GENERATION OF ANIMALS, I. xxiii. 



for a fair part of a day ; whereas semen takes several 

 days to " set " fetations, and when the creatures have 

 emitted this they free themselves. Indeed, animals 

 seem to be just like divided plants : as though you 

 were to pull a plant to pieces when it was bearing its 

 seed and separate it into the male and female present 

 in it. 



In all her workmanship herein Nature acts in every 

 particular as reason would expect. A plant, in its 

 essence, has no function or activity to perform other 

 than the production of its seed * ; and since this is 

 produced as the result of the union of male with 

 female. Nature has mixed the two and placed them 

 together, so that in plants male and female are not 

 separate. Plants, however, have been dealt \nth in 

 another treatise ; here we are concerned with animals, 

 and generation is not the only function which an 

 animal has — that is a function common to all things 

 living. All animals have, in addition, some measure 

 of knowledge of a sort (some have more, some less, 

 some very little indeed), because they have sense- 

 perception,* and sense-perception is, of course, a sort 

 of knowledge. The value we attach to this know- 

 ledge varies greatly according as we judge it by the 

 standard of human intelhgence or the class of hfeless 

 objects. Compared with the intelligence possessed 

 by man, it seems as nothing to possess the two senses 

 of touch and taste only ; but compareH mth entire 

 absence of sensibility it seems a very fine thing 

 indeed. We should much prefer to have even this 



rt of knowledge to a state of death and non-exist- 

 ence. Now it is by sense-perception that animals 



See 732 a 13, n. With this passage (731 a 29-b 3) cf. 

 tie whole Protrepticus passage there referred to. 



125 



