“Stat sua cuique dies, breve et irreparabile tempus
Omnibus est vitae.”------

       “A term of life is set to every man,
        Which is but short, and pass it no one can.”

Generation.] The last of these vegetal faculties is generation, which begets another by means of seed, like unto itself, to the perpetual preservation of the species.  To this faculty they ascribe three subordinate operations:—­the first to turn nourishment into seed, &c.

Life and Death concomitants of the Vegetal Faculties.] Necessary concomitants or affections of this vegetal faculty are life and his privation, death.  To the preservation of life the natural heat is most requisite, though siccity and humidity, and those first qualities, be not excluded.  This heat is likewise in plants, as appears by their increasing, fructifying, &c., though not so easily perceived.  In all bodies it must have radical [981]moisture to preserve it, that it be not consumed; to which preservation our clime, country, temperature, and the good or bad use of those six non-natural things avail much.  For as this natural heat and moisture decays, so doth our life itself; and if not prevented before by some violent accident, or interrupted through our own default, is in the end dried up by old age, and extinguished by death for want of matter, as a lamp for defect of oil to maintain it.

SUBSECT.  VI.—­Of the sensible Soul.

Next in order is the sensible faculty, which is as far beyond the other in dignity, as a beast is preferred to a plant, having those vegetal powers included in it.  ’Tis defined an “Act of an organical body by which it lives, hath sense, appetite, judgment, breath, and motion.”  His object in general is a sensible or passible quality, because the sense is affected with it.  The general organ is the brain, from which principally the sensible operations are derived.  This sensible soul is divided into two parts, apprehending or moving.  By the apprehensive power we perceive the species of sensible things present, or absent, and retain them as wax doth the print of a seal.  By the moving, the body is outwardly carried from one place to another; or inwardly moved by spirits and pulse.  The apprehensive faculty is subdivided into two parts, inward or outward.  Outward, as the five senses, of touching, hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, to which you may add Scaliger’s sixth sense of titillation, if you please; or that of speech, which is the sixth external sense, according to Lullius.  Inward are three—­common sense, phantasy, memory.  Those five outward senses have their object in outward things only, and such as are present, as the eye sees no colour except it be at hand, the ear sound.  Three of these senses are of commodity, hearing, sight, and smell; two of necessity, touch, and taste, without which we cannot live.  Besides, the sensitive power is active or passive.  Active in sight, the eye sees the colour; passive when it is hurt by his object, as the eye by the sunbeams.  According to that axiom, visibile forte destruit sensum. [982]Or if the object be not pleasing, as a bad sound to the ear, a stinking smell to the nose, &c.