The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics)

by Mckeon, Richard

  We must again take up the question what the primary nature of what is called semen is. Needs must everything which we find in the body either be (1) one of the natural parts, whether homogeneous or heterogeneous, or (2) an unnatural part such as a growth, (25) or (3) a secretion or excretion, or (4) waste-product, or (5) nutriment. (By secretion or excretion I mean the residue of the nutriment, by waste-product that which is given off from the tissues by an unnatural decomposition.)

  Now that semen cannot be a part of the body is plain, for it is homogeneous, and from the homogeneous nothing is composed, e. g. from only sinew or only flesh; nor is it separated as are all the other parts. (30) But neither is it contrary to Nature nor a defect, for it exists in all alike, and the development of the young animal comes from it. Nutriment, again, is obviously introduced from without.

  It remains, then, that it must be either a waste-product or a secretion or excretion. (35) Now the ancients seem to think that it is a waste-product, for when they say that it comes from all the body by reason of the heat of the movement of the body in copulation, they imply that it is a kind of waste-product. [725a] But these are contrary to Nature, and from such arises nothing according to Nature. So then it must be a secretion or excretion.

  But, to go further into it, every secretion or excretion is either of useless or useful nutriment; by ‘useless’ I mean that from which nothing further is contributed to natural growth, (5) but which is particularly mischievous to the body if too much of it is consumed; by ‘useful’ I mean the opposite. Now it is evident that it cannot be of the former character, for such is most abundant in persons of the worst condition of body through age or sickness; semen, on the contrary, is least abundant in them, for either they have none at all or it is not fertile, (10) because a useless and morbid secretion is mingled with it.

  Semen, then, is part of a useful secretion. But the most useful is the last and that from which finally is formed each of the parts of the body. For secretions are either earlier or later; of the nutriment in the first stage the secretion is phlegm and the like, (15) for phlegm also is a secretion of the useful nutriment, an indication of this being that if it is mixed with pure nutriment it is nourishing, and that it is used up in cases of illness. The final secretion is the smallest in proportion to the quantity of nutriment. But we must reflect that the daily nutriment by which animals and plants grow is but small, (20) for if a very little be added continually to the same thing the size of it will become excessive.

  So we must say the opposite of what the ancients said. For whereas they said that semen is that which comes from all the body, we shall say it is that whose nature is to go to all of it, and what they thought a waste-product seems rather to be a secretion. For it is more reasonable to suppose that the last extract of the nutriment which goes to all parts resembles that which is left over from it, (25) just as part of a painter’s colour is often left over resembling that which he has used up. Waste-products, on the contrary, are always due to corruption or decay and to a departure from Nature.

  A further proof that it is not a waste-product, but rather a secretion, is the fact that the large animals have few young, (30) the small many. For the large must have more waste and less secretion, since the great size of the body causes most of the nutriment to be used up, so that the residue or secretion is small.

  Again, no place has been set apart by Nature for waste-products but they flow wherever they can find an easy passage in the body, but a place has been set apart for all the natural secretions; thus the lower intestine serves for the excretion of the solid nutriment, the bladder for that of the liquid; for the useful part of the nutriment we have the upper intestine, for the spermatic secretions the uterus and pudenda and breasts, for it is collected and flows together into them. [725b]

  And the resulting phenomena are evidence that semen is what we have said, (5) and these result because such is the nature of the secretion. For the exhaustion consequent on the loss of even a very little of the semen is conspicuous because the body is deprived of the ultimate gain drawn from the nutriment. With some few persons, it is true, during a short time in the flower of their youth the loss of it, (10) if it be excessive in quantity, is an alleviation (just as in the case of the nutriment in its first stage, if too much have been taken, since getting rid of this also makes the body more comfortable), and so it may be also when other secretions come away with it, for in that case it is not only semen that is lost but also other influences come away mingled with it, (15) and these are morbid. Wherefore, with some men at least, that which comes from them proves sometimes incapable of procreation because the seminal element in it is so small. But still in most men and as a general rule the result of intercourse is exhaustion and weakness rather than relief, for the reason given. Moreover, semen does not exist in them either in childhood or in old age or in sickness—in the last case because of weakness, (20) in old age because they do not sufficiently concoct their food, and in childhood because they are growing and so all the nutriment is used up too soon, for in about five years, in the case of human beings at any rate, the body seems to gain half the height that is gained in all the rest of life. (25)

  In many animals and plants we find a difference in this connexion not only between kinds as compared with kinds, but also between similar individuals of the same kind as compared with each other, e. g. man with man or vine with vine. Some have much semen, others little, others again none at all, not through weakness but the contrary, (30) at any rate in some cases. This is because the nutriment is used up to form the body, as with some human beings, who, being in good condition and developing much flesh or getting rather too fat, produce less semen and are less desirous of intercourse. Like this is what happens with those vines which ‘play the goat’, that is, luxuriate wantonly through too much nutrition, for he-goats when fat are less inclined to mount the female; for which reason they thin them before breeding from them, and say that the vines ‘play the goat’, so calling it from the condition of the goats. [726a] And fat people, women as well as men, appear to be less fertile than others from the fact that the secretion when in process of concoction turns to fat with those who are too well-nourished. (5) For fat also is a healthy secretion due to good living.

