Animal and vegetal

Use in the book

Powers included within powers

The ordinary division Burton reports is into vegetal, sensitive and rational faculties, associated respectively with plants, beasts and humans. The lower can exist without the higher; the higher cannot exist without the lower. Sensitive life therefore includes vegetative life, and rational life includes both. The comparison of a triangle contained in a quadrilateral makes this inclusion visible. It is a hierarchy of living capacities, not a claim that human beings cease to need bodily nourishment when they exercise understanding. Burton also records uncertainty about exactly how the powers are connected and rival theories about one soul or several.

The vegetative faculty has three operations. “Altrix, Auctrix, Procreatrix” name nourishing, increasing and reproducing. Nutrition converts food into the substance of the nourished body through natural heat; growth increases the body in length, breadth and thickness towards its proper proportions; generation produces another like itself through seed, preserving the kind. Nutrition has subordinate powers that draw nourishment in, keep it, process it and discharge its residue. The root is compared with a mouth, the sap with a stomach, and attraction with a lodestone drawing iron or a lamp drawing oil. The comparisons explain analogous functions in different bodies; they do not make a plant literally possess the organs named in the animal example.

The life sustained by these operations requires natural heat and the innate moisture that preserves it. Burton includes plants in this account, reasoning from their growth and fruiting even though their heat is less readily perceived. At the end of the will discussion he marks a limit to voluntary command: natural and vegetal powers do not obey the will. One cannot choose to add a cubit to one’s height. The higher power’s inclusion of the lower therefore does not give it direct command over every lower operation.

The sensitive level adds perception, appetite, judgment, breathing and movement. Its general organ is the brain; its two principal powers apprehend and move. In the physiological language of “Animal spirits,” animal specifies the spirits associated with the brain and nerves, which confer sensation and movement on subordinate members. It does not mean the spirits of nonhuman beasts. The article Animal faculties follows this functional vocabulary in greater detail.

A related Latin noun reaches beyond terrestrial beasts. In the marginal quotation attributed to Apuleius, “animalia” means living beings: the spirits are described as capable of passion, rational in mind, airy in body and everlasting. This original marginal account must remain separate from the neighbouring body report that Psellus’s spirits are mortal, a claim Burton says Christian philosophers reject. The edition flags both their disagreement and the uncertain placement of the marginal anchor. The noun identifies purported animate beings; it does not turn the competing authorities into a single doctrine.

Melancholy beyond human beings

The address to the reader deliberately extends the anatomy’s diagnosis beyond individuals. Kingdoms, cities, families and all creatures, vegetal, sensible and rational, are out of tune. Later Burton distinguishes two ways of calling a plant or creature melancholy. One is an inherited astrological classification: lead, certain plants and various animals belong to Saturn and are melancholy by nature. The other, called “artificial,” is brought about by circumstances. A transplanted plant pines; a caged bird or an animal deprived of its offspring or companions suffers; dogs are said to waste away after the death of a master. The contrast is between an assigned natural character and an induced condition, rather than between real melancholy and a consciously manufactured pretence.

This extension combines reported natural history, observations of loss and a satirical claim of universal disorder. It is not a modern diagnostic classification of plants or animals. Yet the examples have distinct force: transplantation supplies a changed environment for plants, while separation and confinement supply losses for creatures capable of fear and sorrow. Reducing both to the mere word “melancholy” would erase the account of what happens to each.

Living creatures and medicinal materials

Burton imagines nature reproaching humankind as a divine creature in the denunciation of war. Here Latin animal includes the human addressee; the claim of divinity comes from its adjective. The contrast between humanity’s supposed sociability and its destructive conduct gives the name its argumentative force. In the aerial digression, ordinary English animals instead names nonhuman creatures: Burton retells Acosta’s question about American birds and beasts so unlike European animals and about how their distribution fits creation and Noah’s Ark. These are questions within the reported natural history.

Animals also appears beside plants and metals in the classification of medicines. The noun identifies a class of materials used medicinally, rather than the patient’s animal faculties. Burton immediately says that a substance may benefit one person and harm another, or be harmful before preparation and useful afterwards, and therefore places such treatment under skilled physicians. This is a qualified historical classification of remedies.

Plant attraction, love and other uses

The love partition returns to vegetals. In the account of natural sympathy and antipathy, Burton reports affinities and hostilities between kinds of plant: vine and elm, vine and cabbage, olive and myrtle. Later he argues more strongly that male and female palms exhibit a love-passion, not merely sympathy. He assembles reports of leaning branches, transferred contact and flourishing after contact, along with poetry and the story of distant palms finally seeing one another. The passage explicitly answers a possible reader’s suspicion that this is a tale by citing more authorities. Those literary attestations establish the history of the claim, not its botanical truth.

The transition then asks: if plants have such fury, how much more violent and evident must love be in sensible creatures? The distinction between vegetative and sensitive life thus provides the steps of a rhetorical ascent. Elsewhere the same hierarchy supports Burton’s defence of unequal human stations: earth nourishes plants, plants feed sensible creatures, and both serve rational souls. Biological classification has become an analogy for social and theological subordination. The analogy is Burton’s argument, rather than a consequence that the lexical definition itself proves.

