On Animal Putrefaction
Aphorism I
Hyle is nothing other than the magnetism resulting from the composition and mixture of the first elements. Hyle is the material principle of all forms except reasonable souls.
II
It is also believed that the reasonable soul is united to the organized body by means of the Hyle.
III
Nature cannot unite extremes without first altering them. God can, and so the reasonable soul is not altered.
IV
There are three natures in every mixed, and so also in the world where these three natures meet.
V
In every mixed, the spirit, the soul and the body are but the same thing in nature and are distinguished from each other only by the mixing of the excrements with and with each other.
VI
The excrements are not composed of the same elements as the pure substance, but their composition is different, and their magnetism dissimilar: on this depends their heterogeneity and the mutual discordance between them and the pure substance.
VII
The strength and duration of the mixed consist in its purity and depend on the separation of the excrements.
VIII
The separation of the excrements takes place in animals as in other mixed.
IX
Of the three parts of the wet radical, the thinnest and most ready to ignite is called the soul.
XI
The whole Hyle of the mixed, or the subject of specific magnetism, is the hotbed of vitality.
X
This soul is not the ultimate perfection of the organic body or of the specific life-giving magnetism; but only the main material part which specifies and retains this perfection and life-giving soul of the organized machine.
XI
The whole Hyle of the mixed, or the subject of specific magnetism, is the hotbed of vitality.
XII
The Hyle produces the vegetative soul and the sensitive soul, but not the rational soul. For this reason the reasonable soul is immortal as even the pagans themselves believed.