Chapter XXXI: Introduction (6)

We have gone at length into some of these matters, as thinking that they were not without all speculative interest, as we shall show by and by. The arguments of Fabricius are easily answered. For I admit that the chick in ovo produces sounds, and these perchance may even have something of the implorative in their nature; but it does not therefore follow that the shell is broken by the mother. Neither is the bill of the chick so soft, nor yet so far from the shell, that it cannot pierce through its prison walls, particularly when we see that the shell, for the reasons assigned, is extremely brittle. Neither does the chick always keep its head under its wing, so as to be thereby prevented from breaking the shell, but only when it sleeps or has died. For the creature wakes at intervals and scrapes and kicks, and struggles, pressing against the shell, tearing the investing membranes, and chirps, (and that this is done whilst petitioning for assistance I willingly concede,) all of which things may readily be heard by any one who will use his ears. And the hen listening attentively when she hears the chirping deep within the egg does not break the shell, but she turns the egg with her feet and gives the chick within another and a more commodious position. But there is no occasion to suppose that the chick by his chirping informs his mother of the propriety of breaking the shell, or seeks deliverance from it. For very frequently for two days before the exclusion you may hear the chick chirping within the shell. Neither is the mother, when she turns the egg, looking for the proper place to break it; but as the child when uncomfortably laid in his cradle is restless and whimpers and cries, and his fond mother turns him this way and that, and rocks him till he is composed again, so does the hen when she hears the chick restless and chirping within the egg, and feels it, when hatched, moving uneasily about in the nest, immediately raise herself and observe that she is not pressing on it with her weight, or keeping it too warm, or the like, and then with her bill and her feet she moves and turns the egg until the chick within is again at its ease and quiet.

EXERCISE THE TWENTY-FOURTH.

_Of twin-bearing eggs._

Twin-bearing eggs are such as produce twin chickens, and according to Aristotle,[196] “are possessed of two yelks, which, in some are separated by a layer of thin albumen, that they may less encroach on one another; in others, however, there is nothing of the sort, and then the two yelks are in contact.”

I have frequently seen twin eggs, each of the yelks in which was surrounded by an albumen, with common and proper membranes surrounding them. I have also met with eggs having two yelks connate, as it were, both of which were embraced by a single and common albumen.

“Some fowls” says Aristotle,[197] “always produce twins, in which the particulars relating to the yelk that have been stated are clearly perceived. A certain fowl laid within two of twenty eggs, all of which, except those that were unprolific, produced twins. Of the twins, however, one was always larger, the other smaller, and the smaller chick was frequently deformed in addition.”

With us twin eggs are occasionally produced, and twin chicks too, although very rarely, are engendered. I have never myself, however, seen both of these chicks live and thrive; one of them either died within the egg or at the time of the exclusion. And this the words of Aristotle prepare us to expect, when he says “one of the two is larger, the other smaller;” this is as much as to say that one of them is stronger and of greater age, the other weaker and less prepared for quitting the shell: my own opinion therefore is, that the two yelks are of different origins and maturity. It is therefore scarcely possible but that the stronger and more advanced chick, if the egg be broken and it emerge into the light, will cause the blight and abortion of the other. But if the stronger bird do not chip the shell, he himself is threatened with a present danger, viz. want of air. At the exclusion from the shell, consequently, certain death hangs over one or other, if not over both.

Fabricius either not observing the above words of Aristotle, or neglecting them, says: “If an egg have now and then two yelks, it engenders a chick having four legs or wings, and two heads--a monster, in short; never two chicks distinct from one another, and that can be spoken of as a pair; there is but one trunk, to which are appended two heads, &c.”

Whence we may infer that he himself had never seen nor heard from credible persons that such eggs produce two pullets, and therefore that he agrees with me in regarding such eggs as rare, and in holding that they never produce two chicks both alike capable of living.

I am surprised nevertheless that, with the authority of Aristotle before him, he should have said that “two chicks, distinct and separate, are _never_ produced from such eggs,” but always a monster; the rather as he thinks that the embryo is engendered from the chalazæ as from the appropriate matter, and he could not but see that there are four chalazæ in every twin-egg.

I should rather imagine that when two vitelli are included by the same albumen in a twin-egg, and are so intimately associated that their cicatriculæ, when they are resolved together, constitute a single eye or colliquament, may engender a monstrous embryo with four feet, two heads, &c., because I see nothing to hinder this; and such a production do I conceive to have been engendered by the egg of which Fabricius speaks.

But where two yelks have existed separately, parted by their several membranes, and furnished with chalazæ, albumens, and all else requisite to the generation of the chick, I hold that we must conclude, with Aristotle, that such an egg, as it has all the parts of two eggs except the shell, so does it also possess the faculty or faculties of as many; and unless it be a wind or barren egg, that it will for the most part produce two embryos, and but rarely a single monstrous individual.

