第63章

Nothing comes into being by putrefying, but by concocting;putrefaction and the thing putrefied is only a residue of that which is concocted.For nothing comes into being out of the whole of anything, any more than in the products of art; if it did art would have nothing to do, but as it is in the one case art removes the useless material, in the other Nature does so.Animals and plants come into being in earth and in liquid because there is water in earth, and air in water, and in all air is vital heat so that in a sense all things are full of soul.Therefore living things form quickly whenever this air and vital heat are enclosed in anything.When they are so enclosed, the corporeal liquids being heated, there arises as it were a frothy bubble.Whether what is forming is to be more or less honourable in kind depends on the embracing of the psychical principle; this again depends on the medium in which the generation takes place and the material which is included.Now in the sea the earthy matter is present in large quantities, and consequently the testaceous animals are formed from a concretion of this kind, the earthy matter hardening round them and solidifying in the same manner as bones and horns (for these cannot be melted by fire), and the matter (or body) which contains the life being included within it.

The class of snails is the only class of such creatures that has been seen uniting, but it has never yet been sufficiently observed whether their generation is the result of the union or not.

It may be asked, if we wish to follow the right line of investigation, what it is in such animals the formation of which corresponds to the material principle.For in the females this is a residual secretion of the animal, potentially such as that from which it came, by imparting motion to which the principle derived from the male perfects the animal.But here what must be said to correspond to this, and whence comes or what is the moving principle which corresponds to the male? We must understand that even in animals which generate it is from the incoming nourishment that the heat in the animal makes the residue, the beginning of the conception, by secretion and concoction.The like is the case also in plants, except that in these (and also in some animals) there is no further need of the male principle, because they have it mingled with the female principle within themselves, whereas the residual secretion in most animals does need it.The nourishment again of some is earth and water, of others the more complicated combinations of these, so that what the heat in animals produces from their nutriment, this does the heat of the warm season in the environment put together and combine by concoction out of the sea-water on the earth.And the portion of the psychical principle which is either included along with it or separated off in the air makes an embryo and puts motion into it.Now in plants which are spontaneously generated the method of formation is uniform; they arise from a part of something, and while some of it is the starting-point of the plant, some is the first nourishment of the young shoots....Other animals are produced in the form of a scolex, not only those bloodless animals which are not generated from parents but even some sanguinea, as a kind of mullet and some other river fishes and also the eel kind.

For all of these, though they have but little blood by nature, are nevertheless sanguinea, and have a heart with blood in it as the origin of the parts; and the so-called 'entrails of earth', in which comes into being the body of the eel, have the nature of a scolex.