Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/258

244 doing. This was a favourable variation and so survived. It should be noted that it clearly belongs to the period of Strife, and not, like the oxen with human heads, to that of Love. The survival of the fittest was the law of evolution in both periods.

117. The distinction of the sexes was a result of the differentiation brought about by Strife. Empedokles differed from the theory given by Parmenides in his Second Part (§ 95) in holding that the warm element preponderated in the male sex, and that males were conceived in the warmer part of the uterus (fr. 65). The foetus was formed partly from the male and partly from the female semen (fr. 63): and it was just the fact that the substance of a new being's body was divided between the male and the female that produced desire when the two were brought together by sight (fr. 64). A certain symmetry of the pores in the male and female semen is necessary for procreation, and from its absence Empedokles explained the sterility of mules. The children resemble that parent who contributed most to their formation. The influence of statues and pictures was also noted, however, as modifying the appearance of the offspring. Twins and triplets were due to a superabundance and division of the semen.

Empedokles held that the foetus was enveloped in a membrane, and that its formation began on the thirty-sixth day and was complete on the forty-ninth. The heart was formed first, the nails and such things last. Respiration did not begin till the time of birth, when the fluids round the foetus were withdrawn. Birth took place in the ninth or seventh month, because the day had been originally nine months long, and afterwards seven. Milk arises on the tenth day of the eighth month (fr. 68).

Death was the final separation by Strife of the fire and