Page - 1425 - in The Complete Aristotle

themselves in that part from whence the semen is secreted. This is the region about the diaphragm in all those animals which have one, for the heart or its analogue is the first principle of a natural body, while the lower part is a mere addition for the sake of it. Now the reason why it is not all males that have a generative secretion, while all females do, is that the animal is a body with Soul or life; the female always provides the material, the male that which fashions it, for this is the power that we say they each possess, and this is what is meant by calling them male and female. Thus while it is necessary for the female to provide a body and a material mass, it is not necessary for the male, because it is not within the work of art or the embryo that the tools or the maker must exist. While the body is from the female, it is the soul that is from the male, for the soul is the reality of a particular body. For this reason if animals of a different kind are crossed (and this is possible when the periods of gestation are equal and conception takes place nearly at the same season and there is no great difference in the of the animals), the first cross has a common resemblance to both parents, as the hybrid between fox and dog, partridge and domestic fowl, but as time goes on and one generation springs from another, the final result resembles the female in form, just as foreign seeds produce plants varying in accordance with the country in which they are sown. For it is the soil that gives to the seeds the material and the body of the plant. And hence the part of the female which receives the semen is not a mere passage, but the uterus has a considerable width, whereas the males that emit semen have only passages for this purpose, and these are bloodless. Each of the secretions becomes such at the moment when it is in its proper place; before that there is nothing of the sort unless with much violence and contrary to nature. We have thus stated the reason for which the generative secretions are formed in animals. But when the semen from the male (in those animals which emit semen) has entered, it puts into form the purest part of the female secretion (for the greater part of the catamenia also is useless and fluid, as is the most fluid part of the male secretion, i.e. in a single emission, the earlier discharge being in most cases apt to be infertile rather than the later, having less vital heat through want of concoction, whereas that which is concocted is thick and of a more material nature). If there is no external discharge, either in women or other animals, on account of there not being much useless and superfluous matter in the secretion, then the quantity forming within the female altogether is as much as what is retained within those animals which have an external discharge; this is put into form by the power of the male residing in the semen secreted by him, or, as is clearly seen to happen in some insects, by the part in the female 1425