Page:A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More.djvu/95

Rh useful and beautiful contrivance of the branches, flowers and, fruits of Plants should be so too (to say nothing yet of the bodies of Birds, Fishes, Beasts and Men) is as ridiculous and supine a Collection, as to infer that, because mere Heat and Cold does soften and harden Wax, and puts it into some shape or other, that therefore this mere Heat and Cold, or Motion and Rest, without any Art and direction, made the Silver Seal too, and graved upon it so curiously some Coat of Arms, or the shape of some Birds or Beasts, as an Eagle, a Lion, and the like. Nay, indeed, this inference is more tolerable far then the other, these effects of Art being more easie and less noble then those others of Nature.

3. Nor is it any botch or gap at all in the works of Nature, that some particular Phænomena be but the easie results of that general Motion communicated unto the Matter from God, others the effects of more curious contrivance, or of the divine Art or Reason (for such are the λόγοι σπερματικοὶ, the * Rationes Seminales) incorporated in the Matter, especially the Matter it self being in some sort vital; else it would not continue the Motion that it is put upon, when it is occasionally this or the other way moved: and besides, the Nature of God being the most perfect fulness of Life that is possibly conceivable, it is very congruous that this outmost and remotest shadow of himself be some way, though but obscurely, vital. Wherefore things falling off by degrees from the highest Perfection, it will be no uneven or unproportionable step, if descending from the Top of this outward Creation, Man, in whom there is a principle of more fine and reflexive Reason, which hangs on, though not in that manner, in the more perfect kind of Brutes, as Sense also, loth to be curb'd within too narrow compass, lays hold upon some kinds of Plants, as in those sundry sorts of Zoophyta, (but in the rest there are no further foot-steps discovered of an Animadversive form abiding in them, though there be the effects of an Inadvertent form (λόγος ἔνυλος) of materiated or incorporated Art or Seminal Reason:) I say, it is no uneven jot, to pass from the more faint and obscure examples of Spermatical life to the more considerable effects of general Motion in Minerals, Metalls, and sundry Meteors, whose easie and rude shapes may have no need of any Principle of Life, or Spermatical form distinct from the Rest or Motion of the particles of the Matter.

4. But there is that Curiosity of Form and Beauty in the more noble kind of Plants, bearing such a sutableness and harmony with the more refined sense and sagacity of the Soul of Man, that he cannot chuse (his Intellectual Touch being so sweetly gratifi'd by what it deprehends in such like Objects) but acknowledge that some hidden Cause, much akin to his own nature, that is Intellectual, is the contriver and perfecter of these so pleasant spectacles in the world.

5. Nor is it at all to the purpose to Object, that this business of Beauty and Comeliness of proportion is but a conceit, because some men acknowledge no such thing, and all things are alike handsome to them, who yet notwithstanding have the use of their Eyes as well as other folks. For, I say, this rather makes for what we aime at, that Pulchritude is conveigh'd indeed by the outward Senses unto the Soul, but a more