The Architectonic Soul: The Theory of Generation in Julius Caesar Scaliger

Toyama, 14/02/2016

Kuni Sakamoto

1. Introduction

In 1705 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) issued an article under the title of

“Considerations on Vital Principles and Plastic Natures.” There, he made a doxographical reflection. Look at the passage number 1 in the handout.

So I have no need to resort, as does Cudworth, to certain immaterial plastic natures, though I

recall that Julius Scaliger and other Peripatetics, as well as certain adherents of Van Helmont’s

doctrine of the archeus believed that the soul makes its own body. To this I can say that it is

not necessary for me nor is sufficient for me, because this preformation and this infinitely

1 complex organism provide me with material plastic natures that meet the need.

Neither Leibniz’s theory of preformation nor his understanding of the Helmontian archeus concern my talk. What matters here is his reference to Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558), as an Aristotelian who assumed that “the soul makes its own body.” This remark would immediately raise two questions. First, what precisely did Scaliger mean when presenting this opinion? Second, why did Scaliger claim so? What was the driving force behind his doctrine and argumentation? These two questions are what I would like to address today, through an examination of Scaliger’s theory of generation. In what follows, I shall concentrate on animal generation from seeds, putting aside the problem concerning the spontaneous generation as well as that of humans.

2. The Architect of the Body

Julius Caesar Scaliger, the protagonist of this talk, published in 1557 a massive

2 philosophical work which was entitled Exotericae Exercitationes. This work consists of 365 chapters, or “exercises,” and the author devotes its exercise number 6 to the problem of generation. His discussion begins with a criticism of the contemporary physician, Jean

Fernal (1497–1558). Fernel was a physician at the University of Paris and had just published On the Hidden Causes Things in 1548. In this book, Fernel introduces the doctrine that the development of matter gives rise to the form, or the soul, of the future animal. Scaliger dissents from it. Look at the passage number 2:

From these discussions, the vain ambition of recent people’s [i.e., Fernel’s] opinion is evident.

They say: the eduction of form from the potentiality of matter is the preparation of matter to

receive form. This preparation occurs through continuous development, until it reaches the

greatest perfection. For it will then have attained even the form of a substance. Indeed, form

necessarily accompanies that perfection and never abandons it.

Scaliger interprets Fernel as claiming that the continuous development of matter results in the form of the new entity. This idea, Scaliger claims, “perceives form too derogatorily,” for

3 the preparation of matter produces only the accumulation of accidental qualities, a process that would never arrive at a form which should be completely immaterial. In short, we should make a sharp distinction between immaterial form and material components. The former never derives from the latter.

Scaliger thus maintains that form does not appear from the development of matter.

Rather, it exists from the beginning, that is, from the moument when the male parent produces the seed. But at this point of production, there is only the seed; the organic body of the future animal has not yet been constructed. Who carries out this construction?

Scaliger’s answer can be found in the passage number 3:

We should therefore make clear how form is educed through preparation, since form itself is

the performer of preparation. For form changes the whole and arranges the parts for its own

sake. It would therefore educe itself. They [i.e., Fernel] therefore did not express themselves

well when they said: “when the greatest perfection of preparation will have been attained, the

form of a substance will also be attained.” For form itself exists prior to that. Therefore what is

attained is not form, but its actuality, whereby the form may enjoy the benefit of that actuality

4 afterward. The ancients used the term “being educed,” because they thought that it is effected

by an external agent. It is, however, the emergence of form, rather than its eduction.

Form prepares matter for bodily formation. Through this preparation, it educes itself from potentiality to actuality, a process that is not well expressed by the usual term “eduction;” rather “emergence” (emersio) would better capture what is actually happening.

