Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/502

 in the slender body of the pullet, and in every one of its actions, does the finger of God or nature no less obviously appear.

Wherefore, if from manifestations it be legitimate to judge of faculties, we might say that the vegetative acts appear rather to be performed with art, election, and foresight, than the acts of the rational soul and mind ; and this even in the most perfect man, whose highest excellence in science and art, if we may take the God for our guide, is that he KNOW HIM- SELF.

A superior and more divine agent than man, therefore, appears to engender and preserve mankind, a higher power than the male bird to produce a young one from the egg. We acknow- ledge God, the supreme and omnipotent creator, to be present in the production of all animals, and to point, as it were, with a finger to his existence in his works, the parents being in every case but as instruments in his hands. In the generation of the pullet from the egg all things are indeed contrived and ordered with singular providence, divine wisdom, and most ad- mirable and incomprehensible skill. And to none can these attributes be referred save to the Almighty, first cause of all things, by whatever name this has been designated, the Divine Mind by Aristotle ; the Soul of the Universe by Plato ; the Natura Naturans by others ; Saturn and Jove by the ancient Greeks and Romans ; by ourselves, and as is seeming in these days, the Creator and Father of all that is in heaven and earth, on whom animals depend for their being, and at whose will and pleasure all things are and were engendered.

Moreover, as I have said, I neither hold this arrangement of the faculties of the vital principle, which Fabricius has placed at the head of his account of the organs of generation, as cor- rect in itself, nor as useful or calculated to assist us in the matter we have in hand. For we do not attain to a knowledge of effects from a discussion of actions or faculties ; the contrary is rather the case : from actions we ascend to a knowledge of faculties, inasmuch as manifestations are more cognizable to us than the powers whence they proceed, and the parts which we investigate already formed are more readily appreciated than the actions whence they proceed.

Neither is it well from the generation of a single chick from an egg, to venture upon general conclusions, which can in fact