The Summary of Physics Restored

221It is clear that this radical foundation does not belong to the class of particular forms, because every individual has its own singular and individual form. When the mixed body is dissolved, that form withdraws from the body, while the radical principle remains unextinguished, though much weakened and of little efficacy because of form’s absence. Certain little vital fires nevertheless remain in it, capable of producing baser and imperfect offspring. Such production is not so much Nature’s birth as the birth of matter, which strives to generate but cannot do so without a mate because the formative and specific power is absent. Thus, through lack of seed, the corpse of a human being or horse can generate not a human being or horse but foul worms and certain insects. Hence we may suspect that this feeble principle of life proceeds from the poverty of first matter and belongs more to the family of lower elements than to the higher and heavenly ones, while nevertheless containing some tincture of light.