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THE HUMAN BEING AS MICROCOSM.
The human being, prince of animals and of the lower world, is held to be a compendium of all Nature. His soul is an immortal ray of divine light; his body is an elegant assemblage of elements. The inward and imperceptible faculties of sense, through which he apprehends whatever meets him, are wholly heavenly, like stars pouring down knowledge of things. Movements and disturbances of the mind are like winds, whirlwinds, flashes, thunder, and meteors that boil up in the airy region of spirits and stir the heart and blood. The human being has therefore deservedly been called a microcosm and a complete little image of the universe.
EVERY MIXED BODY IS A MICROCOSM.
Not only the human being, but every animal and every plant is a microcosm. Thus each grain or seed is a chaos containing, in compendium, the seeds of the whole world, from which a little world will come forth in its own time.
LIVING MIXED BODIES CONSIST OF BODY, SPIRIT, AND SOUL. BODY.
All Nature’s perfectly mixed bodies endowed with life consist of body, spirit, and soul. The body is made from mud, which contains all material things necessary for generation; for it accords with reason that bodies should be made from the two most corporeal elements, earth and water.
SPIRIT.
Spirit is a small portion of the purest air, or even of aether: a nature intermediate between soul and body, the knot and bond of both, the soul’s little case and vehicle, adhering to the subtler and spiritual parts of the body.
SOUL.
The soul or form of a mixed body is a spark of Nature’s fire, or an imperceptible ray of heavenly light, brought from the potentiality of seed or matter into actuality through the motion of generation. Bound to the elemental body through the mediation of spirit, it gives the mixed body its specific being and is the proximate principle and efficient cause of life. It acts, however, according to the disposition of matter and the powers of the organs.
The nature of the soul, or form, is wholly luminous, especially in animals. It therefore differs so greatly from the opaque, earthly matter of bodies that it has no common measure with that matter and is nobler beyond all proportion. Because of this disparity and distance, it could never be bound to the body by the closest bond, such as Nature uses in her works, unless their union, and as it were their soldering together, were achieved through the power and attraction of an appropriate and potent intermediary. The provident Creator of things therefore placed a subtle intermediary between them: the ethereal spirit, which receives and retains the form as it comes into being and binds it to its body, sharing in the nature of both. Understand these words as referring to the heavenly soul of natural things, rather than to the superheavenly and divine human soul. Nevertheless, it pleased its Creator that even this soul should enter into fellowship with the human body through natural intermediaries.
FORMS.