The point here is that no external agent involves in this process. And this point is closely related to another criticism Scaliger makes of Fernel. According to Scaliger, Fernel contradicts himself when he says that “every form comes, and is introduced, from the outside, but only when matter has already been prepared for it.” Scaliger is here referring to

Fernel’s fundamental assumption that form is given to matter by the heavens. It is, Scaliger argues, incompatible with Fernel’s earlier remark that form is educed from the potentiality of matter. How does the same thing come from the heavens and from the potentiality of matter? Fernel’s theory, Scaliger adds, also betrays the basic principle of generation. As

Aristotle points out in the , a begetter and a begotten must be two in number, but one in species. If, as Fernel claims, the form of the offspring originated in the heavens,

5 every generation would be spontaneous. Scaliger argues that this absurd consequence invalidates Fernel’s theory of the heavenly origin of form.

The discussion so far indicates Scaliger’s assumption that only the immaterial soul is responsible for animal generation. He elaborates on this idea on the basis of ’s

Metaphysics. Look at the passage number 4.

Nonetheless, there is also the immortal view of Aristotle. In the seed there is the soul that

shapes a body for its own sake, as is said in the seventh book of the Metaphysics. “The seed is,”

he says, “like an artisan.” An artisan holds the form [of an artifact] in his power. So Aristotle

repeatedly says in the same books: “the material house arises from the immaterial house.”

Obviously, an artisan locates the form [of an artifact] in matter. But he does not accept it

from the outside like accepting a guest or a leaseholder, but he has it as something indigenous

and self-grown.

Just as the artisan has the form of the artifact in mind and imposes it on matter, so the soul in the seed has the plan of the future animal in itself and organizes the body in accordance

6 with that plan, which was give by God ultimately. As the ancient philosopher Themistius said, “the soul is the architect of its own house.” But unlike the human artisan, the soul does not act on something external, but on the seed itself.

Another feature of this immaterial artisan is that it builds its artifact (namely, the body) without using any instrument. Look at the passage number 5.

This natural power [of the soul] acts without any instrument. For no quality known to

humans can be the instrument for [producing] formations, positions, numbers, figures, and

other things of the same kind. It can be the instrument only for secretion or concretion,

thickening or rarefaction, extension or contraction, cohesion or dissolution, roughness or

smoothness, hardness or softness, stickiness or dryness, and other such things, which have

been provided by nature to produce similar [i.e., homogeneous] parts.

Note that this is contrary to the traditional assumption that the soul uses qualities for bodily formation.

As already seen in Scaliger’s criticism of Fernel, this architectonic soul is supposed to

7 be in the seed, right from the moment when the seed is produced by the male parent. And this same soul not only builds the body, but also governs it after its construction. Therefore, the seed is, in a sense, a small animal, at least in terms of the form that informs it. To take the example of a dog, “the seed is an imperfect dog, lacking only the formation of the body.”

This is very much a preformationist theory; no wonder that it was later criticized by

William Harvey, the epigenesist.

But how does the seed acquire the soul? Scaliger explains this in the passage number 6:

But the soul generates the soul through its advancement (promotio) in the same manner as the

soul submerges into the new matter of food in the growth [of the bodily size]. And we have an

example in front of our eyes: when we receive a flame from the flame of a torch, the original

flame remains to be complete as before.

Self-multiplication, therefore, is the ultimate mechanism of the propagation of the soul.

8 3. Against the Surge of Materialism

We have now understood what Scaliger meant when he claimed that the soul makes its own body. The point of this claim is not that the soul is the principal cause of generation; rather it highlights that the soul causes generation not only principally, but also autonomously, without receiving any help from qualities. But why did Scaliger so strenuously exclude the involvement of qualities from the process of generation? Was there any philosopher who highlighted their role? In this connection, the passage number 7 is particularly illuminating:

You [i.e., Cardano] maintain, and publicly support, the horrible absurdity of , to

which shows trepidation, that the soul is nothing but the celestial heat.

Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576/77) was the main target of criticism in the Exercitationes; indeed, the book itself was composed as a critique of his popular philosophical encyclopedia De subtilitate (Nuremberg, 1550). As Scaliger points out in the passage just

9 quoted, Cardano’s understanding of the soul is rather idiosyncratic: he declares the identity of the soul with the celestial heat. Scaliger takes this heat to be one of four primary qualities, and therefore interprets Cardano to reduce the soul to something material. Such a soul of material nature would necessarily be subject to corruption; hence, its immortality would be undermined. Cardano’s doctrine also resembles that of Fernel, in that both assume the soul as something of heavenly origin. This assumption, as we have seen, violates a fundamental premise of generation: the begetter and begotten should be in the same species; otherwise, we cannot account for the persistence of natural kinds. In order to reject this religiously dangerous and philosophically false position of Cardano, Scaliger eliminates any significant involvement of heat and other qualities in the process of generation. According to him, the autonomous soul is sufficient to carry out the process from the beginning to the end.

Antipathy to the materialistic understanding of the soul had a further dimension in

Scaliger’s philosophy, which we can see in the passage number 8.

I also say to them [who have accused ]: in every case the form of every perfect mixture

is the fifth nature, which is entirely different from the four elements, even if the form is not

10 the soul like [the form] in a diamond. From this the Herculean argument is deduced against

Alexander [of Aphrodisias], who constructed the soul out of the four elements. For there is

something in the powers of the soul that was never present in the powers of whatever element.

Alexander of Aphrodisias, an ancient commentator of Aristotle, understood the soul to be a mixture of the elements, and hence as perishable. This doctrine began to attract the attention of philosophers with the dissemination of the translation of Alexander’s treatise on the soul, which was produced by Girolamo Donato (1457–1511) in 1495.

Pietro Pomponazzi (1462–1525) used this work to support his claim that the immortality of the soul cannot be demonstrated on natural philosophical grounds. Of Scaliger’s contemporaries, the Neapolitan philosopher Simone Porzio (1496–1554) reduced all kinds of forms (including souls) to the mixture of the elements. And above all, Scaliger understood Cardano as a follower of Alexander in regarding the individual human souls as mortal. Scaliger therefore opposes the growing influence of Alexander. His antipathy to this influence was so virulent that he labeled Alexander’s followers as “brutal murderers of the souls” (belluae carnifices animarum).

11 Alexander’s popularity in Italy was not the only concern for Scaliger. He perceived yet another threat from Germany. In 1540 Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) published Commentarius de anima, which he would revise as Liber de anima in 1552. In this treatise, he defines the human soul as “intelligent spirit” (spiritus intelligens), with the intention of emphasizing its spirituality. Scaliger, however, understands the term “spirit” in a solely corporeal sense and accuses Melanchthon as an advocate of materialism. Look at the passage number 9.

The following nonsense does not deserve mention or refutation. Rather, his [i.e.,

Melanchthon’s] definition of the rational soul would be worth a hat or vomit. That is, that

the rational soul is an intelligent spirit. It seems that this definition was snatched from the

kitchen of a monarchy with smoke or bad smells, and brought to our eyes, to those who were

walking around that kitchen.

4. Conclusion

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To conclude: my investigation into Scaliger’s theory of generation has shown that the surge of the materialistic understanding of the soul in the first half of the fifteenth century provided the basic doctrinal framework in which Scaliger was to articulate his own views.

Pomponazzi and Melanchthon, in the eyes of Scaliger at least, reduced the soul to material components, and thereby denied its immortality. Cardano committed the same error in identifying the soul with heat. This equation also failed to explain the persistence of natural kinds in the process of generation, because it assumed the heavens, not the parent, as the place whence the soul descended into the body.

Strong antipathy to these assumptions conditioned the way in which Scaliger articulated his doctrine of generation. Contrary to any attempt to reduce the soul to something material, he insisted that neither heat nor the heavens contributed in any substantial manner to the process of generation. Instead, generation was prosecuted solely by the soul. Once multiplied from the parental soul, the soul of the future animal directly worked on matter and carried out bodily formation. The autonomy of the soul was thus fully secured. This feature of Scaliger’s argument led Robert Boyle (1627–1691) to call him

13 the “greatest patron of forms.” How did our patron contribute to the philosophy of the seventeenth century? This is the question I would like to hand over to the following speakers and all of you.

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