brain in respect of it.  This fore part hath many concavities distinguished by certain ventricles, which are the receptacles of the spirits, brought hither by the arteries from the heart, and are there refined to a more heavenly nature, to perform the actions of the soul.  Of these ventricles there are three—­right, left, and middle.  The right and left answer to their site, and beget animal spirits; if they be any way hurt, sense and motion ceaseth.  These ventricles, moreover, are held to be the seat of the common sense.  The middle ventricle is a common concourse and cavity of them both, and hath two passages—­the one to receive pituita, and the other extends itself to the fourth creek; in this they place imagination and cogitation, and so the three ventricles of the fore part of the brain are used.  The fourth creek behind the head is common to the cerebel or little brain, and marrow of the backbone, the last and most solid of all the rest, which receives the animal spirits from the other ventricles, and conveys them to the marrow in the back, and is the place where they say the memory is seated.

SUBSECT.  V.—­Of the Soul and her Faculties.

According to [967]Aristotle, the soul is defined to be [Greek:  entelecheia], perfectio et actus primus corporis organici, vitam habentis in potentia:  the perfection or first act of an organical body, having power of life, which most [968]philosophers approve.  But many doubts arise about the essence, subject, seat, distinction, and subordinate faculties of it.  For the essence and particular knowledge, of all other things it 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.