The Religion of Nature Delineated

lang="la" xml:lang="la">ab æterno, without any further account of the original of mankind, or taking in any author of this traductive power, is the same as to suppose an infinite series of moveds without a mover, or of effects without a cause, the absurdity of which is shown already, proposition I. But concerning this matter, I cannot but think further, after the following manner: What is meant by tradux animæ ought to be clearly explained, for it is not easy to conceive how thought, or thinking substances, can be propagated after the manner of branches, or in any manner that can be analogous to it, or even warrant a metaphorical use of that phrase.225 It should also be told whether this traduction be made from one or from both the parents. If from one, from which of them is it? And if from both, then the same tradux, or branch, must always proceed from two stocks, which is a thing, I presume, that can nowhere else be found, nor has any parallel in nature. And yet such a thing may much better be supposed of vines, or plants, than of thinking beings, who are simple and uncompounded substances.226

This opinion of the traduction of souls seems to me to stand upon an unsound foundation. For I take it to be grounded chiefly on these two things: the similitude there is between the features, humors, and abilities of children and those of their parents;227 and the difficulty men find in forming the notion of a spirit.228 For, from hence, they are apt to conclude that there can be no other substance but matter, and that the soul, resulting from some disposition of the body, or some part of it, or being some merely material appendix to it, must attend it, and come along with it from the parent or parents; and as there is a derivation of the one, so there must be also of the other at the same time.

Now the former of these is not always true, as it ought to be to make the argument valid. Nothing more common than to see children differ from their parents, in their understandings, inclinations, shapes, complexions, and (I am sure) one from another. And this dissimilitude has as much force to prove there is not a traduction, as similitude, whenever that happens, can have to prove there is. Besides, it seems to me not hard to account for some likeness without the help of traduction. It is visible the meat and drink men take, the air they breathe, the objects they see, the sounds they hear, the company they keep, etc., will create changes in them, sometimes with respect to their intellectuals, sometimes to their passions and humors, and sometimes to their health and other circumstances of their bodies: and yet the original stamina and fundamental parts of the man remain still the same. If then the semina, out of which animals are produced, are (as I doubt not) animalcula already formed,229 which, being distributed about, especially in some opportune places, are taken in with aliment, or perhaps the very air, being separated in the bodies of the males by strainers proper to every kind, and then lodged in their seminal vessels, do there receive some kind of addition and influence, and being thence transferred into the wombs of the females, are there nourished more plentifully, and grow, till they become too big to be longer confined;230 I say, if this be the case, why may not the nutriment received from the parents, being prepared by their vessels, and of the same kind with that with which they themselves are nourished, be the same in great measure to the animalcula and embrya that it is to them, and consequently very much assimilate their young, without the derivation of anything else from them? Many impressions may be made upon the fœtus, and many tinctures given to the fluids communicated to it from the parents, and yet it, the animal itself, may not be originally begun in them, or traduced from them. This hypothesis (which has long been mine) suggests a reason why the child is sometimes more like the father, sometimes the mother: viz. because the vessels of the animalculum are disposed to receive a greater proportion of aliment sometimes from the one, sometimes from the other; or the fluids and spirits in one may ferment and operate more strongly than in the other, and so have a greater and more signal effect. (Here, it ought to be observed that though what the animalculum receives from the father is in quantity little, in respect of all that nutriment which it receives by the mother, yet the former, being the first accretion to the original stamina, adhering immediately, and being early interwoven with them, may affect it more.)

Since there cannot be a proper traduction of the child (one mind and one body) from both the two parents, all the similitude it bears to one of them must proceed from some such cause as I have assigned, or at least not from traduction. For the child being sometimes like the father, and sometimes the mother, and the traduction either always from the father, or always from the mother, there must sometimes be similitude where there is no traduction; and then, if the child may resemble one of them without it, why not the other too? The account I have given appears, many times at least, to be true in plants, which, raised from the same seed, but in different beds and soil, will differ. The different nutriment introduces some diversity into the seed or original plant, and assimilates it in some measure to the rest raised in the same place.

The other thing which I take to be one of the principal supports