ing to serve therein for a
vegetative or sensitive soul; unless he stirr'd up in his heart one of
those fires without light which I had already discovered; and that I
conceiv'd of no other nature but that which heats hay when its housed
before it be dry, or which causes new Wines to boyl when it works upon
the grape: For examining the functions which might be consequently in
this body, I exactly found all those which may be in us, without our
thinking of them; and to which our soul (that is to say, that distinct
part from our bodies, whose nature (as hath been said before) is onely
to think) consequently doth not contribute, and which are all the same
wherein we may say unreasonable creatures resemble us. Yet could I not
finde any, of those which depending from the thought, are the onely ones
which belong unto us as Men; whereas I found them all afterwards, having
supposed that God created a reasonable soul, and that he joyn'd it to
this body, after a certain manner which I describ'd.

But that you might see how I treated this matter, I shall here present
you with the explication of the motion of the heart, and of the
arteries, which being the first and most general (which is observed in
animals) we may thereby easily judge what we ought to think of all the
rest. And that we may have the less difficulty to understand what I
shall say thereof, I wish those who are not versed in Anatomy, would
take the pains, before they read this, to cause the heart of some great
animal which hath lungs, to be dissected; for in all of them its very
like that of a Man: and that they may have shewn them the two cels or
concavities which are there: First that on the right side, whereto two
large conduits answer, to wit, the _vena cava_, which is the principal
receptacle of bloud, and as the body of a tree, whereof all the other
veins of the body are branches; and the arterious vein, which was so
mis-call'd, because that in effect its an artery, which taking its
_origine_ from the heart, divides it self after being come forth, into
divers branches, which every way spred themselves through the lungs.
Then the other which is on the left side, whereunto in the same manner
two pipes answer, which are as large, or larger then the former; to wit,
the veinous artery, which was also il named, forasmuch as its nothing
else but a vein which comes from the lungs, where its divided into
several branches interlaid with those of the arterious vein, and tho