The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics) (110 page)

   
CHAPTER

1
. Introduction.

17
,
18
. Semen. Criticism of the Hippocratic theory of pangenesis.

20
. The catamenia.

21
,
22
. The Aristotelian theory of sexual generation.

23
. Conclusion.

1
     
[715a]
We have now discussed the other parts of animals, both generally and with reference to the peculiarities of each kind, explaining how each part exists on account of such a cause, and I mean by this the final cause.

There are four causes underlying everything: first, the final cause, that for the sake of which a thing exists; secondly, the formal cause, the definition of its essence (and these two we may regard pretty much as one and the same); thirdly, the material; and fourthly,
(5)
the moving principle or efficient cause.

We have then already discussed the other three causes, for the definition and the final cause are the same, and the material of animals is their parts—of the whole animal the non-homogeneous parts,
(10)
of these again the homogeneous, and of these last the so-called elements of all matter. It remains to speak of those parts which contribute to the generation of animals and of which nothing definite has yet been said, and to explain what is the moving or efficient cause. To inquire into this last and to inquire into the generation of each animal is in a way the same thing; and, therefore, my plan has united them together,
(15)
arranging the discussion of these parts last, and the beginning of the question of generation next to them.

Now some animals come into being from the union of male and female, i. e. all those kinds of animal which possess the two sexes.
(20)
This is not the case with all of them; though in the sanguinea with few exceptions the creature, when its growth is complete, is either male or female, and though some bloodless animals have sexes so that they generate offspring of the same kind, yet other bloodless animals generate indeed, but not offspring of the same kind; such are all that come into being not from a union of the sexes, but from decaying earth and excrements.
(25)
To speak generally, if we take all animals which change their locality, some by swimming, others by flying, others by walking, we find in these the two sexes, not only in the sanguinea but also in some of the bloodless animals; and this applies in the case of the
latter sometimes to the whole class, as the cephalopoda and crustacea, but in the class of insects only to the majority.
[715b]
Of these, all which are produced by union of animals of the same kind generate also after their kind, but all of which are not produced by animals,
(5)
but from decaying matter, generate indeed, but produce another kind, and the offspring is neither male nor female; such are some of the insects. This is what might have been expected, for if those animals which are not produced by parents had themselves united and produced others, then their offspring must have been either like or unlike to themselves.
(10)
If like, then their parents ought to have come into being in the same way; this is only a reasonable postulate to make, for it is plainly the case with other animals. If unlike, and yet able to copulate, then there would have come into being again from them another kind of creature and again another from these, and this would have gone on to infinity.
(15)
But Nature flies from the infinite, for the infinite is unending or imperfect, and Nature ever seeks amend.

But all those creatures which do not move, as the testacea and animals that live by clinging to something else, inasmuch as their nature resembles that of plants, have no sex any more than plants have,
(20)
but as applied to them the word is only used in virtue of a similarity and analogy. For there is a slight distinction of this sort, since even in plants we find in the same kind some trees which bear fruit and others which, while bearing none themselves,
(25)
yet contribute to the ripening of the fruits of those which do, as in the case of the fig-tree and caprifig.

The same holds good also in plants, some coming into being from seed and others, as it were, by the spontaneous action of Nature, arising either from decomposition of the earth or of some parts in other plants, for some are not formed by themselves separately but are produced upon other trees, as the mistletoe.
[716a]
Plants, however, must be investigated separately. [Chapters 2–16 omitted.]

17
     
[721a]
Some animals manifestly emit semen, as all the sanguinea,
(30)
but whether the insects and cephalopoda do so is uncertain. Therefore this is a question to be considered, whether all males do so, or not all; and if not all, why some do and some not; and whether the female also contributes any semen or not; and, if not semen, whether she does not contribute anything else either, or whether she contributes something else which is not semen.
[721b]
We must also inquire what those animals which emit semen contribute by means of it to generation,
(5)
and generally what is the nature of semen, and of the so-called catamenia in all animals which discharge this liquid.

Now it is thought that all animals are generated out of semen, and that the semen comes from the parents. Wherefore it is part of the same inquiry to ask whether both male and female produce it or only one of them, and to ask whether it comes from the whole of the body or not from the whole; for if the latter is true it is reasonable to suppose that it does not come from both parents either.
(10)
Accordingly, since some say that it comes from the whole of the body, we must investigate this question first.