EXERCISE THE TWENTY-FIFTH.

_Certain Deductions from the preceding History of the Egg._

Such is the history of the hen’s egg; in which we have spoken of its production, and of its action or faculty to engender a chick, at too great length, it may appear to those who do not see the end and object of such painstaking, of such careful observation. Wherefore I think it advisable here to state what fruits may follow our industry, and in the words of the learned Lord Verulam, to “enter upon our second vintage.” Certain theorems, therefore, will have to be gathered from the history given; some of which will be quite certain, some questionable and requiring further sifting, and some paradoxical and opposed to popular persuasion. Some of these, moreover, will have reference to the male, some to the female, several to the egg, and finally, a few to the formation of the chick. When these have been carefully discussed seriatim, we shall be in a condition to judge with greater certainty and facility of the generation of all other animals.

EXERCISE THE TWENTY-SIXTH.

_Of the nature of the egg._

Of the theorems that refer to the egg, some teach us what it is, some show its mode of formation, and others tell of the parts which compose it.

It is certain, in the first place, that one egg produces one chick only. Although the egg be in a certain sense an external uterus, still it most rarely engenders several embryos, but by far the most frequently produces no more than a single pullet. And when an egg produces two chicks, which it does sometimes, still is this egg to be reputed not single but double, and as possessed of the nature and parts of two eggs.

For an egg is to be viewed as a conception proceeding from the male and the female, equally endued with the virtue of either, and constituting an unity from which a single animal is engendered.

Nor is it the beginning only, but the fruit and conclusion likewise. It is the beginning as regards the being to be engendered; the fruit in respect of the two parents: at once the end proposed in their engendering, and the origin of the chick that is to be. “But the seed and the fruit,” according to Aristotle,[198] “differ from one another in the relations of prior and posterior; for the fruit is that which comes of another, the seed is that from which this other comes: were it otherwise, both would be the same.”

The egg also seems to be a certain mean; not merely in so far as it is beginning and end, but as it is the common work of the two sexes and is compounded by both; containing within itself the matter and the plastic power, it has the virtue of both, by which it produces a fœtus that resembles the one as well as the other. It is farther a mean between the animate and the inanimate world; for neither is it wholly endowed with life, nor is it entirely without vitality. It is still farther the mid-passage or transition stage between parents and offspring, between those who are, or were, and those who are about to be; it is the hinge and pivot upon which the whole generation of the bird revolves. The egg is the terminus from which all fowls, male and female, have sprung, and to which all their lives tend,--it is the result which nature has proposed to herself in their being. And thus it comes that individuals in procreating their like for the sake of their species, endure for ever. The egg, I say, is a period or portion of this eternity; for it were hard to say whether an egg exists for the sake of the chick that it engenders, or the pullet exists for the sake of the egg which it is to engender. Which of these was the prior, whether with reference to time or nature,--the egg or the pullet? This question, when we come to speak of the generation of animals in general, we shall discuss at length.

The egg, moreover,--and this is especially to be noted,--corresponds in its proportions with the seeds of plants, and has all the same conditions as these, so that it is to be regarded, not without reason, as the seed or sperma of the common fowl, in the same way as the seeds of plants are justly entitled their eggs, not only as being the _matter_ or that from which, but the _efficient_ or that by which the pullet is engendered. In which finally no part of the future offspring exists _de facto_, but in which all parts inhere _in potentia_.

The seed, properly so called, differs however from the _geniture_, which by Aristotle is defined to be “that which, proceeding from the generator, is the cause, that which first obtains the principle of generation; in those, to wit, whom nature destined to copulate. But the seed is that which proceeds from these two in their connection: and such is the seed of all vegetables, and of some animals, in which the sexes are not distinct; like that which is first produced by male and female commingled, a kind of promiscuous conception, or animal; for this already possesses what is required of both.”

The egg consequently is a natural body endowed with animal virtues, viz. principles of motion and rest, of transmutation and conservation; it is, moreover, a body which, under favorable circumstances, has the capacity to pass into an animal form; heavy bodies indeed do not sink more naturally, nor light ones float, when they are unimpeded, than do seeds and eggs in virtue of their inherent capacity become changed into vegetables and animals. So that the seed and the egg are alike the fruit and final result of the things of which they are the beginning and efficient cause.

For a single pullet there is a single egg; and so Aristotle[199] says: “from one seed one body is engendered; for example, from a single grain of wheat one plant; from a single egg one animal; for a twin-egg is, in fact, two eggs.”