In medical controversy, “vegetals” can also mean plant-derived medicines. Chemical physicians accuse Galenists of abandoning their vegetals for mineral remedies when severe illness defeats them. Burton places that accusation within a dispute and shortly declines to settle it at length. Here the word identifies a class of remedies, not the patient’s vegetative faculty.

Related entries

Soul; Faculty; Animal faculties; Sensible; Spirits; Concoction; Radical moisture; Sympathy and antipathy. Future entries: Natural heat; Love melancholy

Places to read

1. Universal disorderVegetal, sensible and rational creatures included in the claim of disorder
2. A human being called an animalFocus on paragraph 22. Nature’s imagined address uses animal for the human creature in the denunciation of war
3. Nonhuman sufferingSaturnine qualities distinguished from melancholy induced by circumstances
4. Animal as a physiological adjectiveBrain-associated spirits giving sensation and movement
5. The hierarchy of powers and the vegetative operationsCompeting soul accounts, inclusion, nutrition, growth, generation and the conditions of life
6. The sensitive levelHigher dignity and included lower powers; apprehension and movement
7. A limit to voluntary governmentGrowth and other natural powers outside the will’s command
8. Spirits described as living beingsMarginal animalia and the conflicting accounts of mortality
9. Animals as medicinal materialsFocus on paragraph 03. Animal, plant and mineral substances classified as medicines, with effects qualified by patient and preparation
10. Ordinary animals in natural historyFocus on paragraph 34. European and American creatures in a reported question about distribution, creation and the Ark
11. A social use of the hierarchyNutrition and subordination as an argument about human stations
12. Plant remedies in controversyVegetals contrasted with chemical and mineral treatments, with the speakers’ polemical positions preserved
13. Affinity and love in plantsSympathy and antipathy, purported palm passions, cited stories and the transition to sentient creatures

In this edition

“Vegetals and sensibles” becomes “plants and creatures with senses”; “Vegetal, Sensitive, and Rational” becomes “vegetative, sensitive and rational.” The adjective “vegetative” describes living functions here. It carries no implication of a modern clinical or colloquial description of an unresponsive person. “Artificial” in the transplantation passage is rendered “brought about by circumstances,” preserving its contrast with innate Saturnine character.

The original marginal “animalia” is rendered “living beings” within the accompanying note, whose English translation is editorial material, not part of Apuleius’s Latin or the paired modern body.

The modern rendering of “Altrix, Auctrix, Procreatrix” gives the three operations by meaning, rather than repeating the Latin labels. At the passage “their vegetals” becomes “their vegetable remedies,” making the medical referent explicit. “Animal spirits” is retained, while an Editor note explains the human-inclusive physiological sense. These different choices follow local functions rather than one automatic replacement for the entire word family.

Latin animal is rendered “creature” in nature’s imagined address, while English animals and Animals are retained in the zoological and medicinal lists. Divine belongs to divinum in the first passage; the medicinal referent in the last comes from the surrounding classification.

altrix

Printed “Altrix” (Latin).

Printed form, Original wording: Altrix

Nourishing; first of three vegetative operations.

Context: Technical label in Burton’s definition of vegetative life.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: three several operations are specified, Altrix, Auctrix, Procreatrix

Modern rendering, Modern wording: nourishment

Alignment convention

Qualification: The aligned component is separate from the checked clause supplied as construction context.

Modern construction: three operations: nourishment, growth and reproduction

Altrix, Auctrix, Procreatrix

Printed “Altrix, Auctrix, Procreatrix” (Latin).

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Altrix, Auctrix, Procreatrix

The ordered threefold list names the nourishing, increasing and reproductive operations of the vegetative faculty; individual components are indexed separately.

Context: Technical label in Burton’s definition of vegetative life.

Source: original body

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: nourishment, growth and reproduction

Alignment convention

Qualification: Displayed phrase has its own explained lookup record, separate from the component record(s).

animal

Printed “Animal” (English).

Physiological adjective for brain-associated spirits serving sensation and motion, including humans.

Context: Spirits are agents formed from vital spirits, not a class of nonhuman beings.

Source: original body

Source wording: The Animal spirits formed of the Vital

animal (English noun) · animals

Printed “animals” (English plural noun; lemma).

Printed form, Original wording, Modern rendering, Modern wording: animals

Nonhuman living creatures, here European birds and beasts compared with those reported in America.

Context: Burton retells Acosta’s question about animal distribution, creation and Noah’s Ark; the book does not verify every reported zoological claim.

Grammar: Plural noun modified by European and possessed by our.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction, Modern construction: our European animals

Alignment convention

Qualification: The English noun is retained; European is a modifier, not part of the noun’s definition.

Notes: Selected significant sense; not a complete concordance.

animal (English noun) · Animals

Printed “Animals” (English plural noun; lemma).

Printed form, Original wording: Animals

Living creatures, named here as a class of medicinal materials alongside plants and metals.

Context: Burton classifies historical medicines and immediately qualifies their effects by patient, preparation and skilled use.