The proofs from which it can be argued that the semen comes from each and every part of the body may be reduced to four. First, the intensity of the pleasure of coition; for the same state of feeling is more pleasant if multiplied,
(15)
and that which affects all the parts is multiplied as compared with that which affects only one or a few. Secondly, the alleged fact that mutilations are inherited, for they argue that since the parent is deficient in this part the semen does not come from thence, and the result is that the corresponding part is not formed in the offspring.
(20)
Thirdly, the resemblances to the parents, for the young are born like them part for part as well as in the whole body; if then the coming of the semen from the whole body is cause of the resemblance of the whole, so the parts would be like because it comes from each of the parts. Fourthly, it would seem to be reasonable to say that as there is some first thing from which the whole arises,
(25)
so it is also with each of the parts, and therefore if semen or seed is cause of the whole so each of the parts would have a seed peculiar to itself. And these opinions are plausibly supported by such evidence as that children are born with a likeness to their parents,
(30)
not only in congenital but also in acquired characteristics; for before now, when the parents have had scars, the children have been born with a mark in the form of the scar in the same place, and there was a case at Chalcedon where the father had a brand on his arm and the letter was marked on the child, only confused and not clearly articulated. That is pretty much the evidence on which some believe that the semen comes from all the body.
[722a]

18
     On examining the question, however, the opposite appears more likely, for it is not hard to refute the above arguments and the view involves impossibilities. First, then, the resemblance of children to parents is no proof that the semen comes from the whole body,
(5)
because the resemblance is found also in voice, nails, hair, and way of moving, from which nothing comes. And men generate before they yet have certain characters, such as a beard or grey hair. Further, children are like their more remote ancestors from whom nothing has
come, for the resemblances recur at an interval of many generations,
(10)
as in the case of the woman in Elis who had intercourse with the Aethiop; her daughter was not an Aethiop but the son of that daughter was. The same thing applies also to plants, for it is clear that if this theory were true the seed would come from all parts of plants also; but often a plant does not possess one part, and another part may be removed, and a third grows afterwards. Besides,
(15)
the seed does not come from the pericarp, and yet this also comes into being with the same form as in the parent plant.

We may also ask whether the semen comes from each of the homogeneous parts only, such as flesh and bone and sinew, or also from the heterogeneous, such as face and hands. For if (1) from the former only,
(20)
we object that the resemblance exists rather in the heterogeneous parts, such as face and hands and feet; if then it is not because of the semen coming from all parts that children resemble their parents in
these
, what is there to stop the homogeneous parts also from being like for some other reason than this? If (2) the semen comes from the heterogeneous alone, then it does not come from all parts; but it is more fitting that it should come from the homogeneous parts,
(25)
for they are prior to the heterogeneous which are composed of them; and as children are born like their parents in face and hands, so they are, necessarily, in flesh and nails. If (3) the semen comes from both, what would be the manner of generation? For the heterogeneous parts are composed of the homogeneous,
(30)
so that to come from the former would be to come from the latter and from their composition. To make this clearer by an illustration, take a written name; if anything came from the whole of it, it would be from each of the syllables, and if from these, from the letters and their composition. So that if really flesh and bones are composed of fire and the like elements, the semen would come rather from the elements than anything else, for how can it come from their composition? Yet without this composition there would be no resemblance.
[722b]
If again something creates this composition later, it would be
this
that would be the cause of the resemblance, not the coming of the semen from every part of the body.

Further, if the parts of the future animal are separated in the semen, how do they live? and if they are connected, they would form a small animal.

And what about the generative parts? For that which comes from the male is not similar to what comes from the female.
(5)

Again, if the semen comes from all parts of both parents alike, the result is
two
animals, for the offspring will have all the parts of
both. Wherefore Empedocles seems to say what agrees pretty well with this view (if we are to adopt it), to a certain extent at any rate,
(10)
but to be wrong if we think otherwise. What he says agrees with it when he declares that there is a sort of tally in the male and female, and that the whole offspring does not come from either, ‘but sundered is the fashion of limbs, some in man’s …’ For why does not the female generate from herself if the semen comes from all parts alike and she has a receptacle ready in the uterus? But, it seems,
(15)
either it does not come from all the parts, or if it does it is in the way Empedocles says, not the same parts coming from each parent, which is why they need intercourse with each other.

