The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher | Page 5

most of the mother; and ascribes the difference of sex to the
different operations of the menstrual blood; but this reason of the
likeness he refers to the power of the seed; for, as the plants receive
more nourishment from fruitful ground, than from the industry of the
husbandman, so the infant receives more abundance from the mother
than the father. For the seed of both is cherished in the womb, and then
grows to perfection, being nourished with blood. And for this reason it
is, they say, that children, for the most part, love their mothers best,
because they receive the most of their substance from their mother; for
about nine months she nourishes her child in the womb with the purest
blood; then her love towards it newly born, and its likeness, do clearly
show that the woman affords seed, and contributes more towards
making the child than the man.
But in this all the ancients were very erroneous; for the testicles, so
called in women, afford not only seed, but are two eggs, like those of

fowls and other creatures; neither have they any office like those of
men, but are indeed the ovaria, wherein the eggs are nourished by the
sanguinary vessels disposed throughout them; and from thence one or
more as they are fecundated by the man's seed is separated and
conveyed into the womb by the ovaducts. The truth of this is plain, for
if you boil them the liquor will be of the same colour, taste and
consistency, with the taste of birds' eggs. If any object that they have no
shells, that signifies nothing: for the eggs of fowls while they are on the
ovary, nay, after they are fastened into the uterus, have no shell. And
though when they are laid, they have one, yet that is no more than a
defence with which nature has provided them against any outward
injury, while they are hatched without the body; whereas those of
women being hatched within the body, need no other fence than the
womb, by which they are sufficiently secured. And this is enough, I
hope, for the clearing of this point.
As for the third thing proposed, as whence grow the kind, and whether
the man or the woman is the cause of the male or female infant--the
primary cause we must ascribe to God as is most justly His due, who is
the Ruler and Disposer of all things; yet He suffers many things to
proceed according to the rules of nature by their inbred motion,
according to usual and natural courses, without variation; though
indeed by favour from on high, Sarah conceived Isaac; Hannah, Samuel;
and Elizabeth, John the Baptist; but these were all extraordinary things,
brought to pass by a Divine power, above the course of nature. Nor
have such instances been wanting in later days; therefore, I shall wave
them, and proceed to speak of things natural.
The ancient physicians and philosophers say that since these two
principles out of which the body of man is made, and which renders the
child like the parents, and by one or other of the sex, viz., seed common
to both sexes and menstrual blood, proper to the woman only; the
similitude, say they, must needs consist in the force of virtue of the
male or female, so that it proves like the one or the other, according to
the quantity afforded by either, but that the difference of sex is not
referred to the seed, but to the menstrual blood, which is proper to the
woman, is apparent; for, were that force altogether retained in the seed,

the male seed being of the hottest quality, male children would abound
and few of the female be propagated; wherefore, the sex is attributed to
the temperament or to the active qualities, which consists in heat and
cold and the nature of the matter under them--that is, the flowing of the
menstruous blood. But now, the seed, say they, affords both force to
procreate and to form the child, as well as matter for its generation; and
in the menstruous blood there is both matter and force, for as the seed
most helps the maternal principle, so also does the menstrual blood the
potential seed, which is, says Galen, blood well concocted by the
vessels which contain it. So that the blood is not only the matter of
generating the child, but also seed, it being impossible that menstrual
blood has both principles.
The ancients also say that the seed is the stronger efficient, the matter
of it being very little in quantity, but the potential quality of it is very
strong; wherefore, if these principles of generation, according to which
the sex is made were only, say they, in the menstrual