life-giving principle," the words appear to suggest not
merely
generation without sex, but the spontaneous generation either
of
parasites within the animal body, or of living things in matters
cast
off from it. We seem to be confronted with the far-reaching
thought that
there is in the world a life-giving principle by which,
when associated with
soul, matter is quickened in ways of which
sexual generation is only one; and
that this principle is generative
heat, streaming from the sun or transmitted
by the male in coition,
and, thereafter, innate in the resulting creature and
shared by the
humors thereof. The fact must always have been recognized that
in
some way the existence of living things on earth depends upon the
sun.
On the other hand, no modern methods fortified Aristotle's
intelligence
against spontaneous generation, which he accepted as a
matter of course and
called "automatic generation," even asserting
that eels and some other fishes
originate in this way.[394] Further
statements of his own shall show us now
that the sun in its orbit
dominates the changes upon and above the earth and
is the giver of
life, whether imparted by sexual intercourse or otherwise.
Then
Harvey shall repeat the lesson and thus help us to understand
his
declaration regarding the innate heat and the blood, to wit: that
it
"is not fire and does not take its origin from fire."
Aristotle
refers to a region beneath the celestial spheres, which
region he calls "the
first in proximity to the earth," or "the
region common to water and air." He
says of the events therein:--
"Of these the efficient[395] cause and
ruler and first origin is
the circle of the sun's course, which, it is
evident, produces
separation and combination by its approach or
withdrawal and is
the cause of generation and
corruption."[396]
These last words are used in a large sense to mean the
formation and
disintegration of whatever is composed of the four
elements.
But the annual circuit of the sun does more than bring to
pass
the rhythmic changes of the seasons with their effects upon
man's
environment. To the sun's circuit man owes his life. Aristotle
has
said to us already: "Man and the sun generate man," in words
which
have no biological context.[338] He does better when he
enumerates
among the "causes" of a man these three: his father, the
sun,
and "the oblique circle," _i.e._, the ecliptic. These he
styles
"efficient[397] causes" of man,[398] as we have heard him style
"the
circle of the sun's course" the "efficient cause" of the
mighty
changes in inanimate things. We learn in what sense a father is
the
"efficient cause" of his offspring when Aristotle says: "The
female
always provides the matter, while the male provides that
which
fashions it";[399] and when we are told that this matter provided
by
the female "is quickened by the principle derived from the male,
which thus
perfects the animal";[400] "the animal" meaning the
product of conception.
"The body," says Aristotle further, "is from
the female, but the soul from
the male."[401] For although he says
elsewhere that "Genesis is the first
obtaining in heat of a share
of nutritive soul, and life is the tarrying
thereof";[402] although
he concedes a share of this lowest kind of soul to
wind-eggs, to
plants, and to the humblest things which live; nevertheless,
he
holds that, where the sexes are divided, the indispensable
"sensory
soul" which distinguishes the animal from the plant is derived
from
the male parent only.[403] So the seminal fluid and the solar
rays
are coupled together as "efficient causes" of man; and thus
the
moving sun is made responsible, by what chain of causation we are
not
told expressly, for the results of sexual generation.
From this we may
turn now to other forms of generation in the light
of the following
prodigious analogy. Aristotle says:--
"We call 'male' an animal
which engenders within another, and
'female' one which engenders within
itself; and, therefore, in
the case of the universe the earth's nature
is held to be female
and maternal, while heaven and the sun and other
such are called
engenderers and fathers."[404]
Next, after these
sweeping generalities, let us peruse Aristotle's
account of spontaneous
generation. He says:--
"Animals and plants arise in earth and in
moisture, because in
earth there is water and in water there is
air,[319] and in
all air there is psychical heat; so that in a certain
sense
all things are full of soul. Therefore, when once inclusion
of
this[405] has taken place, an individual is quickly
formed.[406]
Inclusion takes place and a kind of foam-bubble arises,
produced
by the heating of moisture which has body[407] of its
own."[408]
The last expression in this passage evidently means
moisture
which is charged with earthy matter in solution; for
Aristotle
says in the same treatise that seawater "has much more body"
than
drinking-water.[409] Still speaking of spontaneous generation he
says
a little further on:--
"Whoever would inquire aright should ask:
What product in such
cases answers to that material principle which in
the female is
a certain animal excretion,[410] potentially similar to
what it
came from? That excretion is quickened by the principle
derived
from the male, which thus perfects the animal. In the
present
case what should be likened to that excretion, and whence
and
what is the quickening principle which answers to the
principle
from the male? Now we must assume that, even in animals
which
procreate, the heat within the animal[411] separates and
concocts, and thus makes out of the nourishment which enters the
animal
the excretion which is the beginning of the embryo. Such
is the case
