Chapter Eleven On Theophrastus’s homunculi, and what is to be thought of them Antonius de Abbatia says that two things are required of a philosopher: first, to put forward no falsehood; second, to expose anyone who does put one forward. Thus far I have faithfully observed the first requirement, but have refrained from the second. Although I have refuted the opinion of one philosopher or another in this work, I have nevertheless passed over his name in silence or indicated it only by letters. I wished thereby to make all the clearer that I intended to offend no one. But since in the preceding chapter I named Zeiller and mentioned his attack on Theophrastus, I have wished to name Theophrastus here as well.

To come to the matter itself: Theophrastus claims in Book I of On the Generation of Natural Things that the spagyric Art can bring a human being to birth outside a woman’s body and without a natural mother. According to his account, a man’s semen is treated in sealed cucurbits in the horse’s belly, in a manner he describes at length there and which need not be repeated here. From it, he says, there comes a truly living human child with all its limbs, like any child born of a woman, but much smaller. This is said to be a great miracle and mighty work of God, a mystery above all mysteries, which is to remain secret until the last times.

For my modest part, I find that good Theophrastus—with his honour nevertheless preserved—has fallen into a double error. From this account it appears that he was right so far concerning the soul’s origin: he believed it to be propagated, rather than separately created. Yet he erred, first, in maintaining that the soul is propagated through the father alone. Whether he supposed this to occur by eduction or by transmission, and whatever precisely his opinion was, I shall set aside for now. Second, he failed here to consider the order of Nature.

I say that Theophrastus rightly rejected separate creation, but wrongly favoured propagation through the father alone. Those who think otherwise understand neither Nature nor Scripture on this point. For when Moses describes the creation of humanity, male and female, he reports with particular precision that God, having formed Adam from a clod of earth, breathed a soul into his nostrils. He does not say this of the woman. Rather, after God had fashioned into a woman the rib taken from Adam, he brought her to the man. It follows that this rib, and the woman formed from it, already possessed a soul.

For the human soul or spirit, as a ray of the divine essence, according to Cartolossæus, and created, as it were, by the hypostatic Word rather than by a spoken word or particular decree, as in the case of animals and plants, possesses in itself the capacity and power to multiply. That capacity was brought into actuality or effect when the Creator himself intervened by taking the rib from Adam.

Afterwards, by instituting marriage, God most wisely ordained that the human being, in both body and soul, should be propagated through union. For this purpose he also pronounced and appointed his word, that blessing: “Be fruitful and multiply.” No generation or multiplication can occur without union. Although, as stated, the soul has in itself the capacity to multiply, neither a man’s soul nor a woman’s can multiply alone. It requires union with the other, through the joining of the seed of both. There the capacity and power of multiplication are immediately brought into actuality and effect, above all through the operation of that divine word and blessing, “Be fruitful,” as an appointed subordinate cause.

Our own Art provides a comparable example. Our magistery cannot be completed by taking either principle alone, whether the ferment or Azoth: both must be employed. Likewise, even when perfected, it cannot be multiplied unless further mercurial water is added. Then what flows in fire is seen to coagulate in air, just as previously what coagulated in fire flowed in air.

I conclude, then, that the soul originally arose from God and still arises through propagation in the manner just described. This is the secret; this is the mighty work of God. Conversely, Theophrastus’s opinion about his homunculi and the generation of a human being outside the womb, without a natural mother and from a man’s semen alone, is false. As a merely speculative teaching contrary to the order of Nature, it is to be rejected entirely.