GENERATION OF ANIMALS, IV. i. 



int# being from the male, while the female provides 

 the space for it," and that the male comes from the 

 right side * and the female from the left [and, as 

 regards the uterus, that the males are in the right 

 side and the female in the left]'^. Others, like Empedocies 

 Empedocles, hold that the opposition begins in the D^mocritus. 

 womb ; according to him, the semens which enter a 

 hot womb become males, those which enter a cold 

 one, females ** ; and that the cause of this heat and 

 cold is the menstrual flow, according as it is hotter or 

 colder, older or more recent/ Democritus of Abdera 

 holds that the difference of male and female is pro- 

 duced in the womb, certainly, but denies that it is 

 on account of heat and cold that one becomes male 

 and another female ; this is determined, he asserts, 

 according to which of the two parents' semen prevails, 

 the semen, that is to say, which has corne from the 

 part wherein male and female differ from one another/ 

 After all, Empedocles was really rather slipshod in 

 his assumption, in supposing that the two differ from 

 each other merely in virtue of heat and cold, when 

 he could see that the whole of the parts concerned — 

 the male pudenda and the uterus — exhibit a great 

 difference^ for supposing that once the animals have 

 been fashioned, and one has got all the parts of the 



for the Pj^thagoreans is, however, to a diflFerent doctrine from 

 this. See also G. Thomson, Aeschylus and Athens (1941), 

 and for other references to such views and their social con- 

 sequences, J. Needham, History of Embryology, '25 fF, 



* i.e., the right testis. 



' These words must be an interpolation, as they are incon- 

 sistent with the view just described. Cf. 765 a 23. 



■* See quotation, 733 a 2i. 



' These terms, as Piatt suggests, may echo Empedocles' 

 own words. The hotter will of course be the more recent. 



' See note on the theory of " pangenesis," 721 b 9. 



373 



