Chapter 5: Ficino and Liceti on Spontaneous Generation

Chapter 5 discusses the theory of spontaneous generation by both the Renaissance Platonists such as Ficino and the Italian philosopher and scientist Fortunio Liceti. On the one camp, Platonists argue for the abiogenesis as evidence for the theory of universal animation and the existence of World-Soul, while on the other camp, a quasi-Corpuscularian doctor Liceti, while agrees that the World Soul is a remote cause of the life on earth, sees the mechanics of spontaneous generation as an argument against views held by Ficino. While various ideas are examined in this chapter, essentially, this chapter focuses on the views expressed by Ficino in Platonic Theology and by Liceti in De Spontaneo Viventium Ortu published in 1618. In particular, the focus is on the fourth division of the first book of De Spontaneo (chapters 68-151), where Liceti examines the views advanced by three groups of people who advocate the doctrines of the World-Soul and Ideas. The first group Liceti considers is the Junior Planotinists, followed by the views of the Major Platonists, ending with those of Ficino.

I: Junior Platonists

Philoponus, Virgil and Macrobius, identified as Junior Platonists, hold the view that the souls of all living beings are generated by the World Soul, and the efficient cause of spontaneous generation must be attributed to this universal soul of the world. To this, Liceti disagrees and argues that life is given to human beings by the human soul and to other beings by their own souls that the body of a living being which has not yet received its own specific soul cannot have life in actuality. In other words, life comes to the body only by its own soul, and it cannot come by the soul of the universe. Indeed, Liceti argues, it is not the World-Soul but the parent’s soul that is the immediate and particular cause of the generation of offspring of the same kind. This makes sense especially since Liceti views the World-Soul as God the Creator, and although God is a common and remote cause, God is not the immediate agent in generation of living beings born in putrefied matter. Liceti thus concludes that spontaneous generation requires another immediate agent, lying hidden in the matter from which these inferior beings are spontaneously born.

II: Major Platonists

Major Platonists, such as Cristoforo Marcello, argues that the immediate agents lacking in the Junior Platonists are the Ideas. This is because it is obvious that these inferior beings that are spontaneously generated do not have any other agent through which they might obtain their souls. So it seems to follow that these beings are directly produced by the particular Ideas procreating their own souls. This agent cannot be identical with the product, so there must be another agent by which the particular form or soul of living beings is procreated. But no immaterial agent except the Ideas of the souls of the living beings have an essence similar to these souls. From which, Marcello concludes that the souls of spontaneously born living beings are produced by Ideas as the particular and immediate agents of their generation.

But Liceti argues that generation is a physical action, and it requires by direct contact through movement. But because Ideas do not act physically, this Idea or the intellect cannot assume the role of a physical cause in natural generation. So even the inferior beings cannot be generated by these immaterial Ideas. Further, Liceti adds that since the forms of natural beings cannot exist without matter, they are material and perishable. And in this way, they differ from Ideas, which are totally immaterial.

Liceti in his turn argues that spontaneously born living beings are generated by a “congeneric” agent residing in matter. Just as Aristotle held, for Liceti, living beings can be generated but forms cannot. Forms in fact are lying hidden in well-disposed matter before the generation of these beings, and they become “life-giving forms” and are given as their souls. For Liceti, as we will also see in Sennert later, nothing is generated totally spontaneously in the sense of abiogenesis. The form exists as a potentiality and a privation of a future form, possessing an aptitude to receive forms in the course of change. Liceti concludes that the material and perishable forms cannot be physically produced by Ideas that are not of the same kind, but only by material forms of the same kind.

