284 ON GENERATION. 



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 ap- 

 parently because these tumours attract all the nourishment to 

 themselves, and defraud the other parts of the body of their nu- 

 tritious juices or proper genius. Whence the familiar names 

 of phagedsena and lupus; and Hippocrates, by the words TO Oeiov, 

 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 conta- 

 gion generate similar diseases even in other bodies. Aristotle 1 

 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." 2 But there is no doubt that the vi- 

 tellus, 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 mem- 

 branes and a shell, and finally perfects itself. All of which 

 things, rightly weighed, we must needs conclude that it is pos- 

 sessed by a proper vital principle (anima). 



EXERCISE THE TWENTY-EIGHTH. 



The egg is not produced without the hen. 



Leaving points that are doubtful, and disquisitions bearing 

 upon the general question, we now approach more definite and 

 obvious matters. 



And first, it is manifest that a fruitful egg cannot be pro- 

 duced without the concurrence of a cock and hen : without 

 the hen no egg can be formed ; without the cock it cannot be- 

 come fruitful. But this view is opposed to the opinion of those 

 who derive the origin of animals from the slime of the ground. 

 And truly when we see that the numerous parts concurring in 



1 De Gen. Aiiim. lib. iii, cap. 2. 2 Ibid. lib. iv, cap. 10. 



