Page:The Works of Aristotle - Vol. 6 - Opuscula (1913).djvu/88

817$a$ harder, and stiffer, while the female will be weaker but more productive. We ought also to inquire whether the two kinds are found in combination in plants as Empedoclcs states that they are. But my opinion is that this is not the case, for things which mingle together ought first to be simple and separate, and so the male will be separate and the female separate; they afterwards mingle, and the mingling will only take place when it is produced by generation. A plant, therefore, would have been discovered before the mingling had taken place, and it ought therefore to be at the same time an active and a passive agent in the process of production. The two sexes cannot be found combined in any plant; if this were so, a plant would be more perfect than an animal, because it would not require anything outside itself in order to generate; whereas the plant does require the right season of the year and sunshine and its natural temperature more than anything, requiring them at the time when the tree sprouts. The nutritive principle in plants is derived from the earth, the generative principle is derived from the sun. Wherefore Anaxagoras said that the seeds of plants are borne down from the air, and other philosophers who profess the same doctrine call the earth the mother and the sun the father of plants. But we must suppose that the mingling of the male and the female in plants takes place in some other way, because the seed of a plant resembles the embryo in animals, being a mixture of the male and female elements. And just as in an egg there exists the force to generate the chicken and the material of its nutriment up to the time when it reaches perfection and emerges from the egg, and the female lays the egg in a short space of time; so too with the plant. And Empedocles is right when he said the tall trees bear