EXERCISE THE TWENTY-SEVENTH.
The egg is not the product of the uterus, but of the vital principle.
“As we have said,” says Fabricius,[209] “that the action of the stomach was to convert the food into chyle, and the action of the testicles to produce semen, because in the stomach we find chyle, in the testes semen, so do we definitely assert that the egg is the product of the uterus of birds, because it is found in this part. The organ and seat of the generation of eggs is, therefore, intimately known and obvious to us. And farther, inasmuch as there are two uteri in birds, one superior and the other inferior, and these are considerably different from one another, and consequently perform different offices, it is in like manner clear what particular action is to be ascribed to each. The superior is devoted to the production of the yelk, the inferior to that of the albumen and remaining parts, or of the perfect egg, as lies obvious to sense; for in the superior uterus we never find aught beyond a multitude of yelks, nor in the inferior uterus, other than entire and perfect eggs. But these are not all the functions of the uteri as it appears, but the following are farther to be noted and enumerated, viz.: the increase of the egg, which succeeds immediately upon its production, and proceeds until it is perfected and acquires its proper dimensions. For the fowl does not naturally lay an egg until it has become complete and has acquired its due dimensions. The actions of the uteri are consequently the increase as well as the engenderment of the egg; but increase supposes and includes nutrition, as is obvious. And since all generation is the effect of the concurrence of two, viz., the agent and the matter, the agent in the generation of an egg is nothing else than the instruments or organs aforesaid, to wit, the double uterus; and the matter is nothing but the blood.”
Now whilst I admit the action of the uterus to be in a manner the generation of the egg, I by no means allow that the egg is nourished and increased by this organ. And this, both for the reasons already alleged by us when we treated of the vital principle of the egg, which is that which nourishes it, and also because it appears little likely (according to Aristotle,[210] it is impossible,) that all the internal parts of the egg, in all their dimensions, should be fashioned and made to increase by an external agent, such as the uterus is with reference to the egg; for how, I beseech you, can that which is extrinsic arrange the natural matter in things that are internal, and supply fresh matter according to the several dimensions in the place of that which has been lost? How can anything be affected or moved by that which does not touch it? Wherefore, without question, the same things happen in the engenderment of eggs which take place in the beginning of all living things whatsoever, viz.: they are primarily constituted by external and preexisting beings; but so soon as they are endowed with life, they suffice for their own nourishment and increase, and this in virtue of peculiar inherent forces, innate, implanted from the beginning.
What has already been said of the vital principle appears clearly to proclaim that the egg is neither the work of the uterus, nor governed by that organ; for it is manifest that the vegetative principle inheres even in the hypenemic egg, inasmuch as we have seen that this egg is nourished and is preserved, increases and vegetates, all of which acts are indications of the presence of the principle mentioned. But neither from the mother nor the uterus can this principle proceed, seeing that the egg has no connexion or union with them, but is free and unconnected, like a son emancipated from pupillage, rolling round within the cavity of the uterus and perfecting itself, even as the seeds of plants are perfected in the bosom of the earth, viz., by an internal vegetative principle, which can be nothing else than the vegetative soul.
And it will appear all the more certain that it is possessed of a soul or vital principle, if we consider by what compact, what moving power, the round and ample yelk, detached from the cluster of the ovary, descends through the infundibulum—a most slender tube composed of a singularly delicate membrane, and possessed of no motory fibres—and opening a path for itself, approaches the uterus through such a number of straits, arrived in which it continues to be nourished, and grows and is surrounded with albumen. Now as there is no motory organ discoverable either in the ovary which expels the vitellus, or in the infundibulum which transmits, or in the uterus which attracts it, and as the egg is not connected with the uterus, nor yet with the ovary by means of vessels, nor hangs from either by an umbilical cord, as Fabricius truly states, and demonstrates most satisfactorily, what remains for us contemplating such great and important processes but that we exclaim with the poet:[211]
’Tis innate soul sustains; and mind infused
Through every part, that actuates the mass.
And although the rudiments of eggs, which we have said are mere specks, and have compared to millet seeds in size, are connected with the ovary by means of veins and arteries, in the same manner as seeds are attached to plants, and consequently seem to be part and parcel of the fowl, and to live and be nourished after the manner of her other parts, it is nevertheless manifest, that seeds once separated from the plants which have produced them, are no longer regarded as parts of these, but like children come of age and freed from leading-strings, they are maintained and governed by their own inherent capacities.
