EXERCISE THE TWENTY-NINTH.
Of the manner, according to Aristotle, in which a perfect and fruitful egg is produced by the male and female fowl.
Shortly before we said that a fruitful egg is not engendered spontaneously, that it is not produced save by a hen, and by her only through the concurrence of the cock. This agrees with the matter of the following sentence of Aristotle:[218] “The principles of generation have particular reference to male and female; the male as supplying the original of motion and reproduction; the female as furnishing the matter.”
In our view, however, an egg is a true generative seed, analogous to the seed of a plant; the original conception arising between the two parents, and being the mixed fruit or product of both. For as the egg is not formed without the hen, so is it not made fruitful without the concurrence of the cock.
We have therefore to inquire how the egg is produced by the hen and is fertilized by the cock; for we have seen that hypenemic eggs, and these animated too, are engendered by the hen, but that they are not prolific without the intercourse of the cock. The male and the female consequently, both set their mark upon a fruitful egg; but not, I believe, in the way in which Aristotle imagines, viz.: that the male concurs in the motion and commencement of generation only, the female supplying nothing but the matter, because the contrary of this is obvious in hypenemic eggs. And although it be true as he says: “That male and female differ in respect of reason, because the faculty of each is different, and, in respect of sense, because certain parts differ likewise. The difference according to reason boasts this distinction, that the male has the power of engendering in another; the female has only the power of engendering in herself; whereby it comes that that which is engendered is produced, this being contained in that which engenders. But as males and females are distinguished by certain faculties and functions, and as an instrument is indispensable to every office, and the parts of the body are adapted as instruments of the functions, it was necessary that certain parts should be set aside for purposes of procreation and coition, and these differing from one another, whereby the male differs from the female.”
It does not, however, follow from thence, that what he appears inclined to infer is correct, where he says: “The male is the efficient agent, and by the motion of his generative virtue (genitura), creates what is intended from the matter contained in the female; for the female always supplies the matter, the male the power of creation, and this it is which constitutes one male, another female. The body and the bulk, therefore, are necessarily supplied by the female; nothing of the kind is required from the male; for it is not even requisite that the instrument, nor the efficient agent itself, be present in the thing that is produced. The body, then, proceeds from the female, the vital principle (anima) from the male; for the essence of every body is its vital principle (anima).” But an egg, and that animated, is engendered by the pullet without the concurrence of the male; whence it appears that the hen too, or the female, may be the efficient agent, and that all creative force or vital power (anima) is not derived exclusively from the male. This view indeed appears to be supported by the instance quoted by Aristotle himself, for he says:[219] “Those animals not of the same species, which copulate, (which those animals do that correspond in their seasons of heat and times of uterogestation, and do not differ greatly in their size,) produce their first young like themselves, but partaking of the species of both parents; of this description is the progeny of the fox and dog, of the partridge and common fowl, &c.; but in the course of time from diversity results diversity, and the progeny of these different parents at length acquires the form of the female; in the same way as foreign seed is changed at last in conformity with the nature of the soil, which supplies matter and body to the seed.”
From this it appears, that in the generation of the partridge with the common fowl it is not the male alone that is efficient, but the female also; inasmuch as it is not the male form only, but one common or subordinate that appears in the hybrid, as like the female as it is like the male in vital endowment (anima), and bodily form. But the vital endowment (anima) is that which is the true form and species of an animal.
Farther, the female seems even to have a superior claim to be considered the efficient cause: “In the course of time,” says the philosopher, “the progeny of different species assumes the form of the female;” as if the semen or influence of the male were the less powerful; as if the species impressed by him disappeared with the lapse of time, and were expelled by a more powerful efficient cause. And the instance from the soil confirms this still farther: “for foreign seeds are changed at length according to the nature of the soil.” Whence it seems probable that the female is actually of more moment in generation than the male; for, “in the world at large it is admitted that the earth is to nature as the female or mother, whilst climate, the sun, and other things of the same description, are spoken of by the names of generator and father.”[220] The earth, too, spontaneously engenders many things without seed; and among animals, certain females, but females only, procreate of themselves and without the concurrence of the male: hens, for example, lay hypenemic eggs; but males, without the intervention of females, engender nothing.
By the same arguments, indeed, by which the male is maintained to be the principle and prime ‘efficient’ in generation, it would seem that the female might be confirmed in the prerogative of ὲνεργεία or efficiency. For is not that to be accounted efficient in which the reason of the embryo and the form of the work appear; whose obvious resemblance is perceived in the embryo, and which, as first existing, calls forth the other? Since, therefore, the form, cause, and similitude inhere in the female not less—and it might even be said that they inhere more—than in the male, and as she also exists previously as prime mover, let us conclude for certain that the female is equally efficient in the work of generation as the male.
And although Aristotle[221] says well and truly, “that the conception or egg receives no part of its body from the male, but only its form, species, and vital endowment (anima), and from the female its body solely, and its dimensions,” it is not yet made sufficiently to appear that the female, besides the matter, does not in some measure contribute form, species, and vital endowment (anima). This indeed is obvious in the hen which engenders eggs without the concurrence of a male; in the same way as trees and herbs, in which there is no distinction of sexes, produce their seeds. For Aristotle himself admits,[222] that even the hypenemic egg is endowed with a vital principle (anima). The female must therefore be esteemed the efficient cause of the egg.
Admitting that the hypenemic egg is possessed of a certain vital principle, still it is not prolific; so that it must further be confessed that the hen of herself is not the efficient cause of a perfect egg, but that she is made so in virtue of an authority, if I may use the word, or power required of the cock. For the egg, unless prolific, can with no kind of propriety be accounted perfect; it only obtains perfection from the male, or rather from the female, as it were upon precept from the male; as if the hen received the art and reason, the form and laws of the future embryo from his address. And so in like manner the female fowl, like to a fruitful tree, is made fertile by coition; by this is she empowered not only to lay eggs, but these perfect and prolific eggs. For although the hen have as yet no rudiments of eggs prepared in her ovary, nevertheless, made fertile by the intercourse of the male, she by and by not only produces them there, but lays them, teeming with life, and apt to produce embryos. And here that practice of the poor folks finds its application: “Having hens at home, but no cock, they commit their females to a neighbour’s male for a day or two; and from this short sojourn the fecundity of the whole of the eggs that will be laid during the current season is secured.”[223] Not only are those eggs which are still nothing more than yelk and have no albumen, or which exist only as most minute specks in the ovary, but eggs not yet extant, that will be conceived long afterwards, rendered fertile by the same property.