 An outstanding lacuna in Descartes’s account, however, was his failure to incorporate the origins of living beings into his naturalistic story of creation by natural laws. Although manuscripts display the degree to which Descartes attempted on several occasions to work out some linkage between his general natural philosophy and the embryological formation of living beings, these reflections did not appear in print during his lifetime (Aucante 2006). The Principles simply skips over the issue of a naturalistic account of the origins of life and the origin of individual species. Instead in Part IV, devoted generally to the origin and physical properties of the Earth, he jumps (Proposition 188) from a discussion of magnetism to a brief allusion to projected Parts V and VI of his Principles that would deal with animals and humans (Descartes 1647 [1983: 275–276]). But the Principles only offers a brief discussion of the various senses and body-soul interaction similar to that put forth in his early unpublished Treatise on Man (1st Latin ed. 1662, 2nd French ed. 1664). These speculations were grounded on the concept of a hypothetical statue-machine created directly by divine action, and possessed immediately of all human functions and structures (Descartes 1664 [1972: 1–5]).