But of this matter we shall speak more fully, when we come to treat of the soul or living principle of the embryo in general, and of the excellence and divine nature of the vegetative soul from a survey of its operations, all of which are carried on with such foresight, art, and divine intelligence; which, indeed, surpass our powers of understanding not less than Deity surpasses man, and are allowed, by common consent, to be so wonderful that their ineffable lustre is in no way to be penetrated by the dull edge of our apprehension.
What shall we say of the animalcules which are engendered in our bodies, and which no one doubts are ruled and made to vegetate by a peculiar vital principle (anima)? of this kind are lumbrici, ascarides, lice, nits, syrones, acari, &c.; or what of the worms which are produced from plants and their fruits, as from gall-nuts, the dog-rose, and various others? “For in almost all dry things growing moist, or moist things becoming dry, an animal may be engendered.”[212] It certainly cannot be that the living principles of the animals which arise in gall-nuts existed in the oak, although these animals live attached to the oak, and derive their sustenance from its juices. In like manner it is credible that the rudiments of eggs exist in the ovarian cluster by their proper vital principle, not by that of the mother, although they are connected with her body by means of arteries and veins, and are nourished by the same food as herself. Because, as we have stated in our history, all the vitellary specks do not increase together, like the grapes of a bunch, or the corns of an ear of wheat, as if they were pervaded by one common actuating force or concocting and forming cause; they come on one after another, as if they grew by their own peculiar energy, each that is most in advance severing itself from the rest, changing its colour and consistence, and from a white speck becoming a yelk, in regular and determinate sequence. And what is more particularly astonishing is that which we witness among pigeons and certain other birds, where two yelks only come to maturity upon the ovarian cluster together, one of which, for the major part, produces a male, the other a female, an abundance of other vitellary specks remaining stationary in the ovary, until the term comes round for two more to increase and make ready for a new birth. It is as if each successive pair received fertility from the repeated addresses of the male; as if the two became possessed of the vital principle together; which, once infused, they forthwith increase spontaneously, and govern themselves, living of their own not through their mother’s right. And, in sooth, what else can you conceive working, disposing, selecting, and perfecting, as respects this pair of vitellary papulæ and none others, but a peculiar vital principle? And although they attract nourishment from the mother, they still do so no otherwise than as plants draw food from the ground, or as the embryo obtains it from the albumen and vitellus.
Lastly, since the papula existing in the ovary receives fecundity from the access of the male, and this of such a kind that it passes into the form and likeness of the concurring male, whether he were a common cock or a pheasant, and there is as great diversity in the papulæ as there are males of different kinds; what shall we hold as inherent in the papulæ themselves, by whose virtue they are distinguished from one another and from the mother? Undoubtedly it must be the vital principle by which they are distinguished both from each other and from the mother.
It is in a similar manner that fungi and parasitic plants live upon trees. And besides, we in our own bodies frequently suffer from cancers, sarcoses, melicerides, and other tumours of the same description, which are nourished and grow as it seems by their own inherent vegetative principle, the true or natural parts of the body meantime shrinking and perishing. And this apparently because these tumours attract all the nourishment to themselves, and defraud the other parts of the body of their nutritious juices or proper genius. Whence the familiar names of phagedæna and lupus; and Hippocrates, by the words το θεῑον, perhaps understood those diseases which arise from poison or contagion; as if in these there was a certain vitality and divine principle inherent, by which they increase and through contagion generate similar diseases even in other bodies. Aristotle[213] therefore says: “all things are full of soul;” and elsewhere he seems to think that “even the winds have a kind of life, and a birth and a death.”[214] But there is no doubt that the vitellus, when it is once cast loose and freed from all connexion with the fowl, during its passage through the infundibulum and its stay in the cavity of the uterus, attracts a sluggish moisture to itself, which it absorbs, and by which it is nourished; there too it surrounds itself with albumen, furnishes itself with membranes and a shell, and finally perfects itself. All of which things, rightly weighed, we must needs conclude that it is possessed by a proper vital principle (anima).