And Fabricius[200] with truth observes: “The egg is not only an exposed uterus, and place of generation, but that also on which the whole reproduction of the pullet depends, and which the egg achieves as agent, as matter, as instrument, as seat, and all else, if more there be, that is needful to generation.” He shows it to be an organ because it consists of several parts, and this, from the statement of Galen, who will have the very essence of an organ to be that “it consist of several parts, all of which conspire to one and the same action though diverse in faculty and use; for some are principal instruments in the action; some are indispensable to it,--without them it could not take place; some secure its better performance; and some, in fine, are extant for the safety and preservation of everything else.” He also shows it to be an _agent_, when from Aristotle and Galen he lays down the two actions of the egg, viz.: “the generation of the chick, and the growth and nutrition of the pullet.” At the conclusion he expresses himself clearly in these words: “In the works of nature we see conjunct and one, the artificer, the instrument, and the matter; the liver, for instance, is both the agent and the instrument for the production of the blood; and so every part of the body; Aristotle,[201] therefore, said well that the moving powers were not easily distinguished from the instruments. In artificial things, indeed, the artificer and the instrument are distinct, as much so as the workman and his hammer, the painter and his pencil. And the reason adduced by Galen[202] is this: that in things made by art the artificer is without the work; in natural things, again, the artificer is within it, conjunct with the instruments, and pervading the whole organization.”

To this I add these perspicuous words of Aristotle.[203] “Of extant things some are consistent with nature, others with other causes. Animals and their parts, and plants, and simple bodies, as earth, fire, air, and water, consist with nature, and are allowed universally to do so; but these bodies differ entirely from those that do not consist with nature. For whatsoever consists with nature is seen to have within itself a principle of motion and of rest, now according to place, now according to increment and decrement, and again according to change. A couch or litter, a garment, and other things of the same description, however designated, inasmuch as they are made by art, have no inherent faculty of change; but inasmuch as they are made of [wood, or] earth, or stone, [or of wool, silk, or linen,] or of mixtures of these, they have such a faculty. As if nature were a certain principle and cause wherefore that should move and be at rest in which she inheres originally, independently, and not by accident. I say, particularly, _not by accident_, because it might happen that one being a physician should himself be the cause of his own good health; but he is not familiar with medicine in the same respect as he has worked his own cure; it happens simply that the man who here recovers his health is a physician. It therefore occasionally happens, that these two things are distinct and separate. But it is not otherwise with everything besides that is of art: none of these has in itself a principle of performance or action, though some of them have such a principle in other things and beyond themselves, such as a house, and aught else that is made with hands; and some have even such a principle inherent, but not _per se_ and independently: everything, for example, may by accident become a cause to itself. Nature is therefore, as stated [that which has an inherent principle of motion]; and those things have nature within them which possess this principle. Now all such are substances; for nature is always some subject, and inheres in the subject.”

These things I have spoken of at length, and even quoted the words of the writers appealed to, that it might thence appear first, that all I attribute to the egg is actually there, viz.: matter, organ, efficient cause, place, and everything else requisite to the generation of the chick; and next and more especially, that the truth in regard to the following very difficult questions might be made clearly to appear, viz.: Which and what principle is it whence motion and generation proceed? By what virtue does the semen act, according to Aristotle? What is it that renders the semen itself fruitful? (for the philosopher will have it that nature in all natural bodies is the innate principle of motion and of rest, and not any second accident.) Whether is that which in the egg is cause, artificer, and principle of generation and of all the vital and vegetative operations--conservation, nutrition, growth--innate or superadded? and whether does it inhere primarily, of itself, and as a kind of nature, or intervene by accident, as the physician in curing diseases? Whether is that which transforms the egg into a pullet inherent or acquired, or is it already conceived in the ovary, and does it nourish, augment, and perfect the egg there?

What is it besides that preserves the egg sweet after it is laid? What is it that renders an egg fruitful--is it to be called soul, or a portion of the soul, or something belonging to the soul, or something having a soul, or is it intelligence, or, finally, is it Divinity? seeing that it acts to a definite end, and orders all with inimitable providence and art, and yet in an incomprehensible manner, always obtaining what is best both for simple being and for well-being, for protection also and for ornament. And all this not only in the fruitful egg which it fecundates, but in the hypenemic egg which it nourishes, causes to increase, and preserves. Nay, it is not merely the vitellus in the vitellarium or egg-bed, but the smallest speck whence the yelk is produced, of no greater size than a millet or a mustard-seed, that it nourishes and makes to grow, and finally envelopes with albumen, and furnishes with chalazæ, and surrounds with membranes and a shell. For it is probable that even the barren egg, whilst it is included within the fowl and is connected with her, is nourished and preserved by its internal and inherent principle, and made to increase (not otherwise than the eggs of fishes and frogs, exposed externally, increase and are perfected), and to be transformed from a small speck into a yelk, and transferred from the ovary to the uterus (though it have no connexion with the uterus), there to be endued with albumen, and at length to be completed with its chalazæ, membranes, and shell.

But what that may be in the hypenemic egg as well as in the fruitful one, which in a similar manner and from the same causes or principles produces the same effects; whether it be the same soul, or the same part of the soul, or something else inherent in both, must be worthy of inquiry: it seems probable, however, that the same things should proceed from similar causes.