Yet this also is impossible, just as much as it is impossible for the parts when full grown to survive and have life in them when torn apart, as Empedocles accounts for the creation of animals; in the time of his ‘Reign of Love’, says he, ‘many heads sprang up without necks,’
(20)
and later on these isolated parts combined into animals. Now that
this
is impossible is plain, for neither would the separate parts be able to survive without having any soul or life in them, nor if they were living things, so to say, could several of them combine so as to become one animal again. Yet those who say that semen comes from the whole of the body really have to talk in that way,
(25)
and as it happened then in the earth during the ‘Reign of Love’, so it happens according to them in the body. Now it is impossible that the parts should be united together when they come into being and should come from different parts of the parent, meeting together in one place. Then how can the upper and lower, right and left, front and back parts have been ‘sundered’? All these points are unintelligible.
(30)
Further, some parts are distinguished by possessing a faculty, others by being in certain states or conditions; the heterogeneous, as tongue and hand, by the faculty of doing something, the homogeneous by hardness and softness and the other similar states. Blood, then, will not to be blood, nor flesh flesh, in any and every state. It is clear, then, that that which comes from any part, as blood from blood or flesh from flesh, will not be identical with that part.
[723a]
But if it is something different from which the blood of the offspring comes, the coming of the semen from all the parts will not be the cause of the resemblance, as is held by the supporters of this theory. For if blood is formed from something which is not blood, it is enough that the semen come from one part only,
(5)
for why should not all the other parts of the offspring as well as blood be formed from one part of the parent? Indeed, this theory seems to be the same as that of Anaxagoras,
that none of the homogeneous parts come into being, except that these theorists assume, in the case of the generation of animals, what he assumed of the universe.

Then, again, how will these parts that came from all the body of the parent be increased or grow? It is true that Anaxagoras plausibly says that particles of flesh out of the food are added to the flesh.
(10)
But if we do not say this (while saying that semen comes from all parts of the body), how will the foetus become greater by the addition of something else if that which is added remain unchanged? But if that which is added
can
change,
(15)
then why not say that the semen from the very first is of such a kind that blood and flesh can be made out of it, instead of saying that it itself
is
blood and flesh? Nor is there any other alternative, for surely we cannot say that it is increased later by a process of mixing, as wine when water is poured into it. For in that case each element of the mixture would be itself
at first
while still unmixed,
(20)
but the fact rather is that flesh and bone and each of the other parts
is
such
later
. And to say that some part of the semen is sinew and bone is quite above us, as the saying is.

Besides all this there is a difficulty if the sex is determined in conception (as Empedocles says: ‘it is shed in clean vessels; some wax female,
(25)
if they fall in with cold’). Anyhow, it is plain that both men and women change not only from infertile to fertile, but also from bearing female to bearing male offspring, which looks as if the cause does not lie in the semen coming from all the parent or not,
(30)
but in the mutual proportion or disproportion of that which comes from the woman and the man, or in something of this kind. It is clear, then, if we are to put this down as being so, that the female sex is not determined by the semen coming from any particular part, and consequently neither is the special sexual part so determined (if really the same semen can become either a male or female child, which shows that the sexual part does not exist in the semen). Why, then, should we assert this of
this
part any more than of the others? For if semen does not come from this part, the uterus, the same account may be given of the others.
[723b]

Again, some creatures come into being neither from parents of the same kind nor from parents of a different kind,
(5)
as flies and the various kinds of what are called fleas; from these are produced animals indeed, but not in this case of similar nature, but a kind of scolex. It is plain in this case that the young of a different kind are not produced by semen coming from all parts of the parent, for they would then resemble them, if indeed resemblance is a sign of its coming from all parts.

Further, even among animals some produce many young from a single coition (and something like this is universal among plants,
(10)
for it is plain that they bear all the fruit of a whole season from a single movement). And yet how would this be possible if the semen were secreted from all the body? For from a single coition and a single segregation of the semen scattered throughout the body must needs follow only a single secretion. Nor is it possible for it to be separated in the uterus, for this would no longer be a mere separation of semen, but, as it were, a severance from a new plant or animal.
(15)

Again, the cuttings from a plant bear seed; clearly, therefore, even before they were cut from the parent plant, they bore their fruit from their own mass alone, and the seed did not come from
all
the plant.

