Generation of Animals
Peck, Arthur Leslie, ed. Generation of Animals. Vol. 13. London: Loeb Classical Library, 1942.
Book 1
2. The male and female are important for the generation. The male is the efficient cause(motive cause), while the female is the material cause. The male generates in another, and the female generates in itself.
3. Testes are normally internally by the loin in the region of kidneys. The uterus is situated near the pudendum.
4. Testes are not necessary but better for the generation.
12. The uterus is always internal so that it can protect the offspring.
17. Where does semen come from?
18. the nature of semen: useful residue.
19. For females, their answer to semen in males is the menstrual fluid, which is also a residue.
20. The male is the active part, and the female is the passive one.
21-22. Male makes its contribution to generation by movement, shape and form, while female by material.
Book 2
1. Why the sexes exist? (1)necessity (2)according to what is better, i.e. final cause, the principle derived from the upper cosmos.
Argument. What exists eternally is better than what is not eternal. Animals cannot be eternal as particulars, but they can be eternal as species. Reproduction is for the perpetuation of species. Reproduction requires male and female. Male is better than female, thus separated from the latter.
How is the embryo formed? Whatever is formed either by Art or by Nature. (734b20) Heat and cold soften and harden the iron, but they do not produce the sword (because heat and cold do not produce logos). Art is located elsewhere, whereas Nature's movement is located in the thing itself.
2. Semen contains a good deal of hot pneuma(hot air) owing to the internal heat of the animal. Semen is a compound of pneuma and water.
3. Female is a deformed male.
All bodies depend on sth glutinous to hold them together.
4. The time of new moon is a cold time, which affects the menstrual discharge.
Physical parts of the body come from the female, soul from the male.
Fetation's growth is supplied through the umbilicus in the same way that a plant's growth is supplied through its root.
5. The difference between animals and plants is that animals possess sense-perception.
6. Parts of the body: (1) the End; (2) activating parts; (3) instrumental parts.
The formation of nails, sinews, flesh, skin, brain, eyes, bones, and teeth.
7. Umbilicus. The convex side is towards the uterus and the hollow side towards the embryo.
Hybrid.
8. The cause of the Mule's infertility. Both horse and ass have a general natural disposition to be infertile.
Book 3
3. In birds' eggs the white and the yolk are separate, whereas fishes' eggs are single-colored.
11. "Animals and plants are formed in the earth and in the water because in earth water is present, and in water pneuma is present, and in all pneuma soul-heat is present, so that in a way all things are full of Soul."
Book 4
4.
-Democritus's Explanation About deformation (monstrosity, τέρᾰς). Mechanism: there is a disorder when two semens goes into one uterus with different speed, earlier or later.
-Aristotle
Case: the semens proceed into the uterus together in so far as the fact that several offspring are formed from one semen and one act of copulation.
Proposition: the cause of deformation is material, i.e. the fetation as they take shape.
Condition: prolific animals (as the variable for the frequency of deformation)
Example
①The bird who has one head and one body but four legs and wings. In some twin-eggs of birds, the yolks are continuous instead of keeping apart. It causes an imbalance of nourishment distribution from the yolk.
②The snake with two heads. But this case is less frequent because of the shape of the snake's uterus, "in which, ……the numerous eggs lie one after another in a row."
-Deformation and Nature
The production of deformation is natural, i.e. their Nature is the unlikeliness of parents.
The deformation is not against the entirety of Nature but the Nature in the generality of cases, because it does not appear in a mere random fashion. In other words, as far as Nature, the ordinary thing occurs by necessity as it always is, and the deformation occurs by necessity but it may be otherwise.
The deformation means the formal Nature does not control the material Nature very well.
Example: "Smoky" vine is intermediate between white and black.
-Concrete deformed phenomenon
Redundancy or deficiency of parts. Outside: animals born with too many toes or just only one. Inside: born without a spleen or with two spleens.
Organs in the wrong place: the liver on the left while the spleen right
Proposition: deformed animals' life expectancy depends on how far their unnatural conformations depart from their vital organs like the heart.
-Question: is it the same cause for the production of single offspring with deficiency in the parts and the production of many offsprings with redundancy in the parts?
-The number of offspring: Why do some animals produce many offspring and the other one only?
Big animals(elephants, camels…) produce fewer offsprings than small animals(dogs, pigs…).
So The number of offspring of production depends on the animal's size because
(1)the larger one needs more nourishment and supply for their size so that no surplus nourishment can be added into the seminal residue;
(2)the semen of larger animals is greater in bulk.
(3)the uterus does not contain many offsprings of larger animals.
-Those prolific animals produce many offspring just in one copulation. Why? Further, why does their semen turn out to be many offspring rather than one?
(1)Analogy inference 1 (Quantity). Fig-juice acts upon milk. Fig-juice curdles the fluid of milk in proportion.
“When animals are being perfected, there is a certain size for each.” So according to the size, “the embryo cannot be formed out of any casual amount of it”. Anyway, the size makes it possible for prolific animals that they can produce many offspring in one piece of semen.
(2)Analogy inference 2 (Quality). Fire heat water. As too much fire will dry up the water, too much semen(dynamis) will destroy the female material. The limitation of quality.【亚里士多德的界限意识。界限与自然？】
-The cause of twins: emitting excessive material for fetation.
-The cause of the redundancy of parts is the same as the case of twins.
Analogy inference: eddy in the river. The fluid meets with any resistance in the movement, two eddies are formed out of the original one. The excessive material recurs at the original place near the material which forms normal parts later.
-The cases of irregular formation
One has two generative organs at the same time.
The construction of deformation is derived from the embryos growing together.
The misplacement of passages.
5. Superfetation
-In which kind of animals does the superfetation occur?
It does not occur in the large size animals because their embryos proportionate to its size, so the residue gets used up.
It does occur in the prolific animals because “the production of more than one at a birth is itself a sort of superfetation”.
-Why do the animals in superfetation sometimes bring the nourishing of fetation into completion, sometimes not?
It depends on the size of the uterus and the size of the residue.
-Why are some animals prone to sexual intercourse?
It depends on how much seminal residue is restored.
-The condition of superfetation. Those animals which
(1)are abundant in semen
(2)are not large in bodily size
(3)produce numerous offspring so their uterus is roomy.
-The hairiness is the sign of the abundance of residue. So hairy animals are prone to copulate.
Example: hare