Although the egg whilst it is being produced is contained within the fowl, and is connected with the ovary of the mother by a pedicle, and is nourished by blood-vessels, it is not therefore to be spoken of as a part of the mother; nor is it to be held as living and vegetating through her vital principle, but by a virtue peculiar to itself and an internal principle; just as fungi, and mosses, and the misletoe, which although they adhere to vegetables and are nourished by the same sap as their leaves and germs, still form no part of these vegetables, nor are they ever so esteemed. Aristotle, with a view to meeting these difficulties, concedes a vegetative soul to the egg, even to the hypenemic one. He says:[204] “Females, too, and all things that live are endowed with the vegetative virtue of the soul, as has been often said; and therefore this [hypenemic] egg is perfect as the conception of a plant, but imperfect as that of an animal.” And he inculcates the same doctrine elsewhere,[205] when he asks: “In what manner or sense are hypenemic eggs said to live? For they cannot do so in the same sense as fruitful eggs, otherwise a living thing might be engendered by their agency. Nor do they comport themselves like wood or stone; because these perish by a kind of corruption, as having formerly had life in a certain manner. It is positive, therefore, that hypenemic eggs have a certain kind of soul potentially; but what? of necessity that ultimate soul, which is the appanage of vegetables; for this equally inheres in all things, in animals as well as vegetables.”

But it is not the same soul that is found in hypenemic as in fruitful eggs; otherwise would a pullet be indifferently produced from both; but how and in what respects the soul attached to each is different from the other, Aristotle does not sufficiently explain, when he inquires:[206] “Wherefore are all the parts of an egg present in the hypenemic egg, and it still incapable of producing a chick? because,” he replies, “it is requisite that it have a sensitive soul.” As if in fruitful eggs, besides the vegetative soul, there were a sensitive soul present. Unless you understand the vegetative soul as inhering _actually_ in the fruitful egg, which contains the sensitive soul within it _potentially_; whence the animal, and the sensible parts of the animal are subsequently produced. But neither do writers satisfactorily untie this knot, nor set the mind of the inquirer free from the difficulties that entangle him. For he sees that the egg is a true animal seed, according to this sentence of the Stagyrite:[207] “In those things endowed with life, in which the male and female sexes are not distinct, the seed is already present as a conception. I entitle _conception_ the first mixture from the male and female (the analogue of the vegetable seed therefore). Wherefore from one seed there is engendered one body, as from one egg one animal.”

It appears, consequently, that for one egg there is one soul or vital principle.[208] But whether is this that of the mother, or that of the father, or a mixture of the two? And here the greatest difficulties are occasioned by those eggs that are produced by the concurrence of animals of different species, as, for example, of the common fowl and pheasant. In such an egg, I ask, is it the vital principle of the father or that of the mother, which inheres? or is it a mixture of the two? But how can vital principles be mingled, if the vital principle (as form) be act and substance, which it is, according to Aristotle? For no one will deny, whatever it be ultimately which in the fruitful egg is the beginning and cause of the effects we witness, that it is a substance susceptible of divers powers, forces, or faculties, and even conditions,--virtues, vices, health and sickness. For some eggs are esteemed to be longer, others shorter lived; some engender chickens endowed with the qualities and health of body that distinguished their parents, others produce young that are predisposed to disease. Nor is it to be said that this is from any fault of the mother, seeing that the diseases of the father or male parent are transferred to the progeny, although he contributes nothing to the matter of the egg; the procreative or plastic force which renders the egg fruitful alone proceeding from the male; none of its parts being contributed by him. For the semen which is emitted by the male during intercourse does by no means enter the uterus of the female, in which the egg is perfected; nor can it, indeed, (as I first announced, and Fabricius agrees with me,) by any manner or way get into the inner recesses of that organ, much less ascend as high as the ovary, near the waist or middle of the body, so that besides its peculiar virtue it might impart a portion of matter to the numerous ova whose rudiments are there contained. For we know, and are assured by unquestionable experience, that several ova are fecundated by one and the same connexion,--not those only that are met with in the uterus and ovary, but those likewise that are in some sort not yet begun, as we shall state by and by, and indeed, as we have already had occasion to assert in our history.

If, therefore, an egg be rendered fruitful by its proper vital principle, or be endowed with its own inherent fecundating force, whence or whereby either a common fowl, or a hybrid betwixt the fowl and the pheasant is produced, and that either male or female, like the father or the mother, healthy or diseased; we must infallibly conclude that the egg, even when contained in the ovary, does not live by the vital principle of the mother, but is, like the youth who comes of age, made independent even from its first appearance; as the acorn taken from the oak, and the seeds of plants in general, are no longer to be considered parts of the tree or herb that has supported them, but things made in their own right, and which already enjoy life in virtue of a proper and inherent vegetative power.

