32 Greek Biology 



This is obscured, however, by his peculiar view of the nature of 

 procreation. On this topic his general conclusion is that the 

 material substance of the embryo is contributed by the female, 

 but that this is mere passive formable material, almost as though 

 it were the soil in which the embryo grows. The male by 

 giving the principle of life, the soul, contributes the essential 

 generative agency. But this soul is not material and it is, there- 

 fore, not theoretically necessary for anything material to pass 

 from male to female. The material which does in fact so pass 

 with the seed of the male is an accident, not an essential, for 

 the essential contribution of the male is not matter but/om 

 and principle. The female provides the material, the male the 

 soul, the form, the principle, that which makes life. Aristotle 

 was thus prepared to accept instances of fertilization without 

 material contact. 



The female does not contribute semen to generation but 

 does contribute something . . . for there must needs be that 

 which generates and that from which it generates ... If, then, 

 the male stands for the effective and active, and the female, 

 considered as female, for the passive, it follows that what the 

 female would contribute to the semen of the male would not 

 be semen but material for the semen to work upon . . . 



' How is it that the male contributes to generation, and how is 

 it that the semen from the male is the cause of the offspring ? 

 Does [the semen] exist in the body of the embryo as a part of it 

 from the first, mingling with the material which comes from the 

 female ? Or does the semen contribute nothing to the material 

 body of the embryo but only to the power and movement 

 in it ? ... The latter alternative appears to be the right one 

 both a priori and in view of the facts.' 1 



This discussion leads to the question of the natural process of 

 generation itself. It is a topic that we have seen discussed by an 

 earlier writer who had set forth a sort of doctrine of pangenesis 

 1 De generatione animalium, i. 21 ; 729* 21. 



