1

I: Introduction

The account of spontaneous generation in the natural philosophy during Early

Modern Europe is muddied with problems of squaring theoretical possibilities with

empirical observations. On the one hand, the authoritative texts of Aristotle dictate that

forms do not generate but only the composite substances of form and matter do, while on

the other hand, the same texts attest that the creatures such as eels and testaceans

spontaneously come to be. Such views seemed to suggest that forms of eels are

everywhere present and upon appropriating the proper matter, they come to be without

the kind of generative process necessary for animals to propagate their species. Here, if

there is no agent or the mover involved in their generation, how do the form of an eel

appropriate the matter necessary for the animal’s coming to be? Further, Aristotle denies

the possibility of the hybrid beings between a woman and a dog, for instance, on the basis

of its differing gestation period, but could this mean if the gestation period were the same,

there could be a hybrid being of a human and a dog? What does such a view say about

the nature of the forms? For if hybrid beings are theoretically possible, since forms do not

generate, there must have been forms of all sorts of hybrid beings present prior to their

coming into being, i.e. generation as composite of form and matter. Or else, forms must

mutate so as to retain features of both forms prior to its mixture into one being, for a

hybrid being is just that: a true mixture of two distinct forms into one continuous whole,

without losing the essential features of both. For if they lose their own essences during

the mixture, there would be a generation of a new form, which cannot be possible. But is

mutation of forms interspecies even possible? Once again, since forms do not generate,

there must have been all the forms present that could exist interspecies.

Daniel Sennert (1572-1637) was one such proponent of the view that there must

be present various forms in matter at least potentially if not actually. Because having

plurality of actual forms in one being would make it many beings rather than one

individual, yet because having just one form per individual cannot explain possible

phenomena of generation of maggots out of a corpse or generation of hybrid beings

without assuming generation of forms themselves, Sennert tried to resolves the tension

between the theoretical framework of substantial forms and the empirical observations

2

made of generation of animals by bridging the gap with positing the plurality of potential

substantial forms latent in the matter but supervened by one actuality of form that makes

the thing what it is. In this way, he explained the generation of hybrid beings as well as of

creatures of spontaneous origin by referring to the various forms in the matter taking the

place of the supervening form, thus manifesting themselves in different forms in the same

matter. So for Sennert, a coming to be of an individual composite substance is no longer

classified as strictly generation, for all things are in all things in the manner of

subordinate forms. Generation then is just the shedding of the old form, as it were, and

wearing of a new form. In terms of reproduction of the same species, the form of the

species, Sennert explains, keeps multiplying instead of generating. In addition to keeping

in the tradition of ingenerability of forms, this has an added benefit that such a view

accords with the Scriptural authority, for God says “increase and multiply” in assisting

the propagation of the species. But is multiplication really distinct from generation? By

adopting such an interpretive account of generation of beings, what conceptual changes

and benefit did he advance that was not explained in the systems of his predecessors?

Was conceiving the forms as multipliable essentially not the same as conceiving the

forms as numerable and hence quantifiable? When in this way Sennert constructs forms

as movers or powers that can form matter into a specific being, is he not talking of the

formal causes as efficient causes? In making this conceptual shift, what exactly were the

explanatory gains and losses? In other words, what did he have to give up to advance his

own philosophical system?

In this paper, I argue that the transition Sennert made played a crucial role in

physicalizing the formal causes, and thus making a clear departure from the traditional

understanding of generation as a qualitative process. This move further precipitated the

mechanization of material interaction in the study of natural philosophy, and such

conception of the world as an interaction of mere atomic particles led to the foundation of

modern chemistry and physics as advanced by the later natural philosophers, such as

René Descartes and Robert Boyle. It is my hope that this paper will shed light on the

philosophical system in transitional period between the medieval Aristotelian philosophy

and the rise of Modern science by focusing on the analyses of the plurality of substantial

forms in Sennert’s philosophical system. In short, I will focus on 1) the theoretical

3

significance of having the chymical principles of tria prima in addition to the traditional

four elements. What is it that tria prima is able to explain that the four elements cannot?

2) What is the relationship between the supervening form and the subordinate forms? Are

the subordinate forms even necessary when the substantial mutation is counted for by the

condition of the matter in question? 3) What sort of problems does this system produce?

He attributes vital or active principles of formative power to the minutest immaterial

seeds called semina. But what exactly is the nature of such seeds? How can they assume

size and be at the same time immaterial principle? Further, the formative principles now

seen as efficient causes, forms appear to play no explanatory roles whatsoever. Why do

we need them? In discussing these issues, I will use Sennert’s two major works: Thirteen

Books of Natural Philosophy and Chymistry Made Easie and Useful, where he argues that

everything has souls in its smallest bodies of atoms, and upon the seminal principle

appropriating the matter, generation takes place. In what follows, I will explicate in detail

what is going on there, i.e. what is the relationship between the account of generation as

the composite of form and matter and the account of generation as the unfolding

formative power latent in the seminal seeds.

II: Formal Causality in the Scholasticism

During the medieval period, both the Arabic and the Scholastic philosophers

tackled the account of generation and that of substantial change, advancing various

interpretations drawn from the texts of Aristotle. In this section, I will 1) lay out the

accounts offered by Avicenna, Averroes, Aquinas and Suarez in order to better

understand the philosophical background against which Sennert was competing, and then

2) raise some issues these views present with regard to the roles played by the formal

causation in each case. In doing so, I will first give a short summary of Aristotle’s own

account on the generation of beings, i.e. composite substances.

Aristotle argued that there are three ways in which one can speak of generation of

substances: generation can be natural, artificial or spontaneous. In all three cases, he

maintains, the producer and the product must be the same in form. This does not mean

that the form in question must be numerically the same, but it suffices that it is the same

4

in type, i.e. the form of parent is numerically different but the same type of form with the

form the offspring will have. So for instance, in the case of the generation of a human

being, the producer (the male) have the same form as the product (the offspring), but the

latter shares the same form in a different piece of matter that is provided by the female.

That the producer must share the same form with the product is commonly referred to as

the Synonymy Principle. This principle holds in the other cases of generation, though

Aristotle struggles to offer a coherent explanation. In the case of artificial generation, for

instance, it is rather difficult to accept that the form in question is the same in type as

spoken of in the case of natural generation. For in making a statue, a sculptor does not

pass onto the matter the form as the parent passes it onto the matter through semen.

Aristotle thinks, however, the principle sufficiently holds insofar as the form in the

sculptor’s mind is the cause of the material realization of that form in the bronze as a

statue.1 In the case of spontaneous generation, this principle is even harder to defend, for

there is no producer that realizes the product to begin with! Yet, Aristotle wants to say

that the principle holds at least partially, and hence is satisfied, because the matter out of

which things come to be spontaneously already contains a part of the final product.2 In

the Metaphysics, Aristotle uses an example of spontaneous recovery from illness as a

type of spontaneous generation insofar as it generates health where health was previously

absent.3 For normally, health is restored by the intervention of a doctor, who plays the

role of the producer of health, it so sometimes happens, says Aristotle, that the body can

spontaneously warm itself up, hence bringing an equilibrium in the bodily humour, which

then restores the balance disturbed. In this spontaneous recovery of health, the agent that

brings about such recovery is the heat in the body. This heat in the body, therefore, is a

part of the final product, i.e. health, and since the agent is a part of the final product,

some sort of partial sameness also exists between the product of spontaneous recovery,

i.e. health in the agent, and what produces it, i.e. heat in the body.4 However, even in this

case, such a spontaneous recovery must presuppose a pre-existing producer as a

composite substance, and such “spontaneous generation” as recovery of health in the

1 Gabriele Galluzzo, The Medieval Reception of Book Zeta of Aristotle’s Metaphysics: Aristotle’s Ontology 2 Ibid, 97. 3 Ibid, 97-98. 4 Galluzzo, 98.

