Whether the semen of the male contributes to the
material of the embryo by itself becoming a part of it and mixing with
the semen of the female, or whether, as we say, it does not act in
this way but brings together and fashions the material within the
female and the generative secretion as the fig-juice does the liquid
substance of milk, what is the reason why it does not form a single
animal of considerable size? For certainly in the parallel case the
fig-juice is not separated if it has to curdle a large quantity of
milk, but the more the milk and the more the fig-juice put into it, so
much the greater is the curdled mass. Now it is no use to say that the
several regions of the uterus attract the semen and therefore more
young than one are formed, because the regions are many and the
cotyledons are more than one. For two embryos are often formed in
the same region of the uterus, and they may be seen lying in a row
in animals that produce many, when the uterus is filled with the
embryos. (This is plain from the dissections.) Rather the truth is
this. As animals complete their growth there are certain limits to
their size, both upwards and downwards, beyond which they cannot go,
but it is in the space between these limits that they exceed or fall
short of one another in size, and it is within these limits that one
man (or any other animal) is larger or smaller than another. So also
the generative material from which each animal is formed is not
without a quantitative limit in both directions, nor can it be
formed from any quantity you please.
Pages:
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201