is
most hard (be it of man or beast) to discern, as [969]Aristotle himself,
[970]Tully, [971]Picus Mirandula, [972]Tolet, and other neoteric
philosophers confess:--[973]"We can understand all things by her, but what
she is we cannot apprehend." Some therefore make one soul, divided into
three principal faculties; others, three distinct souls. Which question of
late hath been much controverted by Picolomineus and Zabarel. [974]
Paracelsus will have four souls, adding to the three grand faculties a
spiritual soul: which opinion of his, Campanella, in his book _de sensu
rerum_ [975]much labours to demonstrate and prove, because carcasses bleed
at the sight of the murderer; with many such arguments And [976]some again,
one soul of all creatures whatsoever, differing only in organs; and that
beasts have reason as well as men, though, for some defect of organs, not
in such measure. Others make a doubt whether it be all in all, and all in
every part; which is amply discussed in Zabarel amongst the rest. The
[977]common division of the soul is into three principal
faculties--vegetal, sensitive, and rational, which make three distinct
kinds of living creatures--vegetal plants, sensible beasts, rational men.
How these three principal faculties are distinguished and connected,
_Humano ingenio inaccessum videtur_, is beyond human capacity, as [978]
Taurellus, Philip, Flavins, and others suppose. The inferior may be alone,
but the superior cannot subsist without the other; so sensible includes
vegetal, rational both; which are contained in it (saith Aristotle) _ut
trigonus in tetragono_ as a triangle in a quadrangle.

_Vegetal Soul_.] Vegetal, the first of the three distinct faculties, is
defined to be "a substantial act of an organical body, by which it is
nourished, augmented, and begets another like unto itself." In which
definition, three several operations are specified--altrix, auctrix,
procreatrix; the first is [979]nutrition, whose object is nourishment,
meat, drink, and the like; his organ the liver in sensible creatures; in
plants, the root or sap. His office is to turn the nutriment into the
substance of the body nourished, which he performs by natural heat. This
nutritive operation hath four other subordinate functions or powers
belonging to it--attraction, retention, digestion, expulsion.

_Attraction_.] [980]Attraction is a ministering faculty, which, as a
loadstone doth iron, draws meat into the stomach, or as a lamp