Physiological Introduction or Principles of the Human Body

and the rational soul are the internal principles of man.
Prænot. 3. Internal principles of the body or of physical generation are, according to Aristotle l. 1. phys t. 42., those which are not made from each other nor from others, but from which all things are. Hence, from the same place (Chap. viii), three are assigned: 1. matter the capable subject; 2. form, which is received by the subject and is likewise sustained by absolute generation; 3. privation the absence of the form to be received. By the ancient Democriteans followers of Democritus, only two internal principles of natural things were assumed, namely body and void, or atoms and space, although Gassendi a 17th-century philosopher in his Animadversiones critical notes thinks they established those two principles with respect to the universe, which they believed to consist of them, but not regarding generable things or natural bodies; for if void spaces were within these, they would not have to be held as parts of them. Among the modern Democriteans, Sperlingius Phys. l. 1, c. 1. Quæst. 1. asserts that matter and form are the internal principles of a natural body, but that privation is not an internal principle of a natural body, nor even of generation, since the origin of form is not an eduction or induction, but a traduction transfer or transmission. In Chapter 3, he urges that no time can be set for privation where it would actually perform the office of a principle, or "principiate"; for when privation is present, there is no generation, nor when it is absent, for that which is not cannot be the actual principle of another. He wonders at Gassendi, not only that privation was placed among the internal principles, but also form, since both imply a contradiction under the aspect of an internal principle. The former implies it insofar as the term "from which," if it were required for generation, would certainly be a pre-existing form, for it seems much more congruent to say that matter passes from the form of fire into the form of water, etc., than that matter passes from the non-being of water to the being of water. The latter (form) implies it insofar as, according to Aristotle, a principle must always remain and not be made from another principle or any other thing; furthermore, a principle should not merely be present or absent, or begin or cease. It cannot be made from privation as a contrary, nor be educed from matter. By the Cartesians followers of Descartes, two internal principles are established: matter and form. Greydanus Instit. phys. tract. 2, cap. 1. wonders how