Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/557

 seed having preceded their birth ; and whilst some of them are generated from the earth, or putrefying vegetable matter, like so many insects, others are produced in animals themselves and from the excrementitious matters of their parts." Now the whole of these, whether they arise spontaneously, or from others, or in others, or from the parts or excrements of these, have this in common, that they are engendered from some principle adequate to this effect, and from an efficient cause inherent in the same principle. In this way, therefore, the primordium from which and by which they arise is inherent in every animal. Let us entitle this the primordium vegetale or vegetative incipience, understanding by this a certain corporeal something having life in potentia ; or a certain something existing per se, which is capable of changing into a vegetative form under the agency of an internal principle. Such primordia are the eggs of animals and the seeds of plants ; such also are the conceptions of vivi- parous animals, and the worm, as Aristotle calls it, whence in- sects proceed : the primordia of different living things conse- quently differ from one another ; and according to their diver- sities are the modes of generation of animals, which nevertheless all agree in this one respect, that they proceed from the vegetal primordium as from matter endowed with the virtue of an efficient cause, though they differ in respect of the primordium which either bursts forth, as it were, spontaneously and by chance, or shows itself as fruit or seed from something else preceding it. Whence some animals are spoken of as spontaneously produced, others as engendered by parents. And these last are again distin- guished by their mode of birth, for some are oviparous, others viviparous, to which Aristotle 1 adds a vermiparous class. But if we take the thing as simple sense proclaims it, there are only two kinds of birth, inasmuch as all animals engen- der others either in actu virtually, or in potentia po- tentially. Animals which bring forth in fact and virtu- ally are called viviparous, those that bring forth potentially are oviparous. For every primordium that lives potentially, we, with Fabricius, think ought to be called an egg, and we make no distinction between the worm of Aristotle and an egg, both because to the eye there is no difference,

1 Hist. Anim. lib. i, cap. 5.