It is to the uterus that the business of conception is chiefly intrusted: without this structure and its functions conception would be looked for in vain. But since it is certain that the semen of the male does not so much as reach the cavity of the uterus, much less continue long there, and that it carries with it a fecundating power by a kind of contagious property, (not because it is then and there in actual contact, or operates, but because it previously has been in contact); the woman, after contact with the spermatic fluid in coitu, seems to receive influence, and to become fecundated without the co-operation of any sensible corporeal agent, in the same way as iron touched by the magnet is endowed with its powers and can attract other iron to itself. When this virtue is once received the woman exercises a plastic power of generation, and produces a being after her own image; not otherwise than the plant, which we see endowed with the forces of both sexes.
Yet it is a matter of wonder where this faculty abides after intercourse is completed, and before the formation of the ovum or “conception.” To what is this active power of the male committed? is it to the uterus solely, or to the whole woman? or is it to the uterus primarily and to the woman secondarily? or, lastly, does the woman conceive in the womb, as we see by the eye and think by the brain?
For although the woman conceiving after intercourse sometimes produces no fœtus, yet we know that phenomena occur which clearly indicate that conception has really taken place, although without result. Over-fed bitches, which admit the dog without fecundation following, are nevertheless observed to be sluggish about the time they should have whelped, and to bark as they do when their time is at hand, also to steal away the whelps from another bitch, to tend and lick them, and also to fight fiercely for them. Others have milk or colostrum, as it is called, in their teats, and are, moreover, subject to the diseases of those which have actually whelped; the same thing is seen in hens which cluck at certain times, although they have no eggs on which to sit. Some birds also, as pigeons, if they have admitted the male, although they lay no eggs at all, or only barren ones, are found equally sedulous in building their nests.
The virtue which proceeds from the male in coitu has such prodigious power of fecundation, that the whole woman, both in mind and body, undergoes a change. And although it is the uterus made ready for this, on which the first influences are impressed, and from which virtue and strength are diffused throughout the body, the question still remains, how it is that the power thus communicated remains attached to the uterus? is it to the whole uterus or only to a part of it? nothing is to be found within it after coitus, for the semen in a short time either falls out or evaporates, and the blood, its circle completed, returns from the uterus by the vessels.
Again, what is this preparation or maturity of the uterus which eagerly demands the fecundating seed? whence does it proceed? Certain it is, unless the uterus be ready for coition every attempt at fecundation is vain; nay, in some animals, at no other time is the male admitted. It happens occasionally, I allow, that this maturity arrives earlier in some from the solicitations of the male animal; it is itself, however, a purely natural result, just as is the ripening of the fruit in trees. What these changes are I will now recount, as I have found them by observation.
The uterus first appears more thick and fleshy; then its inner surface, the future residence, that is, of the “conception,” becomes softer, and resembles in smoothness and delicacy the ventricles of the brain; this I have already described in the deer and other cloven-footed tribes. But in the dog, cat, and other multiparous and digitated animals, the horns of the uterus—clearly corresponding to the round tubes of the woman [Fallopian tubes], the appendices of the intestines in birds, or the ureters in man—exhibit little protuberances at certain intervals, which swell up and become extremely soft; these, after intercourse, appear to open themselves, (as I have observed in deer;) from them the first white fluid transudes into the uterus, and out of this the “conception,” or ovum, is formed. In this way the uterus, by means of the male, (like fruit by the summer’s heat,) is brought to the highest pitch of maturity, and becomes impregnated.
But since there are no manifest signs of conception before the uterus begins to relax, and the white fluid or slender threads (like the spider’s web) constituting the “primordium” of the future “conception,” or ovum, shows itself; and since the substance of the uterus, when ready to conceive, is very like the structure of the brain, why should we not suppose that the function of both is similar, and that there is excited by coitus within the uterus a something identical with, or at least analogous to, an “imagination” (phantasma) or a “desire” (appetitus) in the brain, whence comes the generation or procreation of the ovum? For the functions of both are termed “conceptions,” and both, although the primary sources of every action throughout the body, are immaterial, the one of natural or organic, the other of animal actions; the one (viz. the uterus) the first cause and beginning of every action which conduces to the generation of the animal, the other (viz. the brain) of every action done for its preservation. And just as a “desire” arises from a conception of the brain, and this conception springs from some external object of desire, so also from the male, as being the more perfect animal, and, as it were, the most natural object of desire, does the natural (organic) conception arise in the uterus, even as the animal conception does in the brain.
From this desire, or conception, it results that the female produces an offspring like the father. For just as we, from the conception of the “form” or “idea” in the brain, fashion in our works a form resembling it, so, in like manner, the “idea,” or “form,” of the father existing in the uterus generates an offspring like himself with the help of the formative faculty, impressing, however, on its work its own immaterial “form.” In the same way art, which in the brain is the εἶδος or “form” of the future work, produces, when in operation, its like, and begets it out of “matter.” So too the painter, by means of conception, pictures to himself a face, and by imitating this internal conception of the brain carries it out into act; so also the builder constructs his house according to previous conception. The same thing takes place in every other action and artificial production. Thus, what education effects in the brain, viz. art, with its analogue does the coitus of the male endow the uterus, viz. the plastic art; hence many similar or dissimilar fœtuses are produced at the same coitus. For if the productions and first conceptions of art (the mere imitations of nature) are in this way formed in the brain, how much more probable is it that copies (exemplaria) of animal generation and conception should in like manner be produced in the uterus?
And since Nature, all of whose works are wonderful and divine, has devised an organ of this kind, viz. the brain, by the virtue and sensitive faculty of which the conceptions of the rational soul exist, such as the desires and the arts, the first principles and causes of so many and such various works, of which man, by means of the impulsive faculty of the brain, is by imitation the author; why should we not suppose that the same Nature, who in the uterus has constructed an organ no less wonderful, and adapted it by means of a similar structure to perform all that appertains to conception, has destined it for a similar or at least an analogous function, and intended an organ altogether similar for a similar use? For as the skilful artificer accomplishes his works by ingeniously adapting his instruments to each, so that from the substance and shape of these instruments it is easy to judge of their use and application, with no less certainty than we have been taught by Aristotle[392] to recognize the nature of animals from the structure and arrangement of their bodily organs; and as physiognomy instructs us to judge of a man’s disposition and character from the shape of his face and features, what should prevent us from supposing that where the same structure exists there is the same function implanted?
But it is so unfairly ordered that, when customary and familiar matters come to be debated, this very familiarity lessens their importance and our wonder; whilst things of much less moment, because they are novel and rare, appear to us far greater objects of marvel. Whoever has pondered with himself how the brain of the artist, or rather the artist by means of his brain, pictures to the life things which are not present to him, but which he has once seen; also in what manner birds immured in cages recall to mind the spring, and chant exactly the songs they had learned the preceding summer, although meanwhile they had never practised them; again, and this is more strange, how the bird artistically builds its nest, the copy of which it had never seen, and this not from memory or habit, but by means of an imaginative faculty (phantasia), and how the spider weaves its web, without either copy or brain, solely by the help of this imaginative power; whosoever, I say, ponders these things, will not, I think, regard it as absurd or monstrous, that the woman should be impregnated by the conception of a general immaterial “idea,” and become the artificer of generation.