GENERATION OF ANIMALS, II. i. 



To suppose it is some other thing, and separate from 

 it, is not reasonable. If it were, the question arises : 

 When the animal's generation is completed, does this 

 something disappear, or does it remain ^\■ithin the 

 animal ? We cannot detect any such thing, some- 

 thing which is in the plant or the animal and yet is no 

 part of the organism as a whole. And again, to say 

 that it fashions all the parts or some parts of the 

 organism and then disappears is ridiculous. If it 

 fashions only some of the parts, what will fashion 

 the rest ? Supposing it fashions the heart, and then 

 disappears, and the heart fashions some other part : 

 to be consistent we must say that either all the parts 

 disappear or all the parts remain." It must, then, 

 persist. And therefore it must be a part of the 

 whole, existing in the semen from the outset. And 

 if it is true that there is no part of the Soul Avhich is 

 not in some part of the body,^ then it must also be 

 a part which contains Soul from the outset. 



How, then, are the other parts formed ? Either 

 they are all formed simultaneously — heart, lung, 

 Uver, eye, and the rest of them — or successively, as 

 we read in the poems ascribed to Orpheus, where he 

 says that the process by which an animal is formed 

 resembles the plaiting of a net. As for simultaneous 

 formation of the parts, our senses tell us plainly that 

 this does not happen : some of the parts are clearly 

 to be seen present in the embryo while others are 

 not. And our failure to see them is not because they 

 are too small ; this is certain, because although the 

 lung is larger in size than the heart it makes its appear- 

 ance later in the original process of formation. Since 

 one part, then, comes earlier and another later, is it 

 the case that A fashions B and that it is there on 



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