  In some cases no semen is produced at all, as by the willow and poplar. This condition is due to each of the two causes, weakness and strength; the former prevents concoction of the nutriment, the latter causes it to be all consumed, as said above. In like manner other animals produce much semen through weakness as well as through strength, (10) when a great quantity of a useless secretion is mixed with it; this sometimes results in actual disease when a passage is not found to carry off the impurity, and though some recover of this, others actually die of it. For corrupt humours collect here as in the urine, (15) which also has been known to cause disease.…

  From what has been said, it is clear that semen is a secretion of useful nutriment, (26) and that in its last stage, whether it is produced by all or no. [Chapter 19 and most of chapter 20 omitted.]

  [20] … That, then, the female does not contribute semen to generation, (22) but does contribute something, and that this is the matter of the catamenia, or that which is analogous to it in bloodless animals, (25) is clear from what has been said, and also from a general and abstract survey of the question. [729a] For there must needs be that which generates and that from which it generates; even if these be one, still they must be distinct in form and their essence must be different; and in those animals that have these powers separate in two sexes the body and nature of the active and the passive sex must also differ. If, then, the male stands for the effective and active, and the female, (30) considered as female, for the passive, it follows that what the female would contribute to the semen of the male would not be semen but material for the semen to work upon. This is just what we find to be the case, for the catamenia have in their nature an affinity to the primitive matter.

  21 So much for the discussion o
f this question. At the same time the answer to the next question we have to investigate is clear from these considerations, I mean how it is that the male contributes to generation and how it is that the semen from the male is the cause of the offspring. [729b] Does it exist in the body of the embryo as a part of it from the first, mingling with the material which comes from the female? Or does the semen communicate nothing to the material body of the embryo but only to the power and movement in it? For this power is that which acts and makes, (5) while that which is made and receives the form is the residue of the secretion in the female. Now the latter alternative appears to be the right one both a priori and in view of the facts. For, if we consider the question on general grounds, (10) we find that, whenever one thing is made from two of which one is active and the other passive, the active agent does not exist in that which is made; and, still more generally, the same applies when one thing moves and another is moved; the moving thing does not exist in that which is moved. But the female, as female, is passive, and the male, as male, is active, and the principle of the movement comes from him. Therefore, if we take the highest genera under which they each fall, (15) the one being active and motive and the other passive and moved, that one thing which is produced comes from them only in the sense in which a bed comes into being from the carpenter and the wood, or in which a ball comes into being from the wax and the form. It is plain then that it is not necessary that anything at all should come away from the male, and if anything does come away it does not follow that this gives rise to the embryo as being in the embryo, but only as that which imparts the motion and as the form; so the medical art cures the patient. (20)

  This a priori argument is confirmed by the facts. For it is for this reason that some males which unite with the female do not, it appears, insert any part of themselves into the female, but on the contrary the female inserts a part of herself into the male; this occurs in some insects. (25) For the effect produced by the semen in the female (in the case of those animals whose males do insert a part) is produced in the case of these insects by the heat and power in the male animal itself when the female inserts that part of herself which receives the secretion. And therefore such animals remain united a long time, and when they are separated the young are produced quickly. (30) For the union lasts until that which is analogous to the semen has done its work, and when they separate the female produces the embryo quickly; for the young is imperfect inasmuch as all such creatures give birth to scoleces.

  What occurs in birds and oviparous fishes is the greatest proof that neither does the semen come from all parts of the male nor does he emit anything of such a nature as to exist within that which is generated, as part of the material embryo, but that he only makes a living creature by the power which resides in the semen (as we said in the case of those insects whose females insert a part of themselves into the male). [730a] For if a hen-bird is in process of producing wind-eggs and is then trodden by the cock before the egg has begun to whiten and while it is all still yellow, (5) then they become fertile instead of being wind-eggs. And if while it is still yellow she be trodden by another cock, the whole brood of chicks turn out like the second cock. Hence some of those who are anxious to rear fine birds act thus; they change the cocks for the first and second treading, (10) not as if they thought that the semen is mingled with the egg or exists in it, or that it comes from all parts of the cock; for if it did it would have come from both cocks, so that the chick would have all its parts doubled. But it is by its force that the semen of the male gives a certain quality to the material and the nutriment in the female, (15) for the second semen added to the first can produce this effect by heat and concoction, as the egg acquires nutriment so long as it is growing.

  The same conclusion is to be drawn from the generation of oviparous fishes. When the female has laid her eggs, (20) the male sprinkles the milt over them, and those eggs are fertilized which it reaches, but not the others; this shows that the male does not contribute anything to the quantity but only to the quality of the embryo.