5

agent seems to be nothing but an accidental generation. First, because generation must be

a product of a composite of form and matter, but in the case of spontaneous recovery,

there is no composite of form and matter coming into being, and second, such change as

recovery of health happens in an already existing composite being, i.e. substance.

Whatever happens to that being internally would not make any substantial change in its

being. These then are problems that are left unanswered by Aristotle, and any new

account must be able to ameliorate these issues.

Nonetheless, the medieval philosophers continued on holding the Synonymy

Principle as the defining feature of the account of generation, but focused on the role

form plays rather than the matter, for form alone seems to be responsible for making a

specific matter distinct from any other. The Aristotelians reasoned that in the generation

of substances, if the producer and the product are the same in form, it must be that form is

what individuates matter, directs and orients the coming into being of sensible substances.

In this way, they appealed to the pre-existence of form in the producer to explain why the

generated product shares the characteristics the producer has. In a way, generation is seen

as a process consisting in the transmission of a form from the producer to the product.5

Simply put, the coming into being of composite substances is nothing but acquisition of a

form of a certain kind, and the role form plays in generation is equated with the role of

forming the internal structure and organization of sensible objects.

For Avicenna (980-1037), substantial generation does not occur gradually, but

happens all at once. Nevertheless, there are several substantial changes occurring before

the seed can become an animal or a full-fledged human being. For Avicenna, substantial

changes happen when sufficient amount of accidental changes, i.e. qualitative change,

prepare the way for the substance to change. John McGinns gives a clear analysis of

Avicenna’s generative account. Citing passages from Avicenna’s Book of Animals,

McGinns explains that Avicenna conceives at least four substantial changes in the form-

matter composite before an animal is generated. The initial stage involves “the churning

of the semen”, which Avicenna equates it with the “actuality of the formal power”.

Second, the blood clot manifests in the uterine wall; the first substantial change in the

generative process. Third, this blood clot (or zygote) is replaced by yet another new

5 Ibid., 182.

6

substance, i.e. embryo, which leads to the generation of the heart, primary organs, blood

vessels and limbs. Lastly, the animal is formed, which is yet a different substance. In this

way, these changes from semen to animal take place through a series of discrete

substantial changes, even though a number of gradual qualitative changes do occur,

preparing the way for each discontinuous leap between substantial changes.6 The matter,

then, undergoes a substantial change only when a sufficient number of gradual accidental

changes have occurred in the said matter, acquiring a new substantial form fit for the

specific state of the matter. McGinns likens this process to an example of handling clay,

for he says that clay is receptive at first to a number of different shapes and forms, but as

soon as it is exposed to the sun, “to the degree that the Sun affects the clay and hardens it,

the clay becomes less pliable and so becomes less receptive to the number of forms that

the craftsman can impose upon it.”7 The clay here is the material, i.e. menstrual blood,

and the craftsman is the form, i.e. male semen. The form the craftsman imposes upon the

matter is equivalent to the formative power in the male semen, i.e. efficient cause. Here,

it is significant to note that, according to this analogy, Avicenna conceives of the

formative power to be already in the form, that is to say, the form carries with it the

power to affect the matter. This is striking in comparison with the efficient cause as an

external agent, putting forth the form into the matter to work with, as it was the case with

Aristotle’s account of generation. For Avicenna, clearly, the formative power, or the

efficient cause, is in the form itself, i.e. semen. And this formative power gradually alters

the semen qualitatively “up to the point that the seminal form is displaced and it becomes

a blood clot,” continuing to develop like this “up to the point that [the developing thing]

receives the form of life,” or the new substantial form.8

Averroes (1126-1198), however, takes a radically different approach to the

account of substantial change in that for him, only a material agent can act upon matter

and thus transform it in such a way as to produce another material being.9 In order for

there to be any substantial change, matter must be acted upon so as to be modified in

order to bring about a coming into being of a composite substance. Nothing incorporeal

6 John McGinns, Avicenna, 239. 7 Ibid., 240-241. 8 Ibid., 241-242. 9 Galluzzo, 188.

7

can act upon the matter, so an agent that interacts with matter and is able to effect the

required changes in matter must itself be material and possesses corporeal parts as well as

active qualities.10 Further, for Averroes, matter already contains a form that is potentially

present in it, and generation is explained through the agent’s actualizing the potentiality,

i.e. receptivity, for form in the matter. In other words, generation is nothing but the

coinciding of such an emergence of the receptivity for form in matter with the

transmission of an external form into the matter. So the agent, in transmitting the external

formal principle, at the same time, extracts the receptivity for that form in matter. In this

way, matter also plays somewhat an active role of accepting the new form, for if the

matter remained absolutely the same with only the potentiality/passivity all through the

generation, generation would just mean a production of a new form rather than the

constitution of a new composite.11 So for Averroes, matter too also undergoes

transformation in the process of generation so that it is not simply a new form being

imposed upon the existing material substratum but a new substance both in form and

matter comes into being.12 So in this way, Averroes fulfills the Synonymy Principle in

that for him as well, both the producer and the product must possess the same form in

type, but what is different from the predecessors’ account is that Averroes also takes this

Synonymy Principle further and maintain that both the producer and the product have not

only the form but also the material part with which the preexisting matter can be

interacted. Again, this is due to his general principle that only matter can act upon matter

in such a way to generate another material being, and if form does not have any corporeal

part, it cannot modify the said matter at all. So whatever generates a new substance must

be already be a composite of form and matter. Now, this may work well with the standard,

natural generation, since forms are communicated to the matter through the seed,

containing a natural power capable of transforming matter so as to bring about a full

fledged individual of a certain species, but how does this work in the case of spontaneous

generation where there is no prior composite being acting on the material substratum?

Averroes wants to say something analogous with the natural generation happens in the

10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., 187. 12 Ibid.

8

cases where animal and plants are generated without seed.13 In spontaneous generation,

Averroes argues, animals and plants can come out of the matter without seed by receiving

the formative power directly from the heavenly bodies, insofar as the heavenly bodies are

themselves material beings.14 This means that, even though the heavenly bodies do not

have determinate bodily parts, since they operate through heat, which is a primary quality

of bodies, the operation of the formative powers by the heavenly bodies still satisfy both

the Synonymy Principle and Averroes’ general principle that only matter can modify

matter.15

Although Aquinas (1225-1274) argues also for the primacy of the composite

substance of form and matter, he denies that there are forms latent in the matter, and he

maintains the matter as material substratum is pure potentiality. Matter cannot pre-

contain forms to be actualized afterwards, for then the form would reveal a state of

actuality only of the matter, and matter would be the real subject of the form!16 Aquinas,

thus, rejects both the theory of multiple hidden actual forms (latitatio formarum) in

matter and the theory of inchoate forms (inchoatio formarum) that Averroes held, i.e. a

theory that the acquisition of a form by matter is nothing but the bringing of the

potentiality of matter into act.17 Aquinas reasons that unless forms come to matter

externally rather than emerging from within the matter, there would not be a true

generation and a substantial generation, but only an accidental change in the predicate of

the matter as the subject. So for him, animals as well as human beings do not pre-contain

the form of an animal or of a human being, but the matter or the embryo comes to be such

a state that it can acquire a fit form through changes in the matter. For the matter to come

to be such a state a form of a human being, i.e. rational soul, the formative power in the

semen needs to modify the matter so it forms organs suitable for living beings. Once this

has been done, the matter appropriately so organized, i.e. equipped with organs, can

receive a form by triggering, as it were, the actualization of the potency of the matter.

