by Aristotle
change,' holds in their case also.
That many dreams have no fulfilment is not strange, for it is so too
with many bodily toms and weather-signs, e.g. those of train or
wind. For if another movement occurs more influential than that from
which, while [the event to which it pointed was] still future, the
given token was derived, the event [to which such token pointed]
does not take place. So, of the things which ought to be
accomplished by human agency, many, though well-planned are by the
operation of other principles more powerful [than man's agency]
brought to nought. For, speaking generally, that which was about to
happen is not in every case what now is happening, nor is that which
shall hereafter he identical with that which is now going to be.
Still, however, we must hold that the beginnings from which, as we
said, no consummation follows, are real beginnings, and these
constitute natural tokens of certain events, even though the events do
not come to pass.
As for [prophetic] dreams which involve not such beginnings [sc.
of future events] as we have here described, but such as are
extravagant in times, or places, or magnitudes; or those involving
beginnings which are not extravagant in any of these respects, while
yet the persons who see the dream hold not in their own hands the
beginnings [of the event to which it points]: unless the foresight
which such dreams give is the result of pure coincidence, the
following would be a better explanation of it than that proposed by
Democritus, who alleges 'images' and 'emanations' as its cause. As,
when something has caused motion in water or air, this [the portion of
water or air], and, though the cause has ceased to operate, such
motion propagates itself to a certain point, though there the prime
movement is not present; just so it may well be that a movement and
a consequent sense-perception should reach sleeping souls from the
objects from which Democritus represents 'images' and 'emanations'
coming; that such movements, in whatever way they arrive, should be
more perceptible at night [than by day], because when proceeding
thus in the daytime they are more liable to dissolution (since at
night the air is less disturbed, there being then less wind); and that
they shall be perceived within the body owing to sleep, since
persons are more sensitive even to slight sensory movements when
asleep than when awake. It is these movements then that cause
'presentations', as a result of which sleepers foresee the future even
relatively to such events as those referred to above. These
considerations also explain why this experience befalls commonplace
persons and not the most intelligent. For it would have regularly
occurred both in the daytime and to the wise had it been God who
sent it; but, as we have explained the matter, it is quite natural
that commonplace persons should be those who have foresight [in
dreams]. For the mind of such persons is not given to thinking, but,
as it were, derelict, or totally vacant, and, when once set moving, is
borne passively on in the direction taken by that which moves it. With
regard to the fact that some persons who are liable to derangement
have this foresight, its explanation is that their normal mental
movements do not impede [the alien movements], but are beaten off by
the latter. Therefore it is that they have an especially keen
perception of the alien movements.
That certain persons in particular should have vivid dreams, e.g.
that familiar friends should thus have foresight in a special degree
respecting one another, is due to the fact that such friends are
most solicitous on one another's behalf. For as acquaintances in
particular recognize and perceive one another a long way off, so
also they do as regards the sensory movements respecting one
another; for sensory movements which refer to persons familiarly known
are themselves more familiar. Atrabilious persons, owing to their
impetuosity, are, when they, as it were, shoot from a distance, expert
at hitting; while, owing to their mutability, the series of
movements deploys quickly before their minds. For even as the insane
recite, or con over in thought, the poems of Philaegides, e.g. the
Aphrodite, whose parts succeed in order of similitude, just so do they
[the 'atrabilious'] go on and on stringing sensory movements together.
Moreover, owing to their aforesaid impetuosity, one movement within
them is not liable to be knocked out of its course by some other
movement.
The most skilful interpreter of dreams is he who has the faculty
of observing resemblances. Any one may interpret dreams which are
vivid and plain. But, speaking of 'resemblances', I mean that dream
presentations are analogous to the forms reflected in water, as indeed
we have already stated. In the latter case, if the motion in the water
be great, the reflexion has no resemblance to its original, nor do the
forms resemble the real objects. Skilful, indeed, would he be in
interpreting such reflexions who could rapidly discern, and at a
glance comprehend, the scattered and distorted fragments of such
forms, so as to perceive that one of them represents a man, or a
horse, Or anything whatever. Accordingly, in the other case also, in a
similar way, some such thing as this [blurred image] is all that a
dream amounts to; for the internal movement effaces the clearness of
the dream.
