Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/501

 dering cause itself would be forced to make use of various in- struments in order to accomplish its various operations.

Fabricius, therefore, asserts erroneously that the transmutative force works with the properties of the elements, hot, cold, moist and dry as its instruments ; whilst the formative faculty acts independently of these and by a more divine power, performing its task with consciousness, as it seems, with foresight and elec- tion. But if he had looked more closely at the matter he would have seen that the formative as well as the metamorphic force made use of the hot and the cold, the moist and the dry, as instruments; nor would he have been less struck with indications of the Supreme Artificer's interference in the p'rocesses of nutri- tion and transformation than in that of formation itself. For nature ordained each and all of these faculties to some definite end, and everywhere labours with forethought and intelligence. Whatever it is in the seeds of plants which renders them fertile and exercises a plastic force in their interior; whatever it is which in the egg performs the duty of a most skilful artificer, producing and fashioning the parts of the pullet, warming, cooling, moistening, drying, concocting, condensing, hardening, softening and liquefying at once, impressing distinctive characters on each of them by means of configuration, situation, constitu- tion, temperament, number and order, still is this something at work, disposing and ordering all with no less of foresight, intelligence, and choice in the business of transmuting, than in the processes of nutrition, growth, and formation.

The concoctive and metamorphic, the nutritive and augmentive faculties, which Fabricius would have it act through the quali- ties of hot, cold, moist and dry, without all consciousness, I maintain, on the contrary, work no less to a definite end, and with not less of artifice than the formative faculty, which Fabricius declares has knowledge and foresight of the future action and use of every particular part and organ. In the same way as the arts of the physician, cook and baker, in which heat and cold, moisture and dryness, and similar natural properties are employed, require the use of reason no less than the mecha- nical arts in which either the hands or various instruments are employed, as in the business of the blacksmith, statuary, potter, &c. ; in the same way, as in the greater world, we are told that " All things are full of Jove," Jovis omnia plena so

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