The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher | Page 9

the reason Leviticus, xxii. 28, "Lest he
pollute my sanctuaries." Because of the outward deformity, the body is
often a sign of the pollution of the heart, as a curse laid on the child for
the incontinency of its parents. Yet it is not always so. Let us therefore
duly examine and search out the natural cause of their generation,
which (according to the ancients who have dived into the secrets of
nature) is either in the mother or in the agent, in the seed, or in the
womb.
The matter may be in default two ways--by defect or by excess: by
defect, when the child has only one arm; by excess, when it has four
hands or two heads. Some monsters are begotten by a woman's
unnatural lying with beasts; as in the year 1603, there was a monster
begotten by a woman's generating with a dog; which from the navel
upwards had the perfect resemblance of its mother: but from its navel
downwards it resembled a dog.
[Illustration]
The agent or womb may be in fault three ways; firstly, the formative
faculty, which may be too strong or too weak, by which is procured a
depraved figure; secondly, to the instrument or place of conception, the
evil confirmation or the disposition whereof will cause a monstrous
birth; thirdly, in the imaginative power at the time of conception; which
is of such a force that it stamps the character of the thing imagined on
the child. Thus the children of an adulteress may be like her husband,
though begotten by another man, which is caused through the force of

imagination that the woman has of her own husband at the act of
coition. And I have heard of a woman, who, at the time of conception,
beholding the picture of a blackamoor, conceived and brought forth an
Ethiopian. I will not trouble you with more human testimonies, but
conclude with a stronger warrant. We read (Gen. xxx. 31) how Jacob
having agreed with Laban to have all the spotted sheep for keeping his
flock to augment his wages, took hazel rods and peeled white streaks
on them, and laid them before the sheep when they came to drink,
which coupling together there, whilst they beheld the rods, conceived
and brought forth young.
[Illustration: "Where children thus are born with hairy coats Heaven's
wrath unto the kingdom it denotes"]
Another monster representing a hairy child. It was all covered with hair
like a beast. That which made it more frightful was, that its navel was
in the place where its nose should stand, and its eyes placed where the
mouth should have been, and its mouth placed in the chin. It was of the
male kind, and was born in France, in the year 1597, at a town called
Arles in Provence, and lived a few days, frightening all that beheld it. It
was looked upon as a forerunner of desolations which soon after
happened to that kingdom, in which men to each other were more like
brutes than human creatures.
There was a monster born at Nazara in the year 1530. It had four arms
and four legs.
The imagination also works on the child, after conception, of which we
have a pregnant instance.
A worthy gentlewoman in Suffolk, who being with child and passing
by a butcher who was killing his meat, a drop of blood sprung on her
face, whereupon she said her child would have a blemish on its face,
and at the birth it was found marked with a red spot.
[Illustration]
Likewise in the reign of Henry III, there was a woman delivered of a

child having two heads and four arms, and the bodies were joined at the
back; the heads were so placed that they looked contrary ways; each
had two distinct arms and hands. They would both laugh, both speak,
and both cry, and be hungry together; sometimes the one would speak
and the other keep silence, and sometimes both speak together. They
lived several years, but one outlived the other three years, carrying the
dead one (for there was no parting them) till the survivor fainted with
the burden, and more with the stench of the dead carcase.
[Illustration]
It is certain that monstrous births often happen by means of undue
copulation; for some there are, who, having been long absent from one
another, and having an eager desire for enjoyment, consider not as they
ought, to do as their circumstances demand. And if it happen that they
come together when the woman's menses are flowing, and
notwithstanding, proceed to the act of copulation, which is both
unclean and unnatural, the issue of such copulation does often prove
monstrous, as a just punishment for doing what nature forbids. And,
therefore, though men