, or what are
called accidental forms, I take to be modifications of the primitive
Entelechy, even as shapes are modifications of matter. That is why these
modifications are perpetually changing, while the simple substance remains.

397. I have shown already (part I, 86 _seqq._) that souls cannot spring up
naturally, or be derived from one another, and that it is necessary that
ours either be created or be pre-existent. I have even pointed out a
certain middle way between a creation and an entire pre-existence. I find
it appropriate to say that the soul preexisting in the seeds from the
beginning of things was only sentient, but that it was elevated to the
superior degree, which is that of reason, when the man to whom this soul
should belong was conceived, and when the organic body, always accompanying
this soul from the beginning, but under many changes, was determined for
forming the human body. I considered also that one might attribute this
elevation of the sentient soul (which makes it reach a more sublime degree
of being, namely reason) to the extraordinary operation of God.
Nevertheless it will be well to add that I would dispense with miracles in
the generating of man, as in that of the other animals. It will be possible
to explain that, if one imagines that in this great number of souls and of
animals, or at least of living organic bodies which are in the seeds, those
souls alone which are destined to attain one day to human nature contain
the reason that shall appear therein one day, and the organic bodies of
these souls alone are preformed and predisposed to assume one day the human
shape, while the other small animals or seminal living beings, in which no
such thing is pre-established, are essentially different from them and
possessed only of an inferior nature. This production is a kind of
_traduction_, but more manageable than that kind which is commonly taught:
it does not derive the soul from a soul, but only the animate from an
animate, and it avoids the repeated miracles of a new creation, which would
cause a new and pure soul to enter a body that must corrupt it.

398. I am, however, of the same opinion as Father Malebranche, that, in
general, creation properly understood is not so difficult to admit as might
be supposed, and that it is in a sense involved in the notion of the
dependence of creatures. 'How stupid and ridiculous are the Philosophers!'
(he exclaims, in his _Christian Meditations_, 9, No.