Anne Conway compares a leaf and a stone by a window.

How Anne Conway gets from a stone to a sheep

Anne Conway (1631–1679), an English philosopher, takes up an objection to her teaching in the ninth chapter of her posthumous Principles. If creatures can undergo such thorough changes, where can change come to an end? The answer begins with something a person could pick up beside a path. From a stone Conway leads her reader through earth and grass to a sheep. Each step is small enough for the imagination to follow.

The route through the pasture

[…] as from a Stone into Earth, and from Earth into Grass, and from Grass to a Sheep, and from a Sheep into Humane Flesh, and from Humane Flesh into the most servile Spirits of Man, and from these into his noblest Spirits […]

– Anne Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, 1692, p. 153.[1]

The intermediate terms do much of the work. There seems a considerable distance between a stone in the hand and an animal grazing in a field. Consider in turn the soil, the grass growing in it and the sheep eating that grass, and a sequence of transitions comes into view. The addition of human flesh brings the series into the body of the reader. Conway uses the familiar process of feeding to loosen the idea of kingdoms of nature entirely closed to one another.

Where the argument reaches its limit

The passage belongs to a discussion of the relation between God and creatures. Immediately after the possible changes Conway describes God as unchangeable. In her argument it is precisely their ability to change that distinguishes creatures from their origin. Even the highest condition a creature could reach would preserve that distinction. The stone at the beginning acquires an unusual place. It stands low in a sequence the reader can trace. Yet it shares something decisive with the sheep and the human being. All three inhabit a world whose forms are capable of having a history.