EXERCISE THE TWENTY-EIGHTH.
The egg is not produced without the hen.
Leaving points that are doubtful, and disquisitions bearing upon the general question, we now approach more definite and obvious matters.
And first, it is manifest that a fruitful egg cannot be produced without the concurrence of a cock and hen: without the hen no egg can be formed; without the cock it cannot become fruitful. But this view is opposed to the opinion of those who derive the origin of animals from the slime of the ground. And truly when we see that the numerous parts concurring in the act of generation,—the testes and vasa deferentia in the male, the ovarium and uterus and blood-vessels supplying them in the female—are all contrived with such signal art and forethought, and everything requisite to reproduction in a determinate direction—situation, form, temperature,—arranged so admirably, it seems certain, as nature does nothing in vain, nor works in any round-about way when a shorter path lies open to her, that an egg can be produced in no other manner than that in which we now see it engendered, viz., by the concurring act of the cock and hen. Neither, in like manner, in the present constitution of things, can a cock or hen ever be produced otherwise than from an egg. Thus the cock and the hen exist for the sake of the egg, and the egg, in the same way, is their antecedent cause; it were therefore reasonable to ask, with Plutarch, which of these was the prior, the egg or the fowl? Now the fowl is prior by nature, but the egg is prior in time; for that which is the more excellent is naturally first; but that from which a certain thing is produced must be reputed first in respect of time. Or we may say: this egg is older than that fowl (the fowl having been produced from it); and, on the contrary, this fowl existed before that egg (which she has laid). And this is the round that makes the race of the common fowl eternal; now pullet, now egg, the series is continued in perpetuity; from frail and perishing individuals an immortal species is engendered. By these, and means like to these, do we see many inferior or terrestrial things brought to emulate the perpetuity of superior or celestial things.
And whether we say, or do not say, that the vital principle (anima) inheres in the egg, it still plainly appears, from the circuit indicated, that there must be some principle influencing this revolution from the fowl to the egg and from the egg back to the fowl, which gives them perpetuity. Now this, according to Aristotle’s views,[215] is analogous to the element of the stars; and is that which makes parents engender, and gives fertility to their ova; and the same principle, Proteus like, is present under a different form, in the parents as in the eggs. For, as the same intelligence or spirit which incessantly actuates the mighty mass of the universe, and compels the same sun from the rising to the setting, in his passage over the various regions of the earth, so also is there a vis enthea, a divine principle inherent in our common poultry, showing itself now as the plastic, now as the nutritive, and now as the augmentative force, though it is always and at all times present as the conservative and vegetative force, and now assumes the form of the fowl, now that of the egg; but the same virtue continues to inhere in either to eternity. And although some animals arise spontaneously, or as is commonly said from putrefaction, and some are produced from the female alone, for Pliny[216] says: “in some genera, as in certain fishes, there are no males, every one taken being found full of roe;” still whatever is produced from a perfect egg is so in virtue of the indispensable concurrence of male and female. Aristotle[217] consequently says: “the grand principles of generation must be held to be the male and the female;” the first two principles of the egg are therefore the male and the female; and the common point or conception of these is the egg, which combines the virtues of both parents. We cannot, in fact, conceive an egg without the concurrence of a male and female fowl, any more than we can conceive fruit to be produced without a tree. We therefore see individuals, males as well as females, existing for the sake of preparing eggs, that the species may be perennial, though their authors pass away. And it is indeed obvious, that the parents are no longer youthful, or beautiful, or lusty, and fitted to enjoy life, than whilst they possess the power of producing and fecundating eggs, and, by the medium of these, of engendering their like. But when they have accomplished this grand purpose of nature, they have already attained to the height, the ακμὴ of their being,—the final end of their existence has been accomplished; after this, effete and useless, they begin to wither, and, as if cast off and forsaken of nature and the Deity, they grow old, and, a-weary of their lives, they hasten to their end. How different the males when they make themselves up for intercourse, and swelling with desire are excited by the venereal impulse! It is surprising to see with what passion they are inflamed; and then how trimly they are feathered, how vainglorious they show themselves, how proud of their strength, and how pugnacious they prove! But, the grand business of life accomplished, how suddenly, with failing strength and pristine fervour quenched, do they take in their swelling sails, and, from late pugnacity, grow timid and desponding! Even during the season of jocund masking in Venus’s domains, male animals in general are depressed by intercourse, and become submissive and pusillanimous, as if reminded that in imparting life to others, they were contributing to their own destruction. The cock alone, replete with spirit and fecundity, still shows himself alert and gay; clapping his wings, and crowing triumphantly, he sings the nuptial song at each of his new espousals! yet even he, after some length of time in Venus’s service, begins to fail; like the veteran soldier, he by and by craves discharge from active duty. And the hen, too, like the tree that is past bearing, becomes effete, and is finally exhausted.