Appendix - 4. (fn. 172).
Galen complained that philosophers had not dealt with such an important question. He tells us that disciples succeeded their interminable masters without ever finding what they were looking for. But when he studied the question himself, the result was: 1. he could not explain the formation of the animal and the movements of the already formed animal without an intelligent formative principle; 2. but the baby moves without knowing of its own anatomy, that is, of the muscles it moves; as a result yet another intelligent principle is required, different from the former and able to control involuntary muscles; 3. one is forced to say therefore that either the intelligent principle which formed the animal remains in it even after the formation, or that every muscle is an animal in itself. He summarises himself in the following passage:
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This fact — that he had not found among the learned of his time anyone who could demonstrate for him the formative principle proper to the animal — saddened and forced me to look for some efficacious reason explaining the formation of animals and the complex work involved. But I have to declare here that I have not found any reason of this kind. I now exhort and beg practitioners of these noble sciences to investigate the subject and share freely with us whatever they wisely succeed in finding. We see children speaking and saying all the things we require them to say, for example, 'myrrh, knife and soap', without any knowledge of the muscles suitable for moving the tongue to pronounce such words, or (and this is more important) of the nerves of those muscles. I consider it highly credible and probable either that whatever forms the tongue remains in the formed parts, or that each part itself has been constructed and formed by yet another animal (another soul) who KNOWS the will proper to our soul's principal part. But when I see as a consequence that one soul must be brought to bear in the principal part of our reason and other souls in the individual parts, or that there is at most a common soul governing everything, I relapse into my primitive ignorance. Again, when I hear philosophers say that 'matter was animated from eternity, and renders itself beautiful by gazing on ideas', I reflect once more that there must be a soul which formed us and now uses all our parts. But what militates greatly against this opinion is our ignorance of this soul that governs us and the parts which serve its desires and movements |
Later he says:
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In the formation of the animal I see simultaneously a supreme wisdom and a supreme power. I do not accept therefore that the foetus can be formed by the soul inserted in the seed, that is, by the vegetative soul according to Aristotle, by the sensitive soul according to Plato, and by nature (not even the soul!) according to the Stoics. |
Here and in other places of the famous doctor of Pergamum we note the following:
1. The best minds of antiquity saw the absurdity of animal phenomena being produced by a material, brute cause.
2. But because they did not know the nature of feeling, which they confused with intelligence, and wanted to avoid the absurdity of a brute cause, they went to the opposite extreme of supposing a rational cause.
3. They glimpsed that matter could be united to a feeling but not how it was united. Unable to conceive the concept of creation, they fell into the error of eternal matter.
4. They also glimpsed that feeling could be directed by nature to the intuition of ideas, but knew neither the unity of ideas nor the organisation, given by the Creator, which was necessary for the intuition to take place.
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