A Platform or Scheme of Nature.
Renaissance James Harrington EnglishNATURE is the fiat, the breath, and in the whole sphere of her activity is the very word of God.
She is a spirit, that same spirit of God which in the beginning mov’d upon the waters, his plastic virtue, the Δύναμις ἠ διαπλαϛιϰὴ, Ἐνεργεία ξωτιϰὴ.
She is the Providence of God in his government of the things of this world, even that Providence of which it is said, that without it a sparrow cannot fall to the ground, Mat. 10. 29.
She is the anima mundi, or soul of the world;
She is infallible: for the law of an infallible lawgiver must needs be infallible, and Nature is the law as well as the art of God.
Tho Nature be not fallible, yet she is limited, and can do nothing above her matter; therfore no miracles are to be expected from her.
As defects, redundancys, or such other rude qualitys of matter, ought not to be attributed to the artificer or his art; so neither is Nature, or the art of God, to be charg’d with monsters or imperfections, the things so reputed being the regular effects both of the matter and the art that forms it.
Nature is not only a spirit, but is furnish’d, or rather furnishes her self with innumerable ministerial spirits, by which she operats on her whole matter, as the universe; or on the separat parts, as man’s body.
These ministerial spirits are certain æthereal particles invisibly mix’d with elementary matter; they work ordinarily unseen or unfelt, and may be call’d animal spirits.
As in sound bodys there must needs be GOOD SPIRITS managing the œconomy of health; so in unsound bodies, as in chronical diseases, there must needs be EVIL SPIRITS managing the œconomy of distempers.
Animal spirits, whether in the universe, or in man’s body, are good or evil spirits, according to the matter wherin and wherof they are generated.
What is a good spirit to one creature, is evil to another, as the food of som beasts is poison to man; whence the gentleness of the dove, and the fierceness of the hauk.
Between the animal spirits of the whole or universe, and of the parts, as of man’s body, there is an intercourse or cooperation which preserves the common order of Nature unseen; and in som things often foretels or discovers it, which is what we call presages, signs, and prodigys.
The work of good spirits, as health for example, is felicitous, and as it were angelical; and that of evil spirits, as in diseases, is noxious, and as it were diabolical, a sort of fascination or witchcraft.
All fermentation is caus’d by unlocking, unbinding, or letting loose of spirits; as all attenuation is occasion’d by stirring, working, or provoking of spirits; and all transpiration by the emission or sending abroad of spirits.
Nothing in Nature is annihilated or lost, and therefore whatever is transpir’d, is receiv’d and put to som use by the spirits of the universe.
Scarce any man but at som time or other has felt such a motion as country people call the lifeblood; if in his ey, perhaps there has flown out somthing like a dusky cloud, which is a transpiration or emission of spirits, perhaps as it were a flash of fire, which also was an emission of spirits; but differenc’d according to the matter wherin and wherof they were wrought, as choler, &c.
Animal spirits are ordinarily emitted streaking themselves into various figures, answerable to little arms or hands, by which they work out the matter by transpiration, no otherwise than they unlock’d it, and wrought it up in the body by attenuation, that is, by manufacture: for these operations are perfectly mechanical, and downright handy work as any in our shops or workhouses.
If we find Nature in her operations not only using hands, but likewise somthing analogous to any art, tool, engin, or instrument which we have or use, it cannot be said that Nature had these things of men, because we know that men must have these things of Nature.
In attenuation and transpiration, where the matter of the disease is not only copious but inveterat, the work will not as I may say be inarticulat, as in the trembling call’d the lifeblood: but articulat, and obviously so to the sense of the patient by immediat strokes of the humor upon his organs, which somtimes may be strong enough (tho not ordinarily) to reach another’s.
Nature can work no otherwise than as God taught her, nor any man than as she taught him.
When I see a curious piece from the hands of an apprentice, I cannot imagin that his master was a bungler, or that he wrought not after the same manner as his servant learn’d of him: which I apply to God and Nature.
Physicians somtimes take the prudence of Nature for the phrensy of the patient.
If any man can shew why these things are not thus, or that they may be otherwise, then I have don, and there is said in this part already more than enough; but if they can neither shew that these things are not thus, nor know how they should be otherwise, then so far I stand my ground, and am now arm’d for my narrative cap a pè.
’TIS a thousand pitys that we have not this narrative, to which no doubt he apply’d these principles, and thence form’d the state of his distemper. But the manuscript containing no more, we may however evidently conclude, that the writer of it was not so greatly disorder’d in his thoughts, which are for the most part very just, and all as close and coherent as any man’s.