But the greatest proof of all is derived from observations we have sufficiently established on insects. For, if not in all, at least in most of these,
(20)
the female in the act of copulation inserts a part of herself into the male. This, as we said before, is the way they copulate, for the females manifestly insert this from below into the males above, not in all cases, but in most of those observed. Hence it seems clear that,
(25)
when the males do emit semen, then also the cause of the generation is not its coming from all the body, but something else which must be investigated hereafter. For even if it were true that it comes from all the
body
, as they say, they ought not to claim that it comes from all
parts
of it, but only from the creative part—from the workman, so to say, not the material he works in. Instead of that,
(30)
they talk as if one were to say that the semen comes from the shoes, for, generally speaking, if a son is like his father, the shoes he wears are like his father’s shoes.

As to the vehemence of pleasure in sexual intercourse, it is not because the semen comes from all the body, but because there is a strong friction (wherefore if this intercourse is often repeated the pleasure is diminished in the persons concerned).
[724a]
Moreover, the pleasure is at the end of the act, but it ought, on the theory, to be in each of the parts, and not at the same time, but sooner in some and later in others.

If mutilated young are born of mutilated parents, it is for the same reason as that for which they are like them. And the young of mutilated parents are not always mutilated, just as they are not always like their parents; the cause of this must be inquired into later,
(5)
for this problem is the same as that.

Again, if the female does not produce semen, it is reasonable to suppose it does not come from all the body of the male either. Conversely, if it does not come from all the male it is not unreasonable
to suppose that it does not come from the female,
(10)
but that the female is cause of the generation in some other way. Into this we must next inquire, since it is plain that the semen is not secreted from all the parts.

In this investigation and those which follow from it,
(15)
the first thing to do is to understand what semen is, for then it will be easier to inquire into its operations and the phenomena connected with it. Now the object of semen is to be of such a nature that from it as their origin come into being those things which are naturally formed, not because there is any agent which makes them from it as … but simply because this is the semen.
(20)
Now we speak of one thing coming
from
another in many senses; it is one thing when we say that night comes
from
day or a man becomes man
from
boy, meaning that A follows B; it is another if we say that a statute is made
from
bronze and a bed
from
wood, and so on in all the other cases where we say that the thing made is made
from
a material,
(25)
meaning that the whole is formed from something pre-existing which is only put into shape. In a third sense a man becomes unmusical
from
being musical, sick
from
being well, and generally in this sense contraries arise from contraries. Fourthly, as in the ‘climax’ of Epicharmus; thus
from
slander comes railing and
from
this fighting,
(30)
and all these are
from
something in the sense that it is the efficient cause. In this last class sometimes the efficient cause is in the things themselves, as in the last mentioned (for the slander is a part of the whole trouble), and sometimes external,
(35)
as the art is external to the work of art or the torch to the burning house.

Now the offspring comes
from
the semen, and it is plainly in one of the two following senses that it does so—either the semen is the material from which it is made, or it is the first efficient cause.
[724b]
For assuredly it is not in the sense of A being
after
B, as the voyage comes
from
, i. e. after, the Panathenaea; nor yet as contraries come from contraries, for then one of the two contraries ceases to be, and a third substance must exist as an immediate underlying basis from which the new thing comes into being.
(5)
We must discover, then, in which of the two other classes the semen is to be put, whether it is to be regarded as matter, and therefore acted upon by something else, or as a form, and therefore acting upon something else, or as both at once. For perhaps at the same time we shall see clearly also how all the products of semen come into being from contraries, since coming into being from contraries is also a natural process, for some animals do so,
(10)
i. e. from male and female, others from only one parent, as is the case with plants and all those animals in which male and female are not
separately differentiated. Now that which comes from the generating parent is called the seminal fluid, being that which first has in it a principle of generation, in the case of all animals whose nature it is to unite; semen is that which has in it the principles from
both
united parents, as the first mixture which arises from the union of male and female,
(15)
be it a foetus or an ovum, for these already have in them that which comes from both. (Semen, or seed, and grain differ only in the one being earlier and the other later, grain in that it comes from something else, i. e. the seed, and seed in that something else,
(20)
the grain, comes from
it
, for both are really the same thing.)