But if we now admit that there is a living principle in a fertile egg, it may become matter of discussion whether it is the same living principle which already inheres in the egg that will inhere in the future chick, or whether it is a different one that actuates each? For it is matter of necessity that we admit the inherence of a certain principle which constitutes and causes the egg to grow, and which farther engenders and makes the chick to increase. We have to inquire, therefore, whether the animating principle of the egg and of the chick be one and the same, or several and different? And then, were several vital principles recognized, some appertaining to the egg, others to the chick, we should next have to inquire: whence and at what epoch the animating principle of the chick entered it? and what is it in the egg which causes the cicatricula to dilate before the advent of the living principle; which draws the eye of the vitellus upwards, as stated, and produces the colliquament, changes the constitution of the fluids of the egg, and preordains everything for the construction of the future chick before there is even a vestige of it to be seen? Or whence shall we say the aliment fit for the embryo is derived, and by which it is nourished and made to grow, before it is yet in being? For these acts are seen to be the work of the vegetative soul of the embryo, and have reference to the coming pullet, ensuring its nutrition and growth. And again, when the embryo is begun, or the chick is half formed, what is it which constitutes that embryo or that chick one and continuous and connex with the liquids of the egg? What nourishes and makes the chick to grow, and preserves the fluids that are fit for its nutrition from putrefaction, and prepares, and liquefies, and concocts them?

If the vital principle be the act of the organic body possessing life _in potentia_, it seems incredible that this principle can inhere in the chick before something in the shape of an organized body is extant. Nor is it more credible that the vital principle of the egg and chick can be identical, if the vital principle be conservative of that only to which it belongs; but the egg and the chick are different things, and manifest dissimilar and even opposite vital acts, in so much so that one appears to be produced by the destruction of the other. Or should we perchance maintain that the same principle and cause of life inheres in both, in the pullet half fashioned, to wit, and the egg half consumed, as if it were one and a simple act of the same body; or as if from parts producing one natural body, one soul or vital principle also arose, which was all in all, as is commonly said, and all in each particular part? Just as with leaves and fruit conspicuous on the stem of a tree, wherever a division is made we still say that the principle or first cause of the slip and of the whole tree is the same; the leaves and the fruit are, as it were, the form and end, the trunk of the tree the beginning. So too in a line, wherever a division is made, this will become the end or boundary of the part behind it, the commencement of the part before it. And the same thing is seen to obtain in respect of quality and motion, that is to say, in every kind of transmutation and generation.

So much at this time upon these topics, which will by and by engage us at greater length, when we come to speak of the nature of the living principle of the embryos of animals in general; of its being; of its accession in respect of the how and the when; and how it is all in all, and all in each particular part, the same and yet different. Points which we shall determine from numerous observations.

EXERCISE THE TWENTY-SEVENTH.

_The egg is not the product of the uterus, but of the vital principle._

“As we have said,” says Fabricius,[209] “that the action of the stomach was to convert the food into chyle, and the action of the testicles to produce semen, because in the stomach we find chyle, in the testes semen, so do we definitely assert that the egg is the product of the uterus of birds, because it is found in this part. The organ and seat of the generation of eggs is, therefore, intimately known and obvious to us. And farther, inasmuch as there are two uteri in birds, one superior and the other inferior, and these are considerably different from one another, and consequently perform different offices, it is in like manner clear what particular action is to be ascribed to each. The superior is devoted to the production of the yelk, the inferior to that of the albumen and remaining parts, or of the perfect egg, as lies obvious to sense; for in the superior uterus we never find aught beyond a multitude of yelks, nor in the inferior uterus, other than entire and perfect eggs. But these are not all the functions of the uteri as it appears, but the following are farther to be noted and enumerated, viz.: the increase of the egg, which succeeds immediately upon its production, and proceeds until it is perfected and acquires its proper dimensions. For the fowl does not naturally lay an egg until it has become complete and has acquired its due dimensions. The actions of the uteri are consequently the increase as well as the engenderment of the egg; but increase supposes and includes nutrition, as is obvious. And since all generation is the effect of the concurrence of two, viz., the agent and the matter, the agent in the generation of an egg is nothing else than the instruments or organs aforesaid, to wit, the double uterus; and the matter is nothing but the blood.”

Now whilst I admit the action of the uterus to be in a manner the generation of the egg, I by no means allow that the egg is nourished and increased by this organ. And this, both for the reasons already alleged by us when we treated of the vital principle of the egg, which is that which nourishes it, and also because it appears little likely (according to Aristotle,[210] it is impossible,) that all the internal parts of the egg, in all their dimensions, should be fashioned and made to increase by an external agent, such as the uterus is with reference to the egg; for how, I beseech you, can that which is extrinsic arrange the natural matter in things that are internal, and supply fresh matter according to the several dimensions in the place of that which has been lost? How can anything be affected or moved by that which does not touch it? Wherefore, without question, the same things happen in the engenderment of eggs which take place in the beginning of all living things whatsoever, viz.: they are primarily constituted by external and preexisting beings; but so soon as they are endowed with life, they suffice for their own nourishment and increase, and this in virtue of peculiar inherent forces, innate, implanted from the beginning.

