第46章

In men, then, and in other kinds, as said before, such deficiency occurs sporadically, but the whole of the mule kind is sterile.The reason has not been rightly given by Empedocles and Democritus, of whom the former expresses himself obscurely, the latter more intelligibly.For they offer their demonstration in the case of all these animals alike which unite against their affinities.Democritus says that the genital passages of mules are spoilt in the mother's uterus because the animals from the first are not produced from parents of the same kind.But we find that though this is so with other animals they are none the less able to generate; yet, if this were the reason, all others that unite in this manner ought to be barren.Empedocles assigns as his reason that the mixture of the 'seeds' becomes dense, each of the two seminal fluids out of which it is made being soft, for the hollows in each fit into the densities of the other, and in such cases a hard substance is formed out of soft ones, like bronze mingled with tin.Now he does not give the correct reason in the case of bronze and tin- (we have spoken of them in the Problems)- nor, to take general ground, does he take his principles from the intelligible.How do the 'hollows' and 'solids'

fit into one another to make the mixing, e.g.in the case of wine and water? This saying is quite beyond us; for how we are to understand the 'hollows' of the wine and water is too far beyond our perception.Again, when, as a matter of fact, horse is born of horse, ass of ass, and mule of horse and ass in two ways according as the parents are stallion and she-ass or jackass and mare, why in the last case does there result something so 'dense' that the offspring is sterile, whereas the offspring of male and female horse, male and female ass, is not sterile? And yet the generative fluid of the male and female horse is soft.But both sexes of the horse cross with both sexes of the ass, and the offspring of both crosses are barren, according to Empedocles, because from both is produced something 'dense', the 'seeds' being 'soft'.If so, the offspring of stallion and mare ought also to be sterile.If one of them alone united with the ass, it might be said that the cause of the mule's being unable to generate was the unlikeness of that one to the generative fluid of the ass; but, as it is, whatever be the character of that generative fluid with which it unites in the ass, such it is also in the animal of its own kind.Then, again, the argument is intended to apply to both male and female mules alike, but the male does generate at seven years of age, it is said; it is the female alone that is entirely sterile, and even she is so only because she does not complete the development of the embryo, for a female mule has been known to conceive.

Perhaps an abstract proof might appear to be more plausible than those already given; I call it abstract because the more general it is the further is it removed from the special principles involved.It runs somewhat as follows.From male and female of the same species there are born in course of nature male and female of the same species as the parents, e.g.male and female puppies from male and female dog.