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.
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