This formative power is not to be confused with the soul itself, for Aquinas does not want

to associate the formative power of the semen with the functionality of the souls. What 13 Ibid., 198. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Fabrizio Amerini, Aquinas on the Beginning and End of Human Life, 23. 17 Ibid., 24

9

the formative power does is simply organize the matter in such a way that once the soul is

received, the soul can perform its functions using those organs. So the formative power is

a sort of a vital operation at the moment of conception, and it is a corporeal power passed

on to by the agent, which forms the matter into an organically structured stuff so it can

begin to digest food if there were a soul in it. Once this digestive organs have been

formed, the vegetative soul comes to be, and does its own functions of digesting, etc…

The formative power, however, does not cease to be, but still keeps forming the organs to

make the matter like itself, i.e. the source of itself or in this case the male semen. The

formative power is indeed, what Amerini calls, “a program” for material development

that “expressly tasked to structure the matter of a given body.”18 Once the organs

appropriate for sensation have been formed, the sensitive soul takes place of the

vegetative soul, subsuming the powers of vegetative soul under itself. It is probably more

proper to conceive of this process as transformation of an inferior soul into a superior one,

an upgrade. When the organs can afford to perform more tasks, the soul too develops into

a more adequate form fit for that specific matter. In this way, Aquinas avoids admitting

the plurality of forms latent in the matter, yet manages to explain the various stages of

biological development. Unlike Avicenna’s account, Aquinas’ account does not involve a

number of distinct leaps of substantial generation in order for the semen to fully develop

into an embryo, and then into an animal, but Aquinas admits a substantial generation only

once at the moment of ensoulment, i.e. the union between the vegetative soul and the

matter properly organized. After the vegetative soul takes its root in the matter, the soul

develops into the higher soul, and throughout this entire generative process, the formative

power, or the program, keeps forming the organs until it finishes its task of structuring

the body.

Since Aquinas also attributes the formative power to material agent, it may be

conjectured that it is some sort of vital heat that does the formation of the organs.

Understood in this way, spontaneous generation is explained similarly to the account

18 Ibid., 16.

10

offered by Averroes that it is due to the celestial bodies providing the heat, acting upon

the putrefied matter.19

Francisco Suarez (1548-1617), on the other hand, equates rational soul with the

substantial form. Aquinas avoided conflating the two (soul and substantial form)

precisely because he did not want to imply that the soul, which is the efficient cause and

functions with the organs, is the same as the formative power, which is merely a forming

principle, i.e. its task is merely to form organs so that the soul can take on and performs

its functions using the organs so organized by the formative power. It is here in Suarez

that we see the Aristotle’s analogy in explaining substantial generation of artificial things

and natural things starts to break apart completely. For Aristotle had argued that, in the

artificial generation, the form in the sculptor’s mind is the material realization of that

form in the bronze as a statue. The form in this came in the mind of the sculptor only does

the formation of the material, but in forming a statue of a person, for instance, the hand so

formed does not need to function as a hand. If the sculptor were to make the heart and

other primary organs in making the statue, these organs either do not need to function as

they would in living human body. So the formative principle, i.e. the guideline in forming

a body into a specific manner, in statue-making does not involve functionality of the

organs, and just as Aquinas outlines, the formative principle must be distinct from the

efficient cause, which would be the sculptor in the example of the statue-making. But

clearly, this cannot be the case when one is dealing with the natural generation, for in

natural generation, as soon as the organs are formed, they function. In fact, even as they

are being formed, they show signs of activity. It appears as though this forming principle

in the case of natural generation is equipped with the active principle that is doing the

forming! This point is significant, for it is true to say that the artist as the efficacious

cause is necessary for the form in his mind to be expressed in the matter so as to produce

an informed matter, and without the efficacious agent being present, the production halts

and no further information on the matter is possible. However, with the natural

generation, once the efficacious, external agent passes on to the matter a seed or semen 19 See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Book I, Q45. Reply to Obj. 3, where he says “For the [spontaneous] generation of imperfect animals, a universal agent suffices, and this is to be found in the celestial power to which they are assimilated, not in species, but according to a kind of analogy. Nor is it necessary to say that their forms are created by a separate agent.”

11

(the corporeal matter in form that carries with it a program or structure to be actualized

and realized in matter), the efficacious agent who produced such seed is no longer

necessary for the rest of the formation to take place. The production, in other words, does

not halt even with the absence of the external agent. The seed takes on the task of the

efficacious agent at the moment of conception, as it were, and it itself performs all the

functions attributed to the efficacious agent. In light of this, it is easy to see why Suarez

identified the form with the rational soul. For if the forming power that also functions

with the organs so formed is not the soul, what really is a soul? Is it not the case that

plants are said to nurture when they are equipped with the vegetative soul? Is it not the

case that animals sense and move about only in virtue of them having the sensitive soul?

If so, then, it must follow that soul is that which performs all these functions attributed to

the forming principle. And since the forming principle functions, i.e. is efficacious, the

forming principle is not really the formal cause but an efficient cause of natural

generation. Indeed, this is the path Suarez takes. For Suarez, the composite being is

generated out of the matter by the efficient cause, and as a result of the matter being so

organized, the new form of the composite as the substantial form of that specific

composite appears. In this way, as Helen Hattab argued, the explanatory burden of

accounting for natural generation and substantial change is shifted onto the efficient and

material causes from the formal cause. The substantial form is now posterior to the

generation of the form-matter composite, and the formal causality is reduced to a mode of

the union of the substantial form to matter.20 Since the formal causality is just a mode of

union “between an already existing substantial form and an already existing matter,” it is

neither the formal causality nor the material causality that performs the organic functions,

but rather, it is the emergent substantial form, at least in the case of animals and plants,

that is the source of efficacious causation.

Suarez argues further that the human substantial form as the rational soul is

essentially different from the other types of substantial forms, i.e., material substantial

forms. These material substantial forms are educed out of the matter, rather than created

20 Helen Hattab, “Suarez’s Last Stand for the Substantial Form” in The Philosophy of Francisco Suarez, 101-118.

12

out of nothing by God, and hence they cannot survive the material death.21 These material

substantial forms too are still united by the formal causality, i.e. the union, but because

they are educed from and attached to matter, they do not properly come to be out of

nothing, and what was considered as a substantial generation for Aristotle and Aquinas

was reduced to the status of accidental change happening within the same subject, just

like the example of Aristotle on the generation of health in a body. So for Suarez,

whereas the human substantial form is created by God ex nihilo, the material substantial

forms emerge out of the prime matter, and hence they do not count as a substantial

generation, but only as an accidental generation.22

I agree with Helen Hattab that Suarez’s redefinition of the substantial form as an

incomplete substance, which together with the matter makes one per se composite

substance, his attribution of the efficient causality to the seed separate from the generator,

and the reduction of formal causality to mode of the union of the substantial form and

matter made it conceptual ground for which a new corpuscular mechanistic worldview to

take roots. But I find it a little hard to believe Suarez was solely responsible for the

transition from the Scholastic philosophy into the mechanical philosophy, as well as the

devaluation of formal causality to the efficient causality. In fact, I believe it is somewhat

too much a leap for us to come to Descartes and proclaim with him the dispensability of

the formal causality after Suarez. For even Suarez utilized, in a much weakened manner,

the distinction between formal causality and the other causalities. Without the formal

causality, even for Suarez, it would be impossible to have the substantial form attached

and united to the matter appropriate. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine why Descartes,

who had had a difficulty in explaining the mind-body union could discard such a

convenient cause as formal causality. In what follows, I will attempt to elucidate more in

detail the general attitudes towards the use of Aristotelian causality in the beginning of

the 17th century. In discussing the case of Daniel Sennert and his account of causality in

natural generation, I hope to show that all the groundwork for the new mechanical

philosophy to take place has been laid out, and our understanding of the devaluation of

21 Ibid. 22 Ibid.

13

formal causality, the conflation of it with the efficient causality and finally getting rid of

the formal causality altogether in Descartes will be made more accessible.

