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 Metaphysics, 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 Aristotle’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 Hippocrates, to which Galen 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).