Page - 1475 - in The Complete Aristotle

male. Observed facts confirm what we have said. For more females are produced by the young and by those verging on old age than by those in the prime of life; in the former the vital heat is not yet perfect, in the latter it is failing. And those of a moister and more feminine state of body are more wont to beget females, and a liquid semen causes this more than a thicker; now all these characteristics come of deficiency in natural heat. Again, more males are born if copulation takes place when north than when south winds are blowing. For in the latter case the animals produce more secretion, and too much secretion is harder to concoct; hence the semen of the males is more liquid, and so is the discharge of the catamenia. Also the fact that the catamenia occur in the course of nature rather when the month is waning is due to the same causes. For this time of the month is colder and moister because of the waning and failure of the moon; as the sun makes winter and summer in the year as a whole, so does the moon in the month. This is not due to the turning of the moon, but it grows warmer as the light increases and colder as it wanes. The shepherds also say that it not only makes a difference in the production of males and females if copulation takes place during northern or southerly winds, but even if the animals while copulating look towards the south or north; so small a thing will sometimes turn the scale and cause cold or heat, and these again influence generation. The male and female, then, are distinguished generally, as compared with one another in connexion with the production of male and female offspring, for the causes stated. However, they also need a certain correspondence with one another to produce at all, for all things that come into being as products of art or of Nature exist in virtue of a certain ratio. Now if the hot preponderates too much it dries up the liquid; if it is very deficient it does not solidify it; for the artistic or natural product we need the due mean between the extremes. Otherwise it will be as in cooking; too much fire burns the meat, too little does not cook it, and in either case the process is a failure. So also there is need of due proportion in the mixture of the male and female elements. And for this cause it often happens to many of both sexes that they do not generate with one another, but if divorced and remarried to others do generate; and these oppositions show themselves sometimes in youth, sometimes in advanced age, alike as concerns fertility or infertility, and as concerns generation of male or female offspring. One country also differs from another in these respects, and one water from another, for the same reasons. For the nourishment and the medical condition of the body are of such or such a kind because of the tempering of the surrounding air and of the food entering the body, especially the water; for 1475