...is performed by parts selected from the generators, retaining in them the substance, forms, properties, and operations of the parts of the generators, from whence they were extracted: and this Quintessence or Magistery is called the seed. By which the Individuals of every Species are multiplied... From this, All Creatures take their beginning; some laying up the like matter, for further procreation of the same Species. In others, some diffus'd Atomes of this extract, shrinking themselves into some retired parts of the Matter; become as it were lost, in a wilderness of other confused seeds; and there sleep, till by a discerning corruption they are set at liberty, to execute their own functions. Hence it is, that so many swarms of living Creatures are from the corruption of others brought forth: From our own flesh, from other Animals, from Wood, nay, from everything putrified, these imprisoned seminal principles are muster'd forth, and oftentimes having obtained their freedom, by a kinde of revenge feed on their prison; and devour that which preserv'd them from being scatter'd.[15] Accounting thus for sexual and spontaneous generation, Highmore defines two types of seminal atoms in the seed--"Material Atomes, animated and directed by a spiritual form, proper to that species whose the seed is; and given to such matter at the creation to distinguish it from other matters, and to make it such a Creature as it is."[16] The seminal atoms come from all parts of the body, the spiritual atoms from the male, and the material atoms from the female. The atoms of Democritus are thus transmuted into the "substantial forms" and endowed either with the efficient cause of Aristotle or, permitted to remain material, with Aristotle's material cause. According to Highmore, the atoms are circulated in the blood, which is a "tincture extracted from those things we eat," and these various atoms retain their formal identity despite corruption. The testicles abstract some spiritual atoms belonging to each part and, "As the parts belonging to every particle of the Eye, the Ear, the Heart, the Liver, etc. which should in nutrition, have been added ... to every one of these parts, are compendiously, and exactly extracted from the blood, passing through the body of the Testicles." Being here "cohobated and reposited in a tenacious matter," the particles finally pass out of the testes.[17] A similar extraction of the female seed occurs in the ovaries. The female seed