III: Ficino’s Earth’s Soul and Liceti

Ficino:  the souls of living beings that are spontaneously generated are conferred upon matter by the soul of the earth or by that of the water through Ideas implanted in these souls. Finico argues for the Earth’s soul by an empirical claim, for he says that “we see the earth generating large numbers of trees and living creatures from their own seeds, and nourishing them and making them grow. Stones grow too like its teeth, and plants like hairs as long as they are attached by the roots,” and as soon as they are detached from the earth, they stop growing or die. In this way, he continues to argue that the proper causes are in the soul of the earth, which produces a vine by means of the natural Idea or rational principle of the vine, flies through the rational principle of flies, and so on. For “if art, which produces works that are not alive and introduces forms that are neither primary nor whole, has living rational principles, there is all the more reason to suppose that rational principles are present in nature, which does generate living things and produce forms that are primary and whole.” It is hard to draw a conclusion from this that living beings are spontaneously generated in the earth by the earth’s soul because there requires a definite and particular seed for the generation of particular things. It is in this context that Ficino introduces the concept of spiritual seeds, which are “life-giving seeds of everything” through earth and water. These seeds are enclosed by the vital nature, and this vital nature “takes elemental qualities and adds to them the precious varieties of colours and shapes and the vigor of life.” Further, this earth’s soul must of rational, since some of the earth’s animals do not lack reason and because the works of the earth are more beautiful than those of humans. So there must be, in earth and water, different parts – some are less pure and the others are very pure, and the former have irrational souls whereas the latter have rational ones.

Liceti: In contrast, Liceti observes that many living beings are spontaneously generated in human bellies or in cheese although matter serving the matrix of their birth is not touched by the watery or earthly sphere. From this, he argues that the immediate agent of their generation cannot be the soul of the elements. Further, Ficino counted only one soul for the earth despite a great diversity of living beings born out of it. This does not seem to square with the observation, and hence it is not possible to say that the one earth’s soul counts for all the diversity we see generating. Although Ficino argues that the earth nourishes living beings and makes them grow as if stones were her teeth and plants her hairs, Liceti again observes that the seeds that propagate these living beings do not come from the earth directly but from plants and animals of their own kinds. So the generation of these beings should not be attributed to the earth that carries these seeds, but to the seeds themselves. This is because these seeds are not produced by the earth but by the living beings themselves. So, he concludes that plants and animals live by their own soul and not by that of the earth. And because of this, Liceti denies that these inferior beings are generated spontaneously from the earth’s soul, and argues that such a soul, even if it exists, would be general at best and too remote to generate beings as their immediate cause. In order for generation to take place, a particular, more immediate cause must be present, which Liceti contends are seeds themselves.

Further, against the argument by Ficino that the earth has a living rational principle, Liceti argues that the nature is blind and ignorant and does not possess any Ideas but has only a similitude with the products. This is the same with the humans, who give birth to offspring by similitude of nature without any Idea of offspring. Further, Ficino argues that the pure parts of the earth are full of rational souls and the impure parts have irrational souls, but Liceti counters with the fact that the purest part of the earth is its center but there is no living being found there, while the most impure part is full of living beings. This then is an argument against Ficino’s claim that the earth possesses a rational soul. So, it is not true to say, as Ficino wants to argue, that nature executes its works through Ideas implanted in it and that the earth’s soul procreates a vine by means of the Idea of the vine. But it is the seeds that lie hidden in the earth that possess souls, which then stimulate the generation of inferior beings. Although Ficino argued similarly with his spiritual seeds, for Liceti, the seeds are made of material corpuscles, yet extremely subtle like a physiological spiritus and endowed with the rudiment of a future form. This is because Liceti believes that the form must share some corporeity with the matter in order to affect generation, as we have seen.

To the argument of Ficino that the elemental qualities, employed by the vital nature, account for the various colours and shapes of things, Liceti denies this, and argues that even with the help of the elemental qualities, they cannot produce colours and figures, but what gives them colours and shapes is the substantial form of these specific bodies generated and their souls.

Ficino quoted in Hiro Hirai, Medical Humanism, 137.

Ibid., 141.

Ibid.

Ibid., 144. Italics mine. This is refuted by Liceti and later Sennert takes this to advance a need for the tria prima principles in order to account for the lack of ability for the elements to create colours and shapes.