Chapter XII

HOW IT COMES TO PASS THAT CHILDREN HAVE A GREATER SIMILITUDE WITH STRANGERS THAN WITH THEIR PARENTS.

The greatest part of physicians affirm, that this happens casually and fortuitously; for, when the sperm of the man and woman is too much refrigerated, then children carry a dissimilitude to their parents. Empedocles, that a woman’s imagination when she conceives impresses a shape upon the infant; for women have been enamored with images and statues, and the children which were born of them gave their similitudes. The Stoics, that the resemblances flow from the sympathy and consent of minds, by the insertion of effluvias and rays, not of images or pictures.