Seite - 1430 - in The Complete Aristotle

specimens full of roe, have been seen. Of this, however, we have as yet no proof worthy of credit. Again, some members of the class of fishes are neither male nor female, as eels and a kind of mullets found in stagnant waters. But whenever the sexes are separate the female cannot generate perfectly by herself alone, for then the male would exist in vain, and Nature makes nothing in vain. Hence in such animals the male always perfects the work of generation, for he imparts the sensitive soul, either by means of the semen or without it. Now the parts of the embryo already exist potentially in the material, and so when once the principle of movement has been imparted to them they develop in a chain one after another, as the wheels are moved one by another in the automatic machines. When some of the natural philosophers say that like is brought to like, this must be understood, not in the sense that the parts are moved as changing place, but that they stay where they are and the movement is a change of quality (such as softness, hardness, colour, and the other differences of the homogeneous parts); thus they become in actuality what they previously were in potentiality. And what comes into being first is the first principle; this is the heart in the sanguinea and its analogue in the rest, as has been often said already. This is plain not only to the senses (that it is first to come into being), but also in view of its end; for life fails in the heart last of all, and it happens in all cases that what comes into being last fails first, and the first last, Nature running a double course, so to say, and turning back to the point from whence she started. For the process of becoming is from the non-existent to the existent, and that of perishing is back again from the existent to the non-existent. < div id=“section29” class=“section” title=“6”> 6 After this, as said already, the internal parts come into being before the external. The greater become visible before the less, even if some of them do not come into being before them. First the parts above the hypozoma are differentiated and are superior in size; the part below is both smaller and less differentiated. This happens in all animals in which exists the distinction of upper and lower, except in the insects; the growth of those that produce a scolex is towards the upper part, for this is smaller in the beginning. The cephalopoda are the only locomotive animals in which the distinction of upper and lower does not exist. What has been said applies to plants also, that the upper portion is earlier in development than the lower, for the roots push out from the seed before the 1430