III: Philosophy of Daniel Sennert

We have seen that Suarez conflated the soul with the substantial form, departing

Aquinas’ distinction between efficient causality and formal causality. Further, Suarez

made both the form and the matter incomplete substances, with which together forms a

complete substance and a per se unity. But the form and the matter are able to exist on

their own, what part of them is it that is incomplete? After all, such notion as an

‘incomplete substance’ is only a relative term to a natural being that is a composite of

form and matter. Such notion hence does not hinder God from separating them to subsist

on its own. It then seems clear that there is no need to qualify such a substance as

‘incomplete,’ since it is not incomplete strictly speaking. Sennert indeed takes this path,

and argues that substantial form is naturally before all the accidents or adjuncts, for “if

the Forms were an Accident, there would be no Generation of anything, but only an

alteration.”23 Although form is a substance of itself, Sennert continues, it is imperfect in

the sense that it is not found in nature by itself, just as matter by itself is imperfect. It is

only the composite of form and matter that constitutes the natural things, and so he argues

that the form and the matter need each other and mutually assist one another in order to

come to form a composite. Because, naturally, the forming of a composite requires both

matter and form, matter is said to be the principium subjectivum formae, or that which

provides a subject for the form, and the form as the formal principle of the matter.24 The

form is the formal principle of the matter because it gives the matter an actual being

proper to itself. Indeed, Sennert contends that this is what generation essentially is – the

form is a substantial act, perfecting the matter in the form of a compound.25 Since for him,

the form is an act, it would follow that it is at the same time an efficient cause. In fact, we

are told that “the three causes [efficient, formal and final] are in natural things many

23 Daniel Sennert, Thirteen Books of Natural Philosophy, 16. 24 Ibid., 17. 25 Ibid.

14

times united together, and grow into one cause: so that the form and end, though they

differ in definition, yet in number and subject, they are one Cause.”26 Further, he

conceives the form as the formal cause with respect to the thing generated, “inasmuch as

it is an act perfecting the matter, and therewith making up the compound,” and an end

with respect to generation, but “the same form is also the efficient, inasmuch as the thing

generated, is of the same species or sort with the generator.”27 Here, clearly Sennert takes

the form as an act of generation; not only sharing with that which is a terminus ad quem

(the generated) but also a terminus a quo (the generator). However, if the same form is

said to be shared in both the generated and the generator, but numerically different from

the efficient cause, the form must be capable of being divided in some way, so as to

communicate the form onto the matter to be generated as a compound. This seemingly

quantified notion of form is explained in terms of its co-extension with its body. Notice

that by soul, Sennert only means the substantial act or that which performs the office of

the soul, i.e. power to perform and function. So it makes sense for him to want to say that

soul, or the ability of functioning, to be not just in one part of the body, but in the whole

of the body. This way of conceiving the soul as performative power is similar to Suarez,

and it seems at least plausible that Sennert takes such a position after the manner of the

traditional Scholastic philosophy. Not only because he mentions the philosophy of

Avicenna, Scotus and the Latins throughout his treatises, but also because he uses the

Scholastic terminology in explaining the manner of the soul’s being in the body.28

Sennert explains that although the soul, which is the form in living things, has no quantity,

“it fills and penetrates the whole Body, it is indivisible of itself, yet is co-extended with

the whole Body without quantity,” but for something to be in a place, he continues, it has

to be either definitively, or repletively, or circumscriptively in a place. According to

Aquinas, a corporeal substance is said to be locally and circumscriptively in a place, since

it is measured by the place, whereas an incorporeal substance is neither locally nor

circumscriptively but definitively in place, that is to say when a body and the place

26 Ibid., 23. Italics mine. He continues, “but the formal and the efficient cannot be one in number, yet one in kind. For the same form of an animal is at the same time both the form and end.” What he means by this is that the form of an animal is the same as the end in kind in the sense that it imparts the same form onto the matter to be generated, while the generator and the generated remain distinctly separate. 27 Ibid., italic mine. 28 Ibid., 456, for instance.

15

occupied by the body are commensurate with its quantity or power, e.g. angels are said to

be definitively in a place, for the power of an angel is only operative at that specific place.

And things are repletively in a place when they fill a place by virtue of the

commensuration of their own quantitative dimensions with the dimension of the place,

e.g. God is repletively in space.29 Sennert reasons that since there is more than one way in

which a thing is said to be, “substances free from quantity can be either divers of them

together, or with other bodies in some place,” and hence conjectures that the soul must be

either definitively or repletively in space. Although he acknowledges that only God is

properly said to be repletively in place, Sennert entertains the idea, along with other

‘learned men’ that the soul can also be said to be repletively in place.30 In fact, Sennert

wants to argue that the soul is everywhere present, with Aristotle, and whatever is present

everywhere is necessarily present repletively. For he is opposed to the idea that the soul is

in a particular place and nowhere else, as an angel is said to be. That would commit him

to argue that the soul is in place definitively, but then, one cannot account for the soul in

growing things, i.e. natural things. In fact, Sennert goes further and argues that if “all

Dimensions being taken away, the form of any of us may be in the same Ubi 31with that

of another,” as is observed with many lights scattered through the air, converging into the

same place. In such case, “although there are many [lights] in the same place, yet they are

not mingled, which the shadows declare.”32 Clearly, Sennert wants to argue thus not only

to account for the alleged expansion of the soul as things grow larger, but also in order to

account for the spontaneous generation of animals and plants, for if the soul is present

everywhere, as we will see later on, there does not appear to be a contradiction for a life

emerging out of anywhere.

Now, the manner in which the soul is co-extended with the body, or is in the

whole body, has been explained, but still, how can the form (which is a substantial act

29 See Aquinas, “Summa Theologica Pars Prima Q52, Art. 2, 3” in Basic Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas: Volume I, edited by Pegis, 500. See also Marilyn McCord Adams, Some Later Medieval Theories of the Eucharist, 94-95. Further, Charles Hodge, a 19th century theologian, in his Systematic Theology summarizes them as follows: “Bodies are in space circumscriptively. Spirits are in space definitively. They have an ubi. They are not everywhere, but only somewhere. God is in space repletively. He fills all space. In other words, the limitations of space have no reference to Him. He is not absent from any portion of space, nor more present in one portion than in another.” 30 Sennert, Thirteen Books of Philosophy, 487. 31 Ubi means where/whereabouts in Latin. 32 Sennert, Thirteen Books, 487.

16

and the soul) be said to be divided along with the body? For division necessarily implies

the notion of more or less, i.e. when a thing is divided, each of the divided parts is less

than the undivided whole. To overcome this conceptual problem, Sennert directs us to

think of the soul not as divisible but as multipliable. The soul is multiplied rather than

divided, Sennert argues, “[f]or since nothing is divided but what hath Quantity, and one

part without another, but the Soul hath no quantity,” which explains although the part of

the soul is separated from the generator into the generated, and “although it be in a small

body, yet is it as totally and entirely there, as the soul of the Generator is in this Body.”33

As we know, Descartes would later have it that the essence of extension is in its

divisibility, but Sennert makes a distinction between formal and material extensions. A

soul is formally extended with the body if it can exercise the power throughout the body

that is corporeally extended. This makes sense, since for Sennert, a soul is nothing but an

ability to function using the organs of the body, so insofar as one can exercise his organs

throughout his body, the same soul is said to be present. Sennert follows Fortunius

Licetus, an Italian philosopher and a scientist, whom Sennert cites frequently, in that the

material extension belongs to corporeal bodies and thus subject to division and quantity,

whereas the formal extension belongs to incorporeal bodies that it “makes not the thing to

which it belongs to be subject to quantity, nor necessarily divisible, either of itself or by

accident.”34 Hence, a soul is present repletively with qualification, i.e. it is bound by the

boundaries of the material extension, for only God is properly said to be repletively

present. Since soul does not pertain to quantity, it is not divided but rather multiplied, and

the multiplied souls are neither more nor less than the original soul from which they

multiplied. Thus, Sennert likens the propagation of the soul in the imagery of a candle

fire. Souls are propagated, Sennert explains by a simile, as one candle is lit by another,

“and wherever they meet with a fit matter wherein they may subsist by themselves, they

can transfuse themselves thereinto and cloath themselves therewith, to that that [sic.] part

(if I may so call it, for it is not properly a part) of the form [that] hath the same Essence

with the whole form” and begins to perform the same operations as it did from whence it

33 Sennert, 488. 34 Ibid. Licetus also wrote on spontaneous generation in the works entitled as “De spontaneo viventium ortu libri quatuor” (1628) and “De anima subiecto corpori nihil tribuente, deque seminis vita et efficentia primaria in constitutione foetus” (1630).

