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All animals when castrated change to the female character, and utter
a voice like that of the females because the sinewy strength in the
principle of the voice is relaxed. This relaxation is just as if one
should stretch a string and make it taut by hanging some weight on
to it, as women do who weave at the loom, for they stretch the warp by
attaching to it what are called 'laiai'. For in this way are the
testes attached to the seminal passages, and these again to the
blood-vessel which takes its origin in the heart near the organ
which sets the voice in motion. Hence as the seminal passages change
towards the age at which they are now able to secrete the semen,
this part also changes along with them. As this changes, the voice
again changes, more indeed in males, but the same thing happens in
females too, only not so plainly, the result being what some call
'bleating' when the voice is uneven. After this it settles into the
deep or high voice of the succeeding time of life. If the testes are
removed the tension of the passages relaxes, as when the weight is
taken off the string or the warp; as this relaxes, the organ which
moves the voice is loosened in the same proportion. This, then, is the
reason why the voice and the form generally changes to the female
character in castrated animals; it is because the principle is relaxed
upon which depends the tension of the body; not that, as some suppose,
the testes are themselves a ganglion of many principles, but small
changes are the causes of great ones, not per se but when it happens
that a principle changes with them.
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