The questions, therefore, which we proposed as to the nature of
sleep and the dream, and the cause to which each of them is due, and
also as to divination as a result of dreams, in every form of it, have
now been discussed.
-THE END-
.
350 BC
ON THE GENERATION OF ANIMALS
by Aristotle
translated by Arthur Platt
Book I
1
WE have now discussed the other parts of animals, both generally and
with reference to the peculiarities of each kind, explaining how
each part exists on account of such a cause, and I mean by this the
final cause.
There are four causes underlying everything: first, the final cause,
that for the sake of which a thing exists; secondly, the formal cause,
the definition of its essence (and these two we may regard pretty
much as one and the same); thirdly, the material; and fourthly, the
moving principle or efficient cause.
We have then already discussed the other three causes, for the
definition and the final cause are the same, and the material of
animals is their parts of the whole animal the non-homogeneous
parts, of these again the homogeneous, and of these last the so-called
elements of all matter. It remains to speak of those parts which
contribute to the generation of animals and of which nothing
definite has yet been said, and to explain what is the moving or
efficient cause. To inquire into this last and to inquire into the
generation of each animal is in a way the same thing; and,
therefore, my
plan has united them together, arranging the
discussion of these parts last, and the beginning of the question of
generation next to them.
Now some animals come into being from the union of male and
female, i.e. all those kinds of animal which possess the two sexes.
This is not the case with all of them; though in the sanguinea with
few exceptions the creature, when its growth is complete, is either
male or female, and though some bloodless animals have sexes so that
they generate offspring of the same kind, yet other bloodless
animals generate indeed, but not offspring of the same kind; such
are all that come into being not from a union of the sexes, but from
decaying earth and excrements. To speak generally, if we take all
animals which change their locality, some by swimming, others by
flying, others by walking, we find in these the two sexes, not only in
the sanguinea but also in some of the bloodless animals; and this
applies in the case of the latter sometimes to the whole class, as the
cephalopoda and crustacea, but in the class of insects only to the
majority. Of these, all which are produced by union of animals of
the same kind generate also after their kind, but all which are not
produced by animals, but from decaying matter, generate indeed, but
produce another kind, and the offspring is neither male nor female;
such are some of the insects. This is what might have been expected,
for if those animals which are not produced by parents had
themselves united and produced others, then their offspring must
have been either like or unlike to themselves. If like, then their
parents ought to have come into being in the same way; this is only
a reasonable postulate to make, for it is plainly the case with
other animals. If unlike, and yet able to copulate, then there would
have come into being again from them another kind of creature and
again another from these, and this would have gone on to infinity. But
Nature flies from the infinite, for the infinite is unending or
imperfect, and Nature ever seeks an end.
But all those creatures which do not move, as the testacea and
animals that live by clinging to something else, inasmuch as their
nature resembles that of plants, have no sex any more than plants
have, but as applied to them the word is only used in virtue of a
similarity and analogy. For there is a slight distinction of this
sort, since even in plants we find in the same kind some trees which
bear fruit and others which, while bearing none themselves, yet
contribute to the ripening of the fruits of those which do, as in
the case of the fig-tree and caprifig.
The same holds good also in plants, some coming into being from seed
and others, as it were, by the spontaneous action of Nature, arising
either from decomposition of the earth or of some parts in other
plants, for some are not formed by themselves separately but are
produced upon other trees, as the mistletoe. Plants, however, must
be investigated separately.
2
Of the generation of animals we must speak as various questions
arise in order in the case of each, and we must connect our account
with what has been said. For, as we said above, the male and female
principles may be put down first and foremost as origins of
generation, the former as containing the efficient cause of
generation, the latter the material of it. The most conclusive proof
of this is drawn from considering how and whence comes the semen;
for there is no doubt that it is out of this that those creatures
are formed which are produced in the ordinary course of Nature; but we
must observe carefully the way in which this semen actually comes into
being from the male and female. For it is just because the semen is
secreted from the two sexes, the secretion taking place in them and
from them, that they are first principles of generation. For by a male
animal we mean that which generates in another, and by a female that
which generates in itself; wherefore men apply these terms to the
macrocosm also, naming Earth mother as being female, but addressing
Heaven and the Sun and other like entities as fathers, as causing
generation.