17

was separated.35 Further, although the candle fire is corporeal and thus unlike souls, the

way in which the souls are conceived of as multiplying without admitting quantitative

parts is like sensible species such as a bright light is said to have its representation

multiplied without having quantitative parts. For if a bright shining light is in a place, and

there is only one man or one looking glass to receive that representation of the light, the

whole image of that light is said to be in this one man or in the looking glass, but “if an

hundred, or a thousand, or more men come, or a thousand Glasses be set, the same image

which was before received by one Man and by one Glass does now appear in a thousand

Men and a thousand Looking glasses; nor yet is the Species or Representation of that of

that Visible Object divided into Quantitative parts.”36 In this way, the souls are rightly

conceived of as multiplying themselves upon finding a proper matter.

Now, we need to know what is meant by the soul for Sennert. For we have said

that a soul is nothing but the substantial act, the power to function according to the

delegated offices, i.e. vegetative, sensitive, or rational, but we still do not know wherein

does that power to perform and produce each sensible species, such as taste, smell and

colour, viz. its nature. For these are not the functionality of the soul, strictly speaking, as

they involve no perceivable performance on the part of the soul. Here, Sennert shows his

empirical side in doing his philosophy as a scientist. In explaining unfolding qualities in

living things, he adapted the Augustinian tradition of seminal principles. Initially

developed out of the Stoic notion of seminal reasons, seminal principles, or semina, as

introduced by Augustine were conceived as immaterial principle in matter that God

placed in the form of seeds. Hence, Augustine says, “[t]here are of course the seeds plants

and animals produce which we can see with our eyes; but of these seeds there are other

hidden seeds from which, at the creator’s bidding, water produced the first fishes and

birds, and earth the first plants and animals of their kind.”37 The concept of semina, by

the sixteenth century, came to be interpreted as an immaterial informing principle that

guides the formation of matter into specific beings, and Ficino interpreted semina as that

35 Ibid., 489-490. 36 Ibid., 488. 37 Augustine quoted in Antonio Clericuzio, Elements, Principles and Corpuscles: A Study of Atomism and Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century (USA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), 15, footnote 27.

18

which are “hidden in the prime matter, from which they draw the forms of the four

elements,” occupying an intermediate place between matter and form.38 Later in

Fracastro, semina were used to explain the contagion theory of disease in terms of

invisible units of matter.39 Further, semina were at times given invisible spiritual forces

by Paracelsus and his followers in opposition to the Aristotelian elements, while at

another time, for instance by Michael Sendivogius, they were seen as material agents

from which metals and minerals come.40 However, the Aristotelian elements were not

entirely rejected, but accepted as remote causes, from which the three chemical principles

are derived.41 Sennert, then, in his philosophy, offers this intertwined mixture of

corpuscular atomism and Aristotelian hylomorphism.

He was at the same time much influenced by the Paracelsian doctrine of Tria

Prima and his cosmic system where the Aristotelian four elements are the universal

world and the three chemical principles of salt, sulphur and mercury constitute everything

that is generated out of the mixture of the four elements.42 So when Paracelsus argued

that “[t]he first man was made from the mass, extracted from the machinery of the whole

universe,” and when he called this mass in nature semen, Sennert reasoned that this

matter invisibly contains something in itself. And this something is a soul or a form,

guided by the seminal principle, i.e. semina.43 Such is the principle given to things as

forms when God first created the world, “by which the Order of Generation is continued

and perfected,” and these forms “have a power to multiply themselves,” as the Scripture

also attests in Genesis where God commands all the beings on the Earth to ‘increase and

multiply.’ 44 Indeed, all the generation of natural things depends upon the multiplication

and propagation of these forms, or souls. However, for Sennert as well as for his

contemporaries, there is something else that plays a central role in the generation of

animals, which the form or soul uses as a principal instrument to act by, that is to say, the

38 Clericuzio, Elements, Principles and Corpuscles, 17. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid., 18-20. 41 Ibid., 20. 42 Paracelsus, “The End of the Birth, and the Consideration of the Stars” and “Concerning the Three Prime Essences” in The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus, vol. 2, 299-314, 317-322. 43 Paracelsus, “The End of the Birth”; Sennert, Chymistry Made Easie and Useful. Or, the Agreement and Disagreement of the Chymists and Galenists, 29-30. 44 Sennert, Thirteen Books of Natural Philosophy, 421.

19

natural heat or the spirit.45 This spirit, Sennert argues, has the powers that the four

elements from which a composite substance comes to be do not have. What are these

powers? Here, Sennert argues with Scaliger that every form of a perfect mixture has a

fifth essence distinct from the four elements, namely, the powers to move forward or

backward, and many others that cannot be explained simply by appealing to the four

elements.46 He argues that this innate heat or the spirit is “more divine than an elementary

heat,” citing Aristotle as the very proponent of this view, as Aristotle says in Generation

of Animals that “it is true that the faculty of all kinds of souls seems to have a connection

with a matter different from and more divine than the so-called elements.”47 This inbred

heat, Sennert calls the spirit, and he argues that such spirit “is the cause of all attraction,

excretion, increase, generation and life” but these powers are not in the elementary heat.

That this spirit is different from the elementary heat is further supported by the

observation of the plants, for we know that their seeds and roots keep their strength even

in winter and in frost. Not only that, but we see that life grows under the snow, but if this

spirit is the same as the elementary heat, it would soon be overcome by the cold and no

life would grow.48 Indeed, Aristotle himself affirms that there is a natural principle in

semen that causes it to be productive, and he calls this principle a vital heat, which is “not

fire nor any such force, but it is… the natural principle in the breath, being analogous to

the elements of the stars.”49 This element of the stars, Sennert argues, is the spirit that has

powers to produce scents, flavors and colours. For even though the natural bodies are

made by concurrence of the elements, and the diverse qualities and accidents proceed

immediately from the same elements, Sennert believes, bitterness and other such qualities

cannot be explained simply by appealing to the four terrestrial elements.50 Such a spirit,

Scaliger calls a form of a fifth nature. This peculiar form is made out of the mixture of

the four elements and attained the seminal and essential reasons so as to keep the

propagation of the species going.51 Thus organized, the form of a fifth nature is further

45 Sennert, Chymistry Made Easie and Useful. Or the Agreement and Disagreement of the Chymists and Galenics, 44-45. 46 Ibid., 45. 47 Aristotle, GA Bk. II 3, 736b29-30. 48 Sennert, Chymistry Made Easie, 49. 49 Aristotle, GA, Bk. II 3, 736b32-37. 50 Sennert, Chymist Made Easie, 52. 51 Ibid.

