Note 72 — Chapter II · THE ANIMATE WORLD

II. 281. I.e. because if we could say at such and such a time that the offspring is without the anima, and then afterwards that it now has the Anima, the soul must be educed from nothing. The whole passage is very interesting, but too long to quote. Writing in 1629 to ‘D. Thomae Fieno, in Inclyta Louaniensi Academia, Professori Medico Primario,’ Gassendi speaks as though he had already made up his mind on the point. At first, he says, I thought the child derived its Anima from the parent, being only an offshoot, like the cutting from a tree (juvabat me exemplum rami resecti ex salice). But this clashed with the testimony of the Scriptures, while it was supported by the evidences of heredity; so the only solution was to acknowledge that the Anima was twofold, and say the Anima sensitiva is ex parente, the Anima rationalis was created and ‘poured in’ by God, ‘statim atque decisione facta, seu foetus seu seminis, rationalis Anima Parentis seu foetum seu semen informare desineret’ (VI. 19). This statement is at once more orthodox and dogmatic than that in the Syntagma. The real reason for distinguishing the being of the Anima rationalis is the need for a position that will combine the facts of heredity with the truth of immortality.