ON GENERATION. 3C7 



more excellent cause, to which, with all propriety, are ascribed 

 foresight, intelligence, goodness, and skill, and which is by so 

 much more excellent than its effect or work, as the architect is 

 more worthy than the pile he rears, as the king is more exalted 

 than his minister, as the workman is better than his hands or 

 tools. 



The male and female, therefore, will come to be regarded 

 as merely the efficient instruments, subservient in all respects 

 to the Supreme Creator, or father of all things. In this sense, 

 consequently, it is well said that the sun and moon engender 

 man ; because, with the advent and secession of the sun, come 

 spring and autumn, seasons which mostly correspond with 

 the generation and decay of animated beings. So that the 

 great leader in philosophy says : l " The first motion [of the 

 sphere ?] is not the cause of generation and destruction ; it is 

 the motion of the ecliptic that is so, this being both continuous 

 and having two movements ; for, if future generation and cor- 

 ruption are to be eternal, it is necessary that something like- 

 wise move eternally, that interchanges do not fail, that of the 

 two actions one only do not occur. The cause of the perpetuity 

 [of animal species ?] is, therefore, the law of the universe ; and 

 the obliquity [of the ecliptic?] is the cause of the approach and 

 accession, [of the sun?] and of his being now nearer, now more 

 remote : when he quits us, and removes to a distance, it is then 

 that decay and corruption intervene ; and, in like manner, 

 when he approaches, it is then that he engenders ; and if, as 

 he frequently approaches, he engenders ; so, because he fre- 

 quently recedes, does he cause corruption ; for the causes of 

 contraries are contrary." 



All things, therefore, grow and flourish in spring, (on the 

 approach of the sun, that is to say, he being the common 

 parent and producer, or at all events the immediate and uni- 

 versal instrument of the Creator in the work of reproduction) ; 

 and this is true not of plants only but of animals also ; nor less 

 of those that come spontaneously, than of those that are propa- 

 gated by the consentient act of male and female. It is as if, 

 with the advent of this glorious luminary, Venus the bountiful 

 descended from heaven, waited on by Cupid and a cohort of 

 graces, and prompted all living things by the bland incitement 



1 De Gencrat. et corr. lib. ii, cap. 10. 



