Soul propagation

Use in the book

The immediate disagreement with Theophrastus is carefully bounded. At II.195.2 the author approves propagation against separate creation, then rejects propagation through the father alone. He postpones the question whether the father-only account would operate by eduction or transmission. His main objection concerns the missing partner and the order of nature, rather than a fully elaborated account of each competing scholastic mechanism.

The first scriptural example is Eve, II.196.1. The author emphasizes that Genesis describes God breathing a soul into Adam but does not describe a second breathing into the woman. The rib taken from Adam must therefore, he reasons, already be animated. The exceptional act of the Creator bringing Eve forth makes actual a power associated with the already ensouled Adam. The inference serves as an explanation of why a second individual need not require a second separately created soul.

The passage then distinguishes capacity from its actualization, II.197.1. The soul possesses a power to multiply, which the Creator brought into effect through Eve’s formation. This does not establish that an isolated person can reproduce alone. On the contrary, the next paragraph says that ordinary human propagation requires union, even though the capacity belongs to the soul. Capacity is not sufficient independently of the appointed circumstances that bring it into action.

At II.197.2 marriage and the blessing Be fruitful and multiply establish the ordinary order. Human propagation concerns both body and soul, and the conjunction is explicitly the joining of the seed of both. Neither the man’s soul nor the woman’s alone can multiply. The contribution of both parents is thus stated in the source rather than supplied by a modern editor to soften a male-only account.

The divine blessing is described as a subordinate cause. This vocabulary recalls the book’s earlier distinction between God’s universal Word and particular creative commands. Here the author places ordinary human multiplication within an order established by a particular pronounced blessing, while distinguishing the soul’s original coming-to-be. The argument is theological as well as natural-philosophical; removing the Word and blessing would change the explanatory structure.

The alchemical comparison at II.198.1 requires both ferment and Azoth for the completed magistery and further mercurial water for multiplication. The comparison shows why possessing a principle with a capacity does not remove complementary conditions. It is not an identification of human reproductive materials with those laboratory terms. In both domains, the author wants to prevent one-sided sufficiency from being mistaken for a complete cause.

The final statement, II.198.2, joins origin and continuation explicitly: from God originally, through propagation thereafter. This is the arcanum celebrated against the alleged artificial child. The book’s wonder therefore rests in the divine order working through natural union, not in freeing generation from the natural mother.

Places to read

1. Part II · II.195.2Propagation is approved, but father-only propagation is rejected.
2. Part II · II.196.1; II.197.12Eve’s formation and the distinction between capacity and actuality.
3. Part II · II.197.2; II.198.1; II.198.223Both parents, the subordinate blessing, the alchemical analogy and the final conclusion.

Translation

Anima sive spiritus hominis permits soul or spirit in this anthropological passage; it does not erase the distinctions among spirit, soul and body in the three-principle scheme. Copula is union, here sexual union under marriage. Conjunctio seminis utriusque is the joining of both parents’ seed as the historical theory describes it. Potentia and actus distinguish capacity from realization; they are not genetic terms.

Connections

See Body soul and spirit for the book’s several senses of soul; see Seeds for the different treatment of animal, vegetable and mineral generation. The soul discussion is especially resistant to a single universal scheme in which every kind of seed behaves alike. The writer expressly differentiates the human soul’s origin and subsequent propagation from the mineral generation he discusses elsewhere.

Cautions

Do not treat propagation as a denial that God creates, or identify the account with modern inheritance. The author’s equal necessity of both parents is clear, but it belongs to his specific theology of soul, blessing and nature. The identity of Cartolossæus is left unresolved in the edition.

anima sive spiritus hominis

anima sive spiritus hominis — Attested wording in the cited original passage. II.197.1.

propagatio

propagatio — Attested wording in the cited original passage. II.197.2.

conjunctione seminis utriusque

conjunctione seminis utriusque — Attested wording in the cited original passage. II.197.2.

potentia

potentia — Attested wording in the cited original passage. II.197.2.