Page:Theory of Mind of Roger Bacon.djvu/32

 and wetness)—and of course the four corresponding elements—are able to complete their Species. But this requires some explanation.

It all hangs together with his conception of the universe as a fixed and orderly whole; and here broadly he follows Aristotle, as elaborated by the Arabians. On the one hand, generation and decay are complementary factors in the constitution of the universe; for, if there were only the ingenerable and the incorruptible parts of it, we should have only the spheres of the elements, the Heavens and spiritual substances, and all the rest would be lacking—which would be indeed a disagreeable pass (quod inconveniens esset). On the other hand, if all substances could complete their Species, the entire order of things as we have it would be destroyed; for the Heavenly bodies are incomparably “nobler” than the terrestrial bodies, and spiritual substance than corporeal substance, and if there were a completion of the Species throughout, the lower order would be absorbed into the higher, and these in turn into the highest. But the purpose of just the process of assimilation of everything to everything else in the universe, through the Species, is to preserve and perfect the parts of the universe, and the universe as a whole. And, indeed, for this end is designed the very debilitation and deletion of the Species itself. In short, the “nobler” the substances are, such as the Heavenly bodies and man and the like, the less complete is the mode of being of the Species which they produce; nay more, the Species in these cases is such that it never can be completed.

And so it is, he says, that we have the arrangement of the universe as it is. It is spherical in form, so that from all parts of this sphere the virtues of the Heavens may flow together into the centre of this sphere, which is the “place of generation.” And this is none other than the earth, which is the place of compounding and of generation and decay. And therefore the higher parts, such as the Heavenly bodies, are not subject to generation and decay in the order of the universe, because it is their part to continue these processes in things here below. And they in turn are moved by