326 ON GENERATION. 



the powers of an inherent and innate heat, assimilated by 

 means of concoction, as it were out of a contrary. For the 

 crude and unconcocted are contrary to the concocted and as- 

 similated, as the unmusical man is to the musical, and the 

 sick to the sound man. 



And when the blood is engendered from the clear colliqua- 

 ment, or a clear fluid is produced from the white or the yelk, 

 there is generation as regards the former, corruption as regards 

 the latter; a transmutation, namely, is made from the extremes 

 of contraries, the subject-matter all the while remaining the 

 same. To explain: by the breaking up of the first form of the 

 white, the colliquament is produced; and from the consumption 

 of this colliquament, follows the form of the blood, in the same 

 way precisely as food is converted into the substance of the 

 thing fed. 



It is thus, then, that the chick is said to be made out of 

 the egg, as it were by a contrary ; for in the nutrition and 

 growth of the chick in the egg, white and yelk are equally 

 broken up and consumed, and finally the whole substance of 

 the egg. It is clear, therefore, that the chick is formed from 

 the egg, as it were by a contrary, namely the aliment, and as 

 if by an abstraction, and from a non-entity. For the first 

 particle of the chick, viz. : the blood or punctum saliens, is 

 constituted out of something which is not blood, and alto- 

 gether its contrary, the same subject-matter always remaining. 



The chick too is made from the egg, as a man is made 

 from a boy. For in the same way, as out of plants seeds 

 arise, and out of seeds, buds, sprouts, stems, flowers, and 

 fruits ; so also out of the egg, the seed of the hen is produced, 

 the dilatation of the cicatricula and the colliquament, the 

 blood and the heart, as the first particle of the foetus or fruit ; 

 and all this, in the same way as the day from the night, the sum- 

 mer from the spring, a man from a boy one follows or comes 

 after the other. So that, in the same way as fruits arise 

 after flowers on the same stem, so likewise is the colliqua- 

 ment formed after the egg, the blood after this, as from the 

 primogeneous humour, the chick after the blood, and out of 

 it, as the whole out of a part ; in the same way, as by 

 Epicharmus's exaggeration, out of calumnies comes cursing, 

 and out of cursing fighting. For the blood first begins its 