20

distinguished into three kinds, all of which arise from the true mixture of the four

elements, but due to their own peculiar forms, they differ from the elements and acquire

powers that were not in the four elements. They are the principles of salt, sulphur and

mercury, which are made of the elements, yet their forms come from the first creation

and were given to by God.52 These three principles are, then, responsible for qualities of

savory, scent and colours that are more material in that they can be distinguished from the

primary qualities of hot, cold, wet and dry. In this way, Sennert explains the hierarchy of

principles and the order of things in nature, arguing that just as the inferior things should

serve the superior, so it is in talking of bodies, the four elements are placed at the top of

the hierarchy, from which are made the principles of salt, sulphur and mercury, i.e. tria

prima. Then, these tria prima are mixed diversely by concurrence of the elements, and

they produce minerals, metals, stones, gems, plants and animals. All of these diverse

forms are indeed already in the first mixture, i.e. the four elements and tria prima, and we

can see this, Sennert argues, from the fact that however diverse these forms of different

species seem we can always extract their ingredient, e.g. salt, from the earth, plants and

various creatures.53 In this way, Sennert directs us to observe the empirical fact that

“[n]atural bodies are made of such things as they are resolved into, [and since] they are

resolved into those three principles, therefore they are made of them.”54 It is important to

note here that these principles are now somewhat empirical, rather than pure principles,

and they are hence observable. Even though the chymical principles are inferior to the

principles of the four elements, they still assert themselves through powers that are

peculiar to them, i.e. sourness, saltiness and combustibility, and so on. So when a mixed

body is corrupted, some parts turn to the four elements while other parts turn into salt or

sulphur, according to their respective forms.55 Hence, the reason why tria prima is

necessary in addition to the four elements is its explanatory value. Those who hold that

all mixed bodies are resolved into the primary elements cannot properly explain why

some vapors make us sleepy and not others, or why the fume of lead and quicksilver

52 Ibid., 53. 53 Ibid., 53. 54 Ibid., 54. 55 Ibid.

21

corrodes gold but not the fume of vitriol and other things, and so on.56 These questions

are answerable only by means of referring to the chemical principles, and such

introduction of the chemical principles further assures us that there is an order in nature

that principle are so organized that mixed bodies are not generated immediately from the

elements, but qualities like sourness and that which makes our eyes twitch, as in thick

smoke or in cutting onions, in bodies indicate that there must be other principles that are

separate from the four elements. But by introducing these chymical principles, Sennert

has departed from the scholastic notion of the inbred heat, i.e. the element of the stars,

that Aristotle speaks of, but what was an ambiguous concept now assumes a specific

form and is further divided into three empirically observable phenomena. For instance,

Sennert argues that salt is manifest in all things that grow, and sulphur is needed as the

principle that produces scented things due to its flammability. The elements themselves

are not inflamed, so to account for why things burn, sulphurous vapors are necessary. In

short, Sennert argues against the Aristotelians that the four elements alone cannot bring

scent or colours, and something else must be responsible for these qualities. Mercury is

explained as spiritual liquor devoid of impurities and as the principle that is subtle,

quickening and the primary instrument, i.e. the inbred heat, which the form uses for

vitalizing the organisms. Mercury, then, is the spirit and the element of the stars

mentioned above, but for Sennert, it is so united with the salt and sulphur, each of which

has its own qualities, that all three are needed in the generation of natural things.57 These

three principles are the first mixture of the elements and the form of a fifth nature, from

which composite substances will derive.58 This form of a fifth nature is nothing but the

semina, the seed of things.

Such is the nature of semina, and the semina retains the forms of the elements in

them, for if it is the case that the elementary forms will be gone or replaced by a new

specific form, it would not be called a mixture of the four elements. For something to be

a mixture, “the things mixed, being united in small parts, should act, and suffer together

by contrary qualities, and not loose their forms wholly,” otherwise, it “would not be an

56 Ibid., 57. 57 Ibid., 62-63. 58 Ibid., 63-64.

22

union of things mixable, being changed, but a corruption.”59 Here, Sennert follows

Avicenna’s view that “the Elements in mixt Bodies do retain their Forms perfect and

entire, howbeit divided and cut into very small parts, so that their particles composed and

knit together in a certain order do mutually cohere one with another,”60 and even argues

that if the authority of Aristotle were to be set aside, no one would reject this view.

Indeed, Sennert goes on to say that the opinion of Aristotle that the simple elements do

not retain their forms and natures in the mixed bodies is wrong, and all things become

plain and easy once it is discarded. He defends this view by saying that as a matter of fact

Aristotle himself came to this opinion against his will!61 Even though Aristotle argued

that the small particles in the mixture would not retain their nature, for that would be a

composition and not a true mixture, Sennert responds by citing where Aristotle implies

the contrary that the forms of the elements do remain in the mixed bodies, for example,

“Elements are that of which existing things consist; it must need be that these Elements

must abide and exist in the mixt Body,” (Metaphysics Bk V.5, 3)62, “a mixt Body is

moved according to the sway of the prevailing Element,” (De Caelo, Bk I)63, and “the

things mixable may be separated again from the mixt Body,” (Generation and

Corruption, Bk I), which suggests that the resolution of mixt bodies into the elements is

possible.64 Further, as has been said, it seems obvious that things that have perished

cannot be mixed. Therefore, Sennert concludes that “[a]lthough of many things one be

made: yet neither is it necessary that those simples should perish, nor is it a meer [sic.]

aggregation or blending, but the simples by a superior form are reduced into one body.”65

So the new specific form made out of the mixture retains all the previous forms, for it is 59 Ibid., 73. 60 Sennert, Thirteen Books, 456. 61 Ibid., 457. 62 See Aristotle, Metaphysics Bk V iii (1014a31-32), “those who speak of the elements of bodies mean the things into which bodies are ultimately divided… (because each of them being one and simple is present in a plurality of things, either in all or in as many as possible).” 63 See Aristotle, De Caelo Bk I ii (269a28-29), “For the movement of composite bodies is, as we said, determined by that simple body which prevails in the composition.” 64 Ibid. See Aristotle, GC Bk I x (327b23-327b31), “some things are potentially while others are actually, the constituents can be in a sense and yet not-be. The compound may be actually other than the constituents from which it has resulted; nevertheless each of them may still be potentially what it was before they were combined, and both of them may survive undestroyed. (… it is evident that the combining constituents not only coalesce, having formerly existed in separation, but also can again be separated out from the compound.) The constituents, therefore, neither persist actually, as body and while persist nor are they destroyed (either of them or both), for their potentiality is preserved.” 65 Ibid.

23

necessary that all mixed bodies can be turned back into the primary elements. Had there

been a corruption of the previous forms, mixed bodies could not be resolved into the four

elements. So it follows that the specific form made out of all the previous forms is

necessarily “abide under the Dominion of one superior form, from which it is a

species.”66 Although Sennert argues that experience attests mixed bodies are changed into

that which it was first made, otherwise in resolution or putrefaction there would be a

generation of new elements,67 from the mixture there must arise a new form of the vital

principles, i.e. chymical principles. For he remains adamant that the four elements still

lack in active principles, i.e. motion as well as some sensible qualities, and that in

addition there needs vital principles “by which from invisible things they become visible,

and produce all the ornaments of all bodies; and by this renovation of individuals, they

preserve the perpetuity of all species or kinds.”68 So once the four elements are genuinely

mixed, there manifest vital, active principles of tria prima. These vital principles afford

the sensible qualities to the otherwise passive mixture of elements. Further, these vital

principles themselves operate without purpose and act mechanically. But once they too

are properly mixed and made into a union, this union then assumes a specific form. And

it is this form that is equipped with knowledge of a particular thing, and this is what

directs the generation and formation of that particular thing to be generated and formed.