with plants likewise; although in these and in some
animals there is no
need of the principle imparted by the male,
for this they have within
and mingled with themselves; whereas
in most animals the excretion
aforesaid stands in need of that
principle. The nourishment of some is
water and earth, that of
others is derived from water and earth; so that
what the heat
in animals[412] prepares out of their nourishment, the
heat of
the season in the circumambient air combines by concoction
out
of the sea and the earth, and puts together.[413] But so
much
of the psychical principle as is included or separated
within
the air[319] constructs and quickens[414] the embryo. In
like
manner are put together such plants as arise by spontaneous
generation."[415]
The doctrine that in sexual generation the semen
furnishes soul and
generative heat but none of the matter[416] of which the
embryo
consists, renders logical the view, which Aristotle would seem
to
hold, that it is soul from the air and generative heat from the
sun
which in spontaneous generation represent the derivatives from
the
male.[417] The presence about us of "the psychical principle,"
thus
diffused, may well seem startling to a modern biologist; but we
may
remind ourselves that in ancient times many believed the soul to
be
conveyed by the air into even the higher animals; even into man
himself, even
man's "understanding" reaching him thus.[418] Indeed,
not only the words
"_pneuma_" and "_spiritus_," as we have learned,
but also the Greek and Latin
words for "soul," viz.: "_psyche_" and
"_anima_," meant originally simply
"breath." Let us recall the words
of scripture, which seem so vivid to one
who watches the change in
a new-born child as the first breath is taken: "And
the Lord God
formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his
nostrils
the breath of life; and man became a living soul."[419]
That
the soul enters with the breath is, however, expressly denied
by Aristotle.
Conceding a share of soul to every living thing he
points out quite simply
that there are animals which do not breathe
at all, to say nothing of
plants.[420] Clearly, the doctrine which
he rejects would be hard to
reconcile with his theory of sexual
generation, according to which theory the
sensory soul, and in man
even the divine intellectual soul, is potential in
the semen and
imparted thereby to the product of conception.[421] Indeed,
there is
a chapter of Aristotle's treatise On Soul in which he even
seems
to argue against the presence of soul in the air, in a
polemic
directed against those who believe the soul to be "composed of
the
elements."[422] In this polemic he is the subtle philosopher; but
in
his statements about generation he seems more the biologist; for
in
these his thought, if not more ripe, appears to be less concerned
with
disputation than with phenomena and the interpretation thereof.
The
generation of living things is but generation still, whether
it be sexual or
spontaneous; and the modern student of general
physiology may trace further
parallels of thought in Aristotle's
account of spontaneous generation and in
those words of his about
the semen which Harvey quotes and we have studied.
That living
rudiment, spontaneously generated, which consists of a
foam-bubble
whose film of earth and water was formed by the heat of the
sun
and includes air charged with generative heat associated
with
soul--surely that reminds one of the foamy semen, and of "the
spirits
included in the semen and in foaminess," and of that within
the spirits
"which makes semen generative, the so-called heat,"
the "nature which is
analogous to the element of the stars," which
nature is derived from the male
parent and is associated with the
soul potential in the semen. In the Greek
text of Aristotle one
and the same word, "_pneuma_" is used to express both
the air
in the foam-bubbles of spontaneous generation, and the vapor
in
the foam-bubbles of the semen. In translation "_pneuma_" must
be
rendered "spirits" in the case of the semen, and the verbal identity
is
lost which, by reason of the very vagueness of the Greek word,
helps to mark
the parallelism of thought. It is with _pneuma_,
spirits, that the testicles
and breasts are swollen at the advent
of puberty,[423] according to
Aristotle; and with the presence of
_pneuma_ he connects the pleasure of the
sexual act.[424] We have
found him laying stress upon the fact that "the
nature of semen
is foamy"--that its "generative medium ἡ γονή is
foam":
and he tells of the spontaneous generation of certain shellfish
in
a place where there is "foamy mud."[425] When he obscurely
says that in the
semen "the _pneuma_ included in the semen and in
foaminess"[426] is the
vehicle of the generative heat, does not the
turn of phrase indicate that
Aristotle's thought is ranging far,
that he is thinking not only of the foam
of the semen but of other
widely different kinds of prolific foam as well?
Does he not seem
to think that, in general, the power of bringing matter to
life as
a new individual dwells typically in a bubble representing
earth,
water, and air, and charged with soul and with generative heat,
for
the presence of which the sun is responsible, heat other than that
of
elemental fire?[320] It is not fanciful--for Aristotle himself,
we remember,
has done so incidentally--to connect such speculation
with the ancient myth
of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who sprang
from the foam which had risen
upon the sea, about the immortal genitals of Uranus, which had been severed and
cast therein; Uranus being the heavens personified. |
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