Seminality

1661, George Rust, A Letter of Resolution Concerning Origen, London: C.L., (Facsimile Text Society, Columbia University Press, 1933), p. 84, And unless [God] purposely put a stop to the course of Nature, the great principle of vegetative life will necessarily shape the matter, when duely modified, into all kinde of trees, plants, herbs and flowers: for the inferiour spirit of the world acts not by choice, but fatally; and being essentially stored with an universal Seminality, will not fail to bring her treasure into view when invited by congruous and sequacious dispositions of matter.

For perfection is not, like light, center’d in any one body; but, like the dispersed seminalities of vegetables at the creation, scattered through the whole mass of the earth, no place producing all, and almost all some.

The cold produced by rarefied atmosphere in elevated lands materially modifies the complexion; the mountaineers, for instance, are of an “Indian red” colour, with a warm coppery tinge, which gives “salt”—that is to say, an appearance of life and health—to the skin. Again, much allowance must be made for the seminality of the various races.

Underlying the theory of political democracy are two additional assumptions, one might say doctrines, both sustaining the thesis of the centrality, or seminality, of political behavior, both untenable if tested against the realities of money in politics.