For Sennert, every form participates the power and wisdom of the creator, “every Being

or thing, by its form, hath a desire to be, a Knowledge how to be, and a Power to be,” and

from this form proceeds the qualities and all the furniture of the body.69 This knowledge,

or the active power of the form, is what Sennert calls the mover of mixture.70 So the

manner in which generation occurs is through the mixture of principles and not only its

proper form but also a proper matter is required to have a specific form responsible for

the propagation of the species. This specific form of being, Sennert says, cannot be made

by the mere concourse of the elements, nor through the rash mixture of them.71 So the

chemical spirits are at the basis of generation, and the specific form and soul are the 66 Sennert, Chymistry Made Easie, 73. 67 Ibid. Italics mine. 68 Ibid., 64. 69 Sennert, Thirteen Books of Natural Philosophy, ch.3, 423. 70 Sennert, Chymistry Made Easie., 67. “…the mover of mixture is a vital principle, adorned with knowledge by which the power of which, the Divine offices of mixture are performed.” 71 Ibid., 71.

24

architect and thereby “in generation, all things are directed by the form”, that is to say,

the forms are the first mover of everything in mixture.72 Further, since these spirits or

vital chemical principles are invisible as well as sensible, i.e. they are invisible because

they are principles but they also contain sensible qualities to be manifested in the

generated things, Sennert believes that spirits can be condensed into bodies, and bodies

into spirits, just as the blood can coagulate into solid bodies or evaporate into vapors.73

Further, since there does not appear to be hardness or firmness in a grain of seed, it is

difficult to explain why such a seed grows to be firm or hard, green or brown, let alone

the sweetness of fruits that such a plant bears. Sennert is thus led to conclude that the

seed not only contains these vital principles that contain sensible qualities but is “a most

simple substance, or a certain spirit in which the Soul and Formative Faculty is

immediately seated,” and it contains in itself “the idea or model of that Organical Body

from which it is taken, and therefore having the Power to Form a Body like to that from

whence it was taken, and to perfect itself into an Individual of the same sort with the

Generator.”74

Now, the generation of most animals is explained in this manner, that is, first

there is the mixture of the elements, from which manifests the vital principle and a

specific form. This form will multiply with God’s blessings, i.e. increase and multiply,

and makes sure that the species will propagate. So for Sennert, every form of all the

species is always latent in the mixture and in the principles, and there is no new

generation of forms that did not exist previously. But then, the empirical observations

made about certain worms and Scotch geese75, as well as the cross breeding of various

plants and some animals seem to pose serious problems. For if forms do not generate and

is latent in the being’s specific form, when we see worms coming out of dead cows, we

will have to say not that the cows died and the worms were generated but rather that the

cows grew into worms, just as the silkworm grows into a butterfly. Sennert observes that

it is the plurality of the specific forms in a seed that accounts for these phenomena. In the 72 Ibid. “Therefore the form and soul is the architect, and the first mover of every thing in mixture is that soul and form.” 73 Ibid., 69. 74 Sennert, Thirteen Books, 477. 75 Barnacle geese. “The natural history of Barnacle Goose was long surrounded with a legend claiming that they were born of driftwood.” (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnacle_goose ), accessed May 21st, 2014.

25

case of the silkworm, for instance, there are several forms latent in its seed. Sennert

praises Livabius for his diligent observance that silkworms start out from an egg of a

butterfly as a palmerworm, which undergoes skin change four times before it becomes a

silkworm, which then turns into a butterfly.76 Surely here, it would be absurd to say that

the palmerworm came to be from an egg and passed away, in which of which there took a

new generation of a silkworm; and similarly, the silkworm passing away, a butterfly

came into being from anew. For out of what do silkworms and butterflies come into

being? Since forms do not generate, there must be some continuous substratum that keeps

the same form, i.e. species, throughout, otherwise it could happen that out of a

palmerworm comes out a frog and out of the frog comes out a butterfly, etc… But it so

happens that it is always the case that out of a specific worm comes a specific butterfly,

and unless there be an underlining principle that preserves the species, such regularity in

nature cannot be explained. This sort of regularity then is possible only when we think of

seeds as containing plurality of forms. For Sennert is willing to grant with Aristotle that

forms do not generate without qualification, but forms can be said to generate when we

mean by generation a multiplication, for “when any particular thing generates, a soul is

not created anew, but [only] multiplied.”77 Here again, Sennert repeats the verse from the

Scripture where God commands ‘increase and multiply’, and uses it as the divine

principle of how nature operates, and argues that even though nothing new came to be,

when souls that were before multiplied, “generation is not taken away, but rather

established… [since] when it diffuses itself into more individuals, Generation is rightly

said to be made.”78 Now, multiplication of form is generation, but what does it mean

when a seed has multiply forms latent in it already? Does that mean that there are

multiply generated substances in one seed, hence there are more beings in one seed,

hence making it not one in number? Sennert here indeed asserts that there are multiple

forms in one seed, but he argues that there is only one specific form, i.e. that which

performs the office of the form, at all times. And the way it works is by way of forms

assuming hierarchical ordering. For example, when there are multiple forms in one seed,

all but one dominant form are subordinate to the chief, supervening form that makes a

76 Sennert, Thirteen Books, 177. 77 Sennert, Thirteen Books, ch.4, 469. 78 Ibid.

26

thing what it is.79 Here, it is perhaps noteworthy to quote Sennert in his own account how

such subordination of forms work.

“…it seems more agreeable to tryth, that in living Things there are divers

Auxiliary and subordinate forms, yet so that one is principal and Queen, which

informs the living Creature, and from which the living thing hath its Name, viz.

The Soul itself of every living Thing; and the rest are Servants as it were, which

as long as that superior and Lady Soul is present, do pertain to the disposition

and conditions of the matter, and therefore they do after a sort inform the said

matter that it may be a fit subject for the specifick form, and they have also

actions of their own, yet they do not animate the same, nor do they give it the

Name of a living thing; which is the Office of a specifick Soul only.”80

Hence what gives the thing its name, e.g. silkworm, is the principal and a specific

form, and not subordinate forms. So the nature of the form is quite different when it is a

dominant specific form from when it is simply a subordinate form. Zabarella too had

expressed the similar opinion in that “the form of a mixt Body in a living Creature doth

not perform the Office of a form, in respect of the whole living Creature, but rather of

Matter.”81 By this, he means that for a compound substance there needs not only a form

but also the matter that fits and receives the form, and if there are no matters that can

receive the specific form, the form cannot inform those matters and hence there is no

generation. This is to say that, since the hierarchy is not according to the form but to the

fit matter, it is possible for a cow to exhibit the form of mud right after its corruption,

skipping the intermediate stages of being a maggot, for instance. So when a dominant

form is dead, one of the forms that were subservient to the dominant form comes out and

takes the place of the dominant form. Just as the forms subservient to the principal form

existed before the dominant form disappears, the new form is not created or generated ex

nihilo, but only that a form was changed. Thus Zabarella argues that the situation is much

like the political analogy that “when a King is dead some servant be made King, he was

also before during the Kings Life, but he was not as King; and therefore if any shall ask

whether a new King be created, answer ought doubtless to be made, that a new King is 79 Ibid., see 175. Also see Chymistry Made Easie, ch.12, 69. 80 Sennert, Thirteen Books, 175. 81 Ibid., Zabarella cited.

