Prev | Current Page 210 | Next

Aristotle

"On The Generation Of Animals"

For
in a sense a wind, too, has a life and birth and death.
As for the revolutions of the sun and moon, they may perhaps
depend on other principles. It is the aim, then, of Nature to
measure the coming into being and the end of animals by the measure of
these higher periods, but she does not bring this to pass accurately
because matter cannot be easily brought under rule and because there
are many principles which hinder generation and decay from being
according to Nature, and often cause things to fall out contrary to
Nature.
We have now spoken of the nourishment of animals within the mother
and of their birth into the world, both of each kind separately and of
all in common.
Book V
1
WE must now investigate the qualities by which the parts of
animals differ. I mean such qualities of the parts as blueness and
blackness in the eyes, height and depth of pitch in the voice, and
differences in colour whether of the skin or of hair and feathers.
Some such qualities are found to characterize the whole of a kind of
animals sometimes, while in other kinds they occur at random, as is
especially the case in man. Further, in connexion with the changes
in the time of life, all animals are alike in some points, but are
opposed in others as in the case of the voice and the colour of the
hair, for some do not grow grey visibly in old age, while man is
subject to this more than any other animal.


Pages:
198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222