Page - 1400 - in The Complete Aristotle

contributed to natural growth, but which is particularly mischievous to the body if too much of it is consumed; by ‘useful’ I mean the opposite. Now it is evident that it cannot be of the former character, for such is most abundant in persons of the worst condition of body through age or sickness; semen, on the contrary, is least abundant in them for either they have none at all or it is not fertile, because a useless and morbid secretion is mingled with it. Semen, then, is part of a useful secretion. But the most useful is the last and that from which finally is formed each of the parts of the body. For secretions are either earlier or later; of the nutriment in the first stage the secretion is phlegm and the like, for phlegm also is a secretion of the useful nutriment, an indication of this being that if it is mixed with pure nutriment it is nourishing, and that it is used up in cases of illness. The final secretion is the smallest in proportion to the quantity of nutriment. But we must reflect that the daily nutriment by which animals and plants grow is but small, for if a very little be added continually to the same thing the size of it will become excessive. So we must say the opposite of what the ancients said. For whereas they said that semen is that which comes from all the body, we shall say it is that whose nature is to go to all of it, and what they thought a waste-product seems rather to be a secretion. For it is more reasonable to suppose that the last extract of the nutriment which goes to all parts resembles that which is left over from it, just as part of a painter’s colour is often left over resembling that which he has used up. Waste-products, on the contrary, are always due to corruption or decay and to a departure from Nature. A further proof that it is not a waste-product, but rather a secretion, is the fact that the large animals have few young, the small many. For the large must have more waste and less secretion, since the great size of the body causes most of the nutriment to be used up, so that the residue or secretion is small. Again, no place has been set apart by Nature for waste-products but they flow wherever they can find an easy passage in the body, but a place has been set apart for all the natural secretions; thus the lower intestine serves for the excretion of the solid nutriment, the bladder for that of the liquid; for the useful part of the nutriment we have the upper intestine, for the spermatic secretions the uterus and pudenda and breasts, for it is collected and flows together into them. And the resulting phenomena are evidence that semen is what we have said, and these result because such is the nature of the secretion. For the exhaustion consequent on the loss of even a very little of the semen is conspicuous because the body is deprived of the ultimate gain drawn from the nutriment. With some few persons, it is true, during a short time in the flower of their youth the loss of it, if it be excessive in quantity, is an alleviation (just 1400