27

created, and the King is changed.”82 In this way, after the death of a living being, a form

that was before as a subordinate form to a nobler form and a mere condition of the matter

begins to act as the dominant form to constitute the compound being and to bear rule.83

What is here posed as a troublesome concern is that if there are as many forms of various

beings, i.e. of worms and maggots, form after another, as if they were layered upon layer,

it seems to follow that a specific form of human beings too have various forms

underneath it, and from which follows the form of humans may essentially be the form of

worms and maggots. To this worry, Sennert responds that it is as absurd as to say that “in

a Man to hold both the Form of Earth, and the Humane Form to be specifical,” for there

no natural thing that has two specific forms. So similarly, “Form from whence there

arises out of a Carkass a Beetle, a Wasp, a Bee, while it is in the Horse, or other living

animal, it cannot be called the form of a Wasp, a Beetle or a Bee,” for in these cases, the

form is in the matter latent and that such a form does not yet perform the office of a

form.84 Only when it performs the office of a form, can such a form act as the specifical

form and multiply itself and beget its like. From such consideration of the forms

specifical and subordinate, it is evident that one cannot say there are worms in a man,

“nor can it hence be concluded that there are in man and sundry other Animals Worms, or

that this or that living Creature hath Worms or other live Things in it.” 85 The manner in

which this change of the forms occurs resembles how a compound living creature gets

generated, and may be of a great interest to study here. So the forms that are subservient

to the dominant specific form, although they have not yet assumed the office of a form,

they themselves have dispositions and determination of the matter. So when the specific

form goes away, they get stirred up by the ambient heat and acquire a fit disposition for

life. This is how the subordinate form gets promoted and reigns over the matter as its

specific form. Once this happens, the newly crowned specific form sets itself to shape its

matter fit for itself, and finally begins to exercise the functions of life.86 This description

of a form, taking place of its previous form is, as Sennert argues, what really happens in

the case of spontaneous generation. From the fact that even beings that are said to 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid., 176. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid.

28

spontaneously generate do not generate at random in all sorts of things, but only certain

beings from certain matter, Sennert reasons that in such cases the experiences tell us that

the seminal principle must be preserved in its entirety in waters of raindrops or even in

the dung of animals. Hence he defines spontaneous generation as that which occurs when

a seed or drops of rain filled with semina traverses onto a stone or some such surface, and

out of which a plant or inferior beings come to be. This happens when the subordinate

forms in a seed, upon finding a proper matter, takes the specific form of an egg and

begins to generate. In this manner, Sennert argues, so called spontaneous generation

proceeds from a concealed seed adequately prepared by virtue of the ambient air, i.e.

concoction by the ambient heat.87

In all cases of generation, although it is a mutation of the whole, and no sensible

subject remains as the same subject, it is not as if all the parts of a natural body were

corrupted or bred anew. The matter still remains the same in all generation and corruption,

but the specific form of a natural body being abolished, the whole compound is changed,

and thus said to be corrupted, and a new dominant form takes the matter, so that there

remains not the same sensible subject for the new form, but a new compound is said to

come to be.88 This new compound necessarily differs specifically from the one whose

form has perished. Generation for Sennert, then, is nothing but the continuous process of

changing forms. And the form which uses the spirit and the vital principles is said to be

the primary cause of generation, and that Sennert tells us is no other than the form itself.

This move that the form is the agent (since it has the knowledge of the particular being it

will become and directs the principles) may offend and violate the Scholastic philosophy

still prevalent in the early 17th century. In fact, Sennert himself is aware of such a

possibility, but continues and says that although some people “suppose that this the

distinction is taken away betwixt the internal and external Causes… and they aver that no

Efficient Cause does ever go into the Essence of the Effect… this Doctrine of the

propagation of Souls does no waies take away the distinction of Causes,” it is known to

be the case that “the same Essence may be both the Form and the Efficient Cause, the

Form as it informs the Matter, the Efficient as it is the cause of all Operations performed

87 Ibid., 179. 88 Ibid., 94.

29

in the compound.”89 Here, Sennert clearly departs from the traditional conception of the

formal and efficient causation in generation of animals, but he is also mindful of the fact

that the error of the scholastics arises due to the conflation of the generation of living

organisms with the generation of artificial things. Even though Aristotle often used the

analogy of the sculptor making a statue in the explanation of four causes in generation of

natural things, it is important to note that there is a great difference between the artificial

things and natural organisms in that although every artificer communicates nothing of his

own to the things produced, “living things which begets their like cannot do the same

unless they communicate their own essence.”90 Again, this may be illustrated with the

already mentioned example of the ways in which the candle fire propagates itself and the

light in the mirror example. Since for artificial things, the visual image is multiplied in

the perceiver analogously, but for living things, like the fire of the candle, they can only

multiply when their own innate heat is communicated to the generated. In this way,

Sennert argued that the formal cause and the efficient cause in natural living things are

one and the same, and that the form itself possesses the knowledge of what it will become

and hence can direct as well as perform the organic functions, for a thing is rightly said to

be an animal or other living body only when the soul is in its subject rightly disposed, and

perform the operations belonging to its own kind.91

Therefore, in Sennert, we see the identification of the formal cause with the

efficient cause. Further, by interpreting the form as the soul, which suggests the active

principle, the formal causation became essentially the same as or somewhat subordinate

to the efficient causation in terms of the explanatory value. Whereas up to Suarez,

although it is true that the formal causation underwent various transformations, the form

still remained as an inactive principle and the formal causation came to play no

constructive role, with Sennert, the form became active and efficacious, and more close

to the empirical observation. I mean that in order to explain the generation of natural

things, Sennert followed the experience and observation of natural living things and

concluded that the analogy of the artificial generation does not work with the generation

of living things. Here, it seems it was during the early 1630’s when the formal causation

89 Ibid., 493. 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid.

30

was officially discarded, not as unnecessary, but as already implied in the efficient

causation when talking about generation of living things. For as was mentioned earlier,

although Licetus gave a definition of formal extension of the soul in 1628 and in 1630 in

his works on spontaneous generation of things, he did not go so far as to equate the

formal causation as the efficient causation. In looking at the treatment of formal causation

in Sennert’s works, it appears that Sennert had both the motivation as well as the ability

to articulate the formal causation in terms of efficient causation, hence making the

transition to the mechanical philosophy of Descartes and the chymical philosophy of

Boyle more accessible than from the time of Suarez.

31

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Sennert, Daniel. The Thirteen Books of Natural Philosophy. 1636. Translated by Nicholas

Culpeper. London: 1661.

---. Chymistry Made Easie or Useful. Or, The Agreement and Disagreement of the

Chymists and Galenists. 1636. Translated by Nicholas Culpeper. London: 1662.

Aristotle. “Generation and Corruption” in The Complete Works of Aristotle Vol. I.

Translated and edited by Jonathan Barnes. USA: Princeton University Press, 1984.

---. “Generation of Animals” in The Complete Works of Aristotle Vol. I. Translated and

edited by Jonathan Barnes. USA: Princeton University Press, 1984.

---. “De Caelo” in The Complete Works of Aristotle Vol. I. Translated and edited by

Jonathan Barnes. USA: Princeton University Press, 1984.

---. “Metaphysics” in The Complete Works of Aristotle Vol. II. Translated and edited by

Jonathan Barnes. USA: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae Prima Pars. Translated by Fathers of the English

Dominican Province and edited by NovAntiqua. USA: NovAntique Publishing,

2014.

Paracelsus. “The End of the Birth, and the Consideration of the Stars” in The Hermetic

and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus – vol. II. USA: Martino Fine Books, 2009.

---. “Concerning the Three Prime Essences” in The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of

Paracelsus – vol. II. USA: Martino Fine Books, 2009.

Secondary Sources

Galluzzo, Gabriele. The Medieval Reception of Book Zeta of Aristotle’s Metaphysics:

Aristotle’s Ontology and the Middle Ages – The Tradition of Met., Book Zeta.

Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2013.

McGinns, John. Avicenna. USA: Oxford University Press, 2010.

32

Amerini, Fabrizio. Aquinas on the Beginning and End of Human Life. Translated by

Mark Henninger. USA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Hattab, Helen. “Suarez’s Last Stand for the Substantial Form” in The Philosophy of

Francisco Suarez. Edited by Benjamin Hill and Henrik Lagerlund. USA: Oxford

University Press, 2012.

Adams, Marilyn McCord. Some Later Medieval Theories of the Eucharist: Thomas

Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Duns Scotus, and William Ockham. NY: Oxford

University Press, 2010.

Clericuzio, Antonio. Elements, Principles and Corpuscles: A Study of Atomism and

Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century. USA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000.