(This question has been treated in the special
discussion of action and reaction, where it is laid down in what
classes of things action and reaction exist.) Now that which is acted
on escapes and is not mastered by the semen, either through deficiency
of power in the concocting and moving agent or because what should
be concocted and formed into distinct parts is too cold and in too
great quantity. Thus the moving agent, mastering it in one part but
not in another, makes the embryo in formation to be multiform, as
happens with athletes because they eat so much. For owing to the
quantity of their food their nature is not able to master it all, so
as to increase and arrange their form symmetrically; therefore their
limbs develop irregularly, sometimes indeed almost so much that no one
of them resembles what it was before. Similar to this is also the
disease known as satyrism, in which the face appears like that of a
satyr owing to a quantity of unconcocted humour or wind being diverted
into parts of the face.
We have thus discussed the cause of all these phenomena, (1)
female and male offspring are produced, (2) why some are similar to
their parents, female to female and male to male, and others the other
way about, females being similar to the father and males to the
mother, and in general why some are like their ancestors while
others are like none of them, and all this as concerns both the body
as a whole and each of the parts separately.
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