  From what has been said it is plain that the semen does not come from the whole of the body of the male in those animals which emit it, (25) and that the contribution of the female to the generative product is not the same as that of the male, but the male contributes the principle of movement and the female the material. This is why the female does not produce offspring by herself, for she needs a principle, i. e. something to begin the movement in the embryo and to define the form it is to assume. (30) Yet in some animals, as birds, the nature of the female unassisted can generate to a certain extent, for they do form something, only it is incomplete; I mean the so-called wind-eggs.

  22 For the same reason the development of the embryo takes place in the female; neither the male himself nor the female emits semen into the male, but the female receives within herself the share contributed by both, because in the female is the material from which is made the resulting product. [730b] Not only must the mass of material exist there from which the embryo is formed in the first instance, but further material must constantly be added that it may increase in size. (5) Therefore the birth must take place in the female. For the carpenter must keep in close connexion with his timber and the potter with his clay, and generally all workmanship and the ultimate movement imparted to matter must be connected with the material concerned, as, for instance, architecture is in the buildings it makes.

  From these considerations we may also gather how it is that the male contributes to generation. (10) The male does not emit semen at all in some animals, and where he does this is no part of the resulting embryo; just so no material part comes from the carpenter to the material, i. e. the wood in which he works, nor does any part of the carpenter’s art exist within what he makes, but the shape and the form are imparted from him to the material by means of the motion he sets up. (15) It is his hands that move his tools, his tools that move the material; it is his knowledge of his art, and his soul, in which is the form, that move his hands or any other part of him with a motion of some definite kind, a motion varying with the varying nature of the object made. In like manner, in the male of those animals which emit semen, (20) Nature uses the semen as a tool and as possessing motion in actuality, just as tools are used in the products of any art, for in them lies in a certain sense the motion of the art. Such, then, is the way in which these males contribute to generation. (25) But when the male does not emit semen, but the female inserts some part of herself into the male, this is parallel to a case in which a man should carry the material to the workman. For by reason of weakness in such males Nature is not able to do anything by any secondary means, but the movements imparted to the material are scarcely strong enough when Nature herself watches over them. Thus here she resembles a modeller in clay rather than a carpenter, for she does not touch the work she is forming by means of tools, (30) but, as it were, with her own hands.

  23 In all animals which can move about, the sexes are separated, one individual being male and one female, though both are the same in species, as with man and horse. [731a] But in plants these powers are mingled, female not being separated from male. Wherefore they generate out of themselves, and do not emit semen but produce an embryo, what is called the seed. Empedocles puts this well in the line: ‘and thus the tall trees oviposit; first olives …’ For as the egg is an embryo, a certain part of it giving rise to the animal and the rest being nutriment, (5) so also from a part of the seed springs the growing plant, and the rest is nutriment for the shoot and the first root.

  In a certain sense the same thing happens also in those animals which have the sexes separate. For when there is need for them to generate the sexes are no longer separated any more than in plants, (10) their nature desiring that they shall become one; and this is plain to view when they copulate and are united, that one animal is made out of both.

  It is the nature of those creatures which do not emit semen to remain united a long time until the male element has formed the
embryo, (15) as with those insects which copulate. The others so remain only until the male has discharged from the parts of himself introduced something which will form the embryo in a longer time, as among the sanguinea. For the former remain paired some part of a day, while the semen forms the embryo in several days. (20) And after emitting this they cease their union.

  And animals seem literally to be like divided plants, as though one should separate and divide them, when they bear seed, into the male and female existing in them.

  In all this Nature acts like an intelligent workman. For to the essence of plants belongs no other function or business than the production of seed; since, (25) then, this is brought about by the union of male and female, Nature has mixed these and set them together in plants, so that the sexes are not divided in them. Plants, however, have been investigated elsewhere. But the function of the animal is not only to generate (which is common to all living things), (30) but they all of them participate also in a kind of knowledge, some more and some less, and some very little indeed. For they have sense-perception, and this is a kind of knowledge. (If we consider the value of this we find that it is of great importance compared with the class of lifeless objects, but of little compared with the use of the intellect. [731b] For against the latter the mere participation in touch and taste seems to be practically nothing, but beside absolute insensibility it seems most excellent; for it would seem a treasure to gain even this kind of knowledge rather than to lie in a state of death and nonexistence.) Now it is by sense-perception that an animal differs from those organisms which have only life. (5) But since, if it is a living animal, it must also live; therefore, when it is necessary for it to accomplish the function of that which has life, it unites and copulates, becoming like a plant, as we said before.

  Testaceous animals, being intermediate between animals and plants, perform the function of neither class as belonging to both. (10) As plants they have no sexes, and one does not generate in another; as animals they do not bear fruit from themselves like plants; but they are formed and generated from a liquid and earthy concretion. However, we must speak later of the generation of these animals.