What has already been said of the vital principle appears clearly to proclaim that the egg is neither the work of the uterus, nor governed by that organ; for it is manifest that the vegetative principle inheres even in the hypenemic egg, inasmuch as we have seen that this egg is nourished and is preserved, increases and vegetates, all of which acts are indications of the presence of the principle mentioned. But neither from the mother nor the uterus can this principle proceed, seeing that the egg has no connexion or union with them, but is free and unconnected, like a son emancipated from pupillage, rolling round within the cavity of the uterus and perfecting itself, even as the seeds of plants are perfected in the bosom of the earth, viz., by an internal vegetative principle, which can be nothing else than the vegetative soul.

And it will appear all the more certain that it is possessed of a soul or vital principle, if we consider by what compact, what moving power, the round and ample yelk, detached from the cluster of the ovary, descends through the infundibulum--a most slender tube composed of a singularly delicate membrane, and possessed of no motory fibres--and opening a path for itself, approaches the uterus through such a number of straits, arrived in which it continues to be nourished, and grows and is surrounded with albumen. Now as there is no motory organ discoverable either in the ovary which expels the vitellus, or in the infundibulum which transmits, or in the uterus which attracts it, and as the egg is not connected with the uterus, nor yet with the ovary by means of vessels, nor hangs from either by an umbilical cord, as Fabricius truly states, and demonstrates most satisfactorily, what remains for us contemplating such great and important processes but that we exclaim with the poet:[211]

’Tis innate soul sustains; and mind infused
Through every part, that actuates the mass.

And although the rudiments of eggs, which we have said are mere specks, and have compared to millet seeds in size, are connected with the ovary by means of veins and arteries, in the same manner as seeds are attached to plants, and consequently seem to be part and parcel of the fowl, and to live and be nourished after the manner of her other parts, it is nevertheless manifest, that seeds once separated from the plants which have produced them, are no longer regarded as parts of these, but like children come of age and freed from leading-strings, they are maintained and governed by their own inherent capacities.

But of this matter we shall speak more fully, when we come to treat of the soul or living principle of the embryo in general, and of the excellence and divine nature of the vegetative soul from a survey of its operations, all of which are carried on with such foresight, art, and divine intelligence; which, indeed, surpass our powers of understanding not less than Deity surpasses man, and are allowed, by common consent, to be so wonderful that their ineffable lustre is in no way to be penetrated by the dull edge of our apprehension.

What shall we say of the animalcules which are engendered in our bodies, and which no one doubts are ruled and made to vegetate by a peculiar vital principle (anima)? of this kind are lumbrici, ascarides, lice, nits, syrones, acari, &c.; or what of the worms which are produced from plants and their fruits, as from gall-nuts, the dog-rose, and various others? “For in almost all dry things growing moist, or moist things becoming dry, an animal may be engendered.”[212] It certainly cannot be that the living principles of the animals which arise in gall-nuts existed in the oak, although these animals live attached to the oak, and derive their sustenance from its juices. In like manner it is credible that the rudiments of eggs exist in the ovarian cluster by their proper vital principle, not by that of the mother, although they are connected with her body by means of arteries and veins, and are nourished by the same food as herself. Because, as we have stated in our history, all the vitellary specks do not increase together, like the grapes of a bunch, or the corns of an ear of wheat, as if they were pervaded by one common actuating force or concocting and forming cause; they come on one after another, as if they grew by their own peculiar energy, each that is most in advance severing itself from the rest, changing its colour and consistence, and from a white speck becoming a yelk, in regular and determinate sequence. And what is more particularly astonishing is that which we witness among pigeons and certain other birds, where two yelks only come to maturity upon the ovarian cluster together, one of which, for the major part, produces a male, the other a female, an abundance of other vitellary specks remaining stationary in the ovary, until the term comes round for two more to increase and make ready for a new birth. It is as if each successive pair received fertility from the repeated addresses of the male; as if the two became possessed of the vital principle together; which, once infused, they forthwith increase spontaneously, and govern themselves, living of their own not through their mother’s right. And, in sooth, what else can you conceive working, disposing, selecting, and perfecting, as respects this pair of vitellary papulæ and none others, but a peculiar vital principle? And although they attract nourishment from the mother, they still do so no otherwise than as plants draw food from the ground, or as the embryo obtains it from the albumen and vitellus.

