Nature's cabinet unlock'd wherein is discovered the natural causes of metals, stones, precious earths, juyces, humors, and spirits, the nature of plants in general, their affections, parts, and kinds in particular : together with a description of the individual parts and species of all animate bodies ... : with a compendious anatomy of the body of man, as also the manner of his formation in the womb / by Tho. Browne ...

The Commentary.

(A) BY spirit here we under∣stand not an incorporeal substance, or the intellect of man, which is rightly called by the Philosophers, a spirit; which Scaliger, otherwise a man very learned dothseem to dissent from;

for he speaks Theologically, and is to be understood, as speaking of an incorporate substance: but by spirit we mean a thin and sub∣til body.

(B) Because nature is not wont to copulate one contrary to another, unless it be with some medium, not unlike a band: for mortal and immortal, do differ more then in kinde; and there∣fore an incorporate being, is not consentaneous to a brittle body, and immortality cannot be uni∣ted to the intellect of man with∣out the concurrence of a medi∣um: and this is no other then a spirit, which doth bring mortali∣ty to the body; having a thin and tender substance, as it were, acceding to the intellect. The medium between both, is na∣ture: and this spirit is not void of a body, but begotten of the elements which were in the seed:

and it is most elaborate, nearly acceding to the nature of celesti∣al spirits; and most thin, that it may fly all sense; very apt to pass, by an incredible celerity: for it passes over the whole body with a great celerity, that it may give motion, sense, and strength to its parts, and perform other functions of the soul.

(D) Concerning this spirit, many great questions are agita∣ted: some do-banish it from the catalogue of spirits, moved there∣to by these Arguments: First, because there is no use nor neces∣sity for it. We answer, Its use is great: for first of all, it is the cha∣riot of aliment; for the humours gotten in the liver, can scarce pe∣netrate of themselves, through the narrow passages, by reason of their crassitude; nor can they well be carried to the other parts of the body, by reason of the slowness

of their motion. Furthermore, this spirit takes its natural facul∣ty from the liver; whose work is to attract, retain, and concoct fa∣miliar aliment to all the parts of the body; and by a certain force, doth expel the excrements. Se∣condly, they will have no place to be given by nature proper for this spirit. We answer, the li∣ver is its fountain and principle; as the heart of life, and the brain of the soul. Thirdly, they al∣ledge, that this spirit doth not lead any thing to any part, or carry any thing thereunto. But we say, that as the animal spirit is carried by the Nerves, the Vi∣tal by the Arteries: so the natu∣ral spirit is carried by the veins, together with the aliment blood, into the general mass of the bo∣dy. But here another question will arise, how can the spirits flow into the inward and most

remote parts, but by penetrati∣on, and dimension. Answer, Some bodies are crass and solid, and some thin and tender: through those that are hard, they cannot penetrate; but the spirits, because they are thin, do fly all manner of sense, and are diffused without impediment in a mo∣ment, this way and that way, with a certain kind of celerity, and do pervade the members; neither by their presence filling them, nor by their absence emp∣tying them.

(E) And in this spirit all the causes come to be considered: the matter is the natural spirit, pro∣created in the liver, thence car∣ried by the vena cava, with the arterious blood (that is, the pu∣rest of blood) upwards, going into the right side of the heart, where it is attenuated most accu∣rately, by the passages, not altoge∣ther

occult; but if a dog be dis∣sected, it will be found in the left side: the efficient cause is the strong heat of the heart, attenua∣ting and making thin the vital spirit: it's form its rarefaction, not unlike to the tenuity of a lit∣tle flame: its end is to conserve life diffused from the heart, by the arteries, into the universal body.

(F) The matter of this spirit is that vital, which is carried by the crevices of the arteries, to the ba∣sis of the brain; and it doth slide thereinto as into a net; which is placed there by nature, as a laby∣rinth: for when any matter would exactly elaborate, it doth devise a longer stay in the instruments of coction, and afterwards by another context is intromitted into ventricles of the brain: the efficient cause is motion, but chiefly the proper force of the so∣lid

substance of the brain, where∣by this spirit doth exactly elabo∣rate, and so become animal: the form of it is rarefaction, made perfect by the degeneration of the vital spirit into the animal: its end is to shew a sensitive and mo∣ving faculty, with great celerity, from the middle ventricle of the brain, by the nerves, into the whole body; by which spirit the animal faculty is apprehended in man of reason and memory, if its force or motion be not hin∣dred.