Page - 1493 - in The Complete Aristotle

the original plan of the organism. For the part above the hypozoma is the sovereign part of the animal, while that below is concerned with nourishment and residual matter, in order that all animals which move about may contain within themselves nourishment enough to make them independent when they move from one place to another. From this upper part also is produced the generative secretion for the reason mentioned in the opening of our discussion. But both the secretion of the male and the catamenia of the female are of a sanguineous nature, and the first principle of this blood and of the blood-vessels is the heart, and the heart is in this part of the body. Therefore it is here that the change of such a secretion must first become plain. This is why the voice changes in both sexes when they begin to bear seed (for the first principle of the voice resides there, and is itself changed when its moving cause changes). At the same time the parts about the breasts are raised visibly even in males but still more in females, for the region of the breasts becomes empty and spongy in them because so much material is drained away below. This is so not only in women but also in those animals which have the mammae low down. This change in the voice and the parts about the mammae is plain even in other creatures to those who have experience of each kind of animal, but is most remarkable in man. The reason is that in man the production of secretion is greatest in both sexes in proportion to their size as compared with other animals; I mean that of the catamenia in women and the emission of semen in men. When, therefore, the embryo no longer takes up the secretion in question but yet prevents its being discharged from the mother, it is necessary that the residual matter should collect in all those empty parts which are set upon the same passages. And such is the position of the mammae in each kind of animals for both causes; it is so both for the sake of what is best and of necessity. It is here, then, that the nourishment in animals is now formed and becomes thoroughly concocted. As for the cause of concoction, we may take that already given, or we may take the opposite, for it is a reasonable view also that the embryo being larger takes more nourishment, so that less is left over about this time, and the less is concocted more quickly. That milk has the same nature as the secretion from which each animal is formed is plain, and has been stated previously. For the material which nourishes is the same as that from which Nature forms the animal in generation. Now this is the sanguineous liquid in the sanguinea, and milk is blood concocted (not corrupted; Empedocles either mistook the fact or made a bad metaphor when he composed the line: ‘On the tenth day of the eighth month the milk comes into being, a white pus’, for putrefaction and 1493