Lastly, since the papula existing in the ovary receives fecundity from the access of the male, and this of such a kind that it passes into the form and likeness of the concurring male, whether he were a common cock or a pheasant, and there is as great diversity in the papulæ as there are males of different kinds; what shall we hold as inherent in the papulæ themselves, by whose virtue they are distinguished from one another and from the mother? Undoubtedly it must be the vital principle by which they are distinguished both from each other and from the mother.

It is in a similar manner that fungi and parasitic plants live upon trees. And besides, we in our own bodies frequently suffer from cancers, sarcoses, melicerides, and other tumours of the same description, which are nourished and grow as it seems by their own inherent vegetative principle, the true or natural parts of the body meantime shrinking and perishing. And this apparently because these tumours attract all the nourishment to themselves, and defraud the other parts of the body of their nutritious juices or proper genius. Whence the familiar names of phagedæna and lupus; and Hippocrates, by the words το θεῑον, perhaps understood those diseases which arise from poison or contagion; as if in these there was a certain vitality and divine principle inherent, by which they increase and through contagion generate similar diseases even in other bodies. Aristotle[213] therefore says: “all things are full of soul;” and elsewhere he seems to think that “even the winds have a kind of life, and a birth and a death.”[214] But there is no doubt that the vitellus, when it is once cast loose and freed from all connexion with the fowl, during its passage through the infundibulum and its stay in the cavity of the uterus, attracts a sluggish moisture to itself, which it absorbs, and by which it is nourished; there too it surrounds itself with albumen, furnishes itself with membranes and a shell, and finally perfects itself. All of which things, rightly weighed, we must needs conclude that it is possessed by a proper vital principle (anima).

EXERCISE THE TWENTY-EIGHTH.

_The egg is not produced without the hen._

Leaving points that are doubtful, and disquisitions bearing upon the general question, we now approach more definite and obvious matters.

And first, it is manifest that a fruitful egg cannot be produced without the concurrence of a cock and hen: without the hen no egg can be formed; without the cock it cannot become fruitful. But this view is opposed to the opinion of those who derive the origin of animals from the slime of the ground. And truly when we see that the numerous parts concurring in the act of generation,--the testes and vasa deferentia in the male, the ovarium and uterus and blood-vessels supplying them in the female--are all contrived with such signal art and forethought, and everything requisite to reproduction in a determinate direction--situation, form, temperature,--arranged so admirably, it seems certain, as nature does nothing in vain, nor works in any round-about way when a shorter path lies open to her, that an egg can be produced in no other manner than that in which we now see it engendered, viz., by the concurring act of the cock and hen. Neither, in like manner, in the present constitution of things, can a cock or hen ever be produced otherwise than from an egg. Thus the cock and the hen exist for the sake of the egg, and the egg, in the same way, is their antecedent cause; it were therefore reasonable to ask, with Plutarch, which of these was the prior, the egg or the fowl? Now the fowl is prior by nature, but the egg is prior in time; for that which is the more excellent is naturally first; but that from which a certain thing is produced must be reputed first in respect of time. Or we may say: this egg is older than that fowl (the fowl having been produced from it); and, on the contrary, this fowl existed before that egg (which she has laid). And this is the round that makes the race of the common fowl eternal; now pullet, now egg, the series is continued in perpetuity; from frail and perishing individuals an immortal species is engendered. By these, and means like to these, do we see many inferior or terrestrial things brought to emulate the perpetuity of superior or celestial things.

And whether we say, or do not say, that the vital principle (anima) inheres in the egg, it still plainly appears, from the circuit indicated, that there must be some principle influencing this revolution from the fowl to the egg and from the egg back to the fowl, which gives them perpetuity. Now this, according to Aristotle’s views,[215] is analogous to the element of the stars; and is that which makes parents engender, and gives fertility to their ova; and the same principle, Proteus like, is present under a different form, in the parents as in the eggs. For, as the same intelligence or spirit which incessantly actuates the mighty mass of the universe, and compels the same sun from the rising to the setting, in his passage over the various regions of the earth, so also is there a vis enthea, a divine principle inherent in our common poultry, showing itself now as the plastic, now as the nutritive, and now as the augmentative force, though it is always and at all times present as the conservative and vegetative force, and now assumes the form of the fowl, now that of the egg; but the same virtue continues to inhere in either to eternity. And although some animals arise spontaneously, or as is commonly said from putrefaction, and some are produced from the female alone, for Pliny[216] says: “in some genera, as in certain fishes, there are no males, every one taken being found full of roe;” still whatever is produced from a perfect egg is so in virtue of the indispensable concurrence of male and female. Aristotle[217] consequently says: “the grand principles of generation must be held to be the male and the female;” the first two principles of the egg are therefore the male and the female; and the common point or conception of these is the egg, which combines the virtues of both parents. We cannot, in fact, conceive an egg without the concurrence of a male and female fowl, any more than we can conceive fruit to be produced without a tree. We therefore see individuals, males as well as females, existing for the sake of preparing eggs, that the species may be perennial, though their authors pass away. And it is indeed obvious, that the parents are no longer youthful, or beautiful, or lusty, and fitted to enjoy life, than whilst they possess the power of producing and fecundating eggs, and, by the medium of these, of engendering their like. But when they have accomplished this grand purpose of nature, they have already attained to the height, the ακμὴ of their being,--the final end of their existence has been accomplished; after this, effete and useless, they begin to wither, and, as if cast off and forsaken of nature and the Deity, they grow old, and, a-weary of their lives, they hasten to their end. How different the males when they make themselves up for intercourse, and swelling with desire are excited by the venereal impulse! It is surprising to see with what passion they are inflamed; and then how trimly they are feathered, how vainglorious they show themselves, how proud of their strength, and how pugnacious they prove! But, the grand business of life accomplished, how suddenly, with failing strength and pristine fervour quenched, do they take in their swelling sails, and, from late pugnacity, grow timid and desponding! Even during the season of jocund masking in Venus’s domains, male animals in general are depressed by intercourse, and become submissive and pusillanimous, as if reminded that in imparting life to others, they were contributing to their own destruction. The cock alone, replete with spirit and fecundity, still shows himself alert and gay; clapping his wings, and crowing triumphantly, he sings the nuptial song at each of his new espousals! yet even he, after some length of time in Venus’s service, begins to fail; like the veteran soldier, he by and by craves discharge from active duty. And the hen, too, like the tree that is past bearing, becomes effete, and is finally exhausted.

