Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/467

 ON GENERATION. 3C7

more excellent cause, to which, with all propriety, are ascribed foresight, intelligence, goodness, and skill, and which is by so much more excellent than its effect or work, as the architect is more worthy than the pile he rears, as the king is more exalted than his minister, as the workman is better than his hands or tools.

The male and female, therefore, will come to be regarded as merely the efficient instruments, subservient in all respects to the Supreme Creator, or father of all things. In this sense, consequently, it is well said that the sun and moon engender man ; because, with the advent and secession of the sun, come spring and autumn, seasons which mostly correspond with the generation and decay of animated beings. So that the great leader in philosophy says : l " The first motion [of the sphere ?] is not the cause of generation and destruction ; it is the motion of the ecliptic that is so, this being both continuous and having two movements ; for, if future generation and cor- ruption are to be eternal, it is necessary that something like- wise move eternally, that interchanges do not fail, that of the two actions one only do not occur. The cause of the perpetuity [of animal species ?] is, therefore, the law of the universe ; and the obliquity [of the ecliptic?] is the cause of the approach and accession, [of the sun?] and of his being now nearer, now more remote : when he quits us, and removes to a distance, it is then that decay and corruption intervene ; and, in like manner, when he approaches, it is then that he engenders ; and if, as he frequently approaches, he engenders ; so, because he fre- quently recedes, does he cause corruption ; for the causes of contraries are contrary."

All things, therefore, grow and flourish in spring, (on the approach of the sun, that is to say, he being the common parent and producer, or at all events the immediate and uni- versal instrument of the Creator in the work of reproduction) ; and this is true not of plants only but of animals also ; nor less of those that come spontaneously, than of those that are propa- gated by the consentient act of male and female. It is as if, with the advent of this glorious luminary, Venus the bountiful descended from heaven, waited on by Cupid and a cohort of graces, and prompted all living things by the bland incitement

1 De Gencrat. et corr. lib. ii, cap. 10.