Grammar: Plural noun in a list of kinds of medicines; material use is contextual.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: Of these medicines there be divers & infinite kindes, Plants, Metals, Animals

Modern rendering, Modern wording: animals

Alignment convention

Qualification: Animals is retained as animals; the medicinal-material sense is supplied by the governing medicines construction, not by an added word in the translation.

Modern construction: These medicines come in countless different kinds—plants, metals, animals

Notes: Selected significant sense; not a complete concordance.

animal (Latin noun) · animalia

Printed “animalia” (Latin).

Printed form, Original wording: animalia

Living beings, here predicated of spirits described as rational and airy.

Context: Apuleius in margin; everlasting lives conflict with adjacent Psellus mortality, which Christian philosophers reject; anchor placement uncertain.

Source: Burton original marginal quotation

Source wording, Original construction: spiritus animalia sunt animo passibilia, mente rationalia, corpore aëria, tempore sempiterna.

Modern rendering, Modern wording: living beings

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original Latin component and editorial English component are separately aligned; wider constructions are retained as context.

Modern construction: spirits are living beings, subject to passions in soul, rational in mind, airy in body and everlasting in time.

Notes: The complete mixed note was consulted, but only its original Latin is used as lexical attestation.

Translation layer: Editorial translation within the supplied Burton-labelled note; not original marginal wording and not paired modern body

animal (Latin noun) · animal

Printed “animal” (Latin accusative singular; lemma).

Printed form, Original wording: animal

Living creature; here a human being addressed by personified nature as a divine creature.

Context: Burton imagines nature reproaching humankind in an argument against war; divinum supplies divine, not animal itself.

Grammar: Accusative singular predicate designation with te after finxi; divinum qualifies animal.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: Ego te divinum animal finxi

Modern rendering, Modern wording: creature

Alignment convention

Qualification: Animal supplies creature; divinum supplies divine. The modern column translates the Latin before separately retaining Burton’s expanded English restatement.

Modern construction: I fashioned you a divine creature

Notes: Selected significant sense; not a complete concordance.

Animal spirits

Printed “Animal spirits” (English).

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Modern rendering, Modern wording, Original construction, Modern construction: Animal spirits

Physiological spirits formed from vital spirits, associated with the brain and distributed through nerves to give sensation and movement, including in humans.

Context: Spirits are agents formed from vital spirits, not a class of nonhuman beings.

Source: original body

Alignment convention

Qualification: Displayed phrase has its own explained lookup record, separate from the component record(s).

artificial

Printed “artificial” (English).

Melancholy brought about by circumstances, contrasted with an innate Saturnine classification.

Context: Burton distinguishes induced condition from melancholy by nature.

Source: original body

Source wording: but that artificial, which is perceived in them all

auctrix

Printed “Auctrix” (Latin).

Printed form, Original wording: Auctrix

Increasing or causing growth; second vegetative operation.

Context: The capacity enlarges bodily dimensions towards due proportion.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: Altrix, Auctrix, Procreatrix

Modern rendering, Modern wording: growth

Alignment convention

Qualification: The aligned component is separate from the checked clause supplied as construction context.

Modern construction: nourishment, growth and reproduction

procreatrix

Printed “Procreatrix” (Latin).

Printed form, Original wording: Procreatrix

Reproducing; third vegetative operation.

Context: The capacity produces another like the parent through seed.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: Altrix, Auctrix, Procreatrix

Modern rendering, Modern wording: reproduction

Alignment convention

Qualification: The aligned component is separate from the checked clause supplied as construction context.

Modern construction: nourishment, growth and reproduction

sensible

Printed “sensibles” (English).

Living beings capable of sensation.

Context: Pairing of plant and sentient life in Burton’s extended melancholy argument.

Source: original body

Source wording: vegetals and sensibles

vegetal · vegetals

Printed “vegetals” (English).

Plants, contrasted with beings possessing sensation.

Context: Burton extends melancholy beyond humans in the prefatory argument.

Source: original body

Source wording: even to vegetals and sensibles

vegetal · Vegetal

Printed “Vegetal” (English).

The nutritive, growing and reproductive faculty included in sensitive and rational life.

Context: Burton reports the common division, while preserving uncertainty about the connection of powers.

Source: original body

Source wording: Vegetal, Sensitive, and Rational

vegetal · vegetall

Printed “vegetall” (English).

Vegetative, belonging to plant life; with creatures the phrase denotes plants, treated as displaying love in Burton’s reported natural history and poetic argument.

Context: Burton claims evidence, then cites palm stories and poems; the reports are not verified botanical facts.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: In vegetall creatures what soveraignty Love hath

Original wording: vegetall creatures

Modern rendering, Modern wording: plants

Alignment convention

Qualification: The adjective plus creatures is rendered as plants; plants is not assigned to the adjective alone.

Modern construction: Love’s sovereignty over plants

vegetals

Printed “vegetals” (English).

Plant-derived medicines, contrasted with mineral remedies.

Context: Chemical physicians’ attack on Galenists; Burton soon withdraws from extended controversy.

Source: original body

Source wording: when their vegetals will do no good