EXERCISE THE TWENTY-NINTH.

_Of the manner, according to Aristotle, in which a perfect and fruitful egg is produced by the male and female fowl._

Shortly before we said that a fruitful egg is not engendered spontaneously, that it is not produced save by a hen, and by her only through the concurrence of the cock. This agrees with the matter of the following sentence of Aristotle:[218] “The principles of generation have particular reference to male and female; the male as supplying the original of motion and reproduction; the female as furnishing the matter.”

In our view, however, an egg is a true generative seed, analogous to the seed of a plant; the original conception arising between the two parents, and being the mixed fruit or product of both. For as the egg is not formed without the hen, so is it not made fruitful without the concurrence of the cock.

We have therefore to inquire how the egg is produced by the hen and is fertilized by the cock; for we have seen that hypenemic eggs, and these animated too, are engendered by the hen, but that they are not prolific without the intercourse of the cock. The male and the female consequently, both set their mark upon a fruitful egg; but not, I believe, in the way in which Aristotle imagines, viz.: that the male concurs in the motion and commencement of generation only, the female supplying nothing but the matter, because the contrary of this is obvious in hypenemic eggs. And although it be true as he says: “That male and female differ in respect of reason, because the faculty of each is different, and, in respect of sense, because certain parts differ likewise. The difference according to reason boasts this distinction, that the male has the power of engendering in another; the female has only the power of engendering in herself; whereby it comes that that which is engendered is produced, this being contained in that which engenders. But as males and females are distinguished by certain faculties and functions, and as an instrument is indispensable to every office, and the parts of the body are adapted as instruments of the functions, it was necessary that certain parts should be set aside for purposes of procreation and coition, and these differing from one another, whereby the male differs from the female.”

It does not, however, follow from thence, that what he appears inclined to infer is correct, where he says: “The male is the efficient agent, and by the motion of his generative virtue (genitura), creates what is intended from the matter contained in the female; for the female always supplies the matter, the male the power of creation, and this it is which constitutes one male, another female. The body and the bulk, therefore, are necessarily supplied by the female; nothing of the kind is required from the male; for it is not even requisite that the instrument, nor the efficient agent itself, be present in the thing that is produced. The body, then, proceeds from the female, the vital principle (anima) from the male; for the essence of every body is its vital principle (anima).” But an egg, and that animated, is engendered by the pullet without the concurrence of the male; whence it appears that the hen too, or the female, may be the efficient agent, and that all creative force or vital power (anima) is not derived exclusively from the male. This view indeed appears to be supported by the instance quoted by Aristotle himself, for he says:[219] “Those animals not of the same species, which copulate, (which those animals do that correspond in their seasons of heat and times of uterogestation, and do not differ greatly in their size,) produce their first young like themselves, but partaking of the species of both parents; of this description is the progeny of the fox and dog, of the partridge and common fowl, &c.; but in the course of time from diversity results diversity, and the progeny of these different parents at length acquires the form of the female; in the same way as foreign seed is changed at last in conformity with the nature of the soil, which supplies matter and body to the seed.”

From this it appears, that in the generation of the partridge with the common fowl it is not the male alone that is efficient, but the female also; inasmuch as it is not the male form only, but one common or subordinate that appears in the hybrid, as like the female as it is like the male in vital endowment (anima), and bodily form. But the vital endowment (anima) is that which is the true form and species of an animal.