_Generation_.] The last of these vegetal faculties is generation, which
begets another by means of seed, like unto itself, to the perpetual
preservation of the species. To this faculty they ascribe three
subordinate operations:—the first to turn nourishment into seed, &c.
_Life and Death concomitants of the Vegetal Faculties_.] Necessary
concomitants or affections of this vegetal faculty are life and his
privation, death. To the preservation of life the natural heat is most
requisite, though siccity and humidity, and those first qualities, be
not excluded. This heat is likewise in plants, as appears by their
increasing, fructifying, &c., though not so easily perceived. In all
bodies it must have radical [981]moisture to preserve it, that it be
not consumed; to which preservation our clime, country, temperature,
and the good or bad use of those six non-natural things avail much. For
as this natural heat and moisture decays, so doth our life itself; and
if not prevented before by some violent accident, or interrupted
through our own default, is in the end dried up by old age, and
extinguished by death for want of matter, as a lamp for defect of oil
to maintain it.
SUBSECT. VI.—_Of the sensible Soul_.
Next in order is the sensible faculty, which is as far beyond the other
in dignity, as a beast is preferred to a plant, having those vegetal
powers included in it. 'Tis defined an Act of an organical body by
which it lives, hath sense, appetite, judgment, breath, and motion. His
object in general is a sensible or passible quality, because the sense
is affected with it. The general organ is the brain, from which
principally the sensible operations are derived. This sensible soul is
divided into two parts, apprehending or moving. By the apprehensive
power we perceive the species of sensible things present, or absent,
and retain them as wax doth the print of a seal. By the moving, the
body is outwardly carried from one place to another; or inwardly moved
by spirits and pulse. The apprehensive faculty is subdivided into two
parts, inward or outward. Outward, as the five senses, of touching,
hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, to which you may add Scaliger's
sixth sense of titillation, if you please; or that of speech, which is
the sixth external sense, according to Lullius. Inward are three—common
sense, phantasy, memory. Those five outward senses have their object in
outward things only, and such as are present, as the eye sees no colour
except it be at hand, the ear sound. Three of these senses are of
commodity, hearing, sight, and smell; two of necessity, touch, and
taste, without which we cannot live. Besides, the sensitive power is
active or passive. Active in sight, the eye sees the colour; passive
when it is hurt by his object, as the eye by the sunbeams. According to
that axiom, visibile forte destruit sensum. [982]Or if the object be
not pleasing, as a bad sound to the ear, a stinking smell to the nose,
&c.
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