Male and female differ in their essence by each having a separate
ability or faculty, and anatomically by certain parts; essentially the
male is that which is able to generate in another, as said above;
the female is that which is able to generate in itself and out of
which comes into being the offspring previously existing in the
parent. And since they are differentiated by an ability or faculty and
by their function, and since instruments or organs are needed for
all functioning, and since the bodily parts are the instruments or
organs to serve the faculties, it follows that certain parts must
exist for union of parents and production of offspring. And these must
differ from each other, so that consequently the male will differ from
the female. (For even though we speak of the animal as a whole as
male or female, yet really it is not male or female in virtue of the
whole of itself, but only in virtue of a certain faculty and a certain
part- just as with the part used for sight or locomotion- which part
is also plain to sense-perception.)
Now as a matter of fact such parts are in the female the so-called
uterus, in the male the testes and the penis, in all the sanguinea;
for some of them have testes and others the corresponding passages.
There are corresponding differences of male and female in all the
bloodless animals also which have this division into opposite sexes.
But if in the sanguinea it is the parts concerned in copulation that
differ primarily in their forms, we must observe that a small change
in a first principle is often attended by changes in other things
depending on it. This is plain in the case of castrated animals,
for, though only the generative part is disabled, yet pretty well
the whole form of the animal changes in consequence so much that it
seems to be female or not far short of it, and thus it is clear than
an animal is not male or female in virtue of an isolated part or an
isolated faculty. Clearly, then, the distinction of sex is a first
principle; at any rate, when that which distinguishes male and
female suffers change, many other changes accompany it, as would be
the case if a first principle is changed.
3
The sanguinea are not all alike as regards testes and uterus. Taking
the former first, we find that some of them have not testes at all, as
the classes of fish and of serpents, but only two spermatic ducts.
Others have testes indeed, but internally by the loin in the region of
the kidneys, and from each of these a duct, as in the case of those
animals which have no testes at all, these ducts unite also as with
those animals; this applies (among animals breathing air and having a
lung) to all birds and oviparous quadrupeds. For all these have their
testes internal near the loin, and two ducts from these in the same
way as serpents; I mean the lizards and tortoises and all the scaly
reptiles. But all the vivipara have their testes in front; some of
them inside at the end of the abdomen, as the dolphin, not with
ducts but with a penis projecting externally from them; others
outside, either pendent as in man or towards the fundament as in
swine. They have been discriminated more accurately in the Enquiries
about Animals.
The uterus is always double, just as the testes are always two in
the male. It is situated either near the pudendum (as in women, and
all those animals which bring forth alive not only externally but also
internally, and all fish that lay eggs externally) or up towards
the hypozoma (as in all birds and in viviparous fishes). The
uterus is also double in the crustacea and the cephalopoda, for the
membranes which include their so-called eggs are of the nature of a
uterus. It is particularly hard to distinguish in the case of the
poulps, so that it seems to be single, but the reason of this is
that the bulk of the body is everywhere similar.
It is double also in the larger insects; in the smaller the question
is uncertain owing to the small size of the body.
Such is the description of the aforesaid parts of animals.
4
With regard to the difference of the spermatic organs in males, if
we are to investigate the causes of their existence, we must first
grasp the final cause of the testes. Now if Nature makes everything
either because it is necessary or because it is better so, this part
also must be for one of these two reasons. But that it is not
necessary for generation is plain; else had it been possessed by all
creatures that generate, but as it is neither serpents have testes nor
have fish; for they have been seen uniting and with their ducts full
of milt. It remains then that it must be because it is somehow
better so. Now it is true that the business of most animals is, you
may say, nothing else than to produce young, as the business of a