Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/457

 (aiiima) to the egg, and that combined from the souls of the parents, these being occasionally of different species, the horse and the ass, the common fowl and the pheasant, for example, this vital principle not being a mixture but only an union ; and allow the pullet to be produced in the manner of the seeds of plants, by the same efficient principle by which the perfect animal is afterwards preserved through the rest of its life, so that it would be absurd to say that the ftetus grew by one vital principle without the uterus or ovum, and by another within the uterus or ovum did we grant all this, I say (although it is invalid and undeserving faith), our history of generation from the egg, nevertheless, upsets the foundations of the doctrine, and shows it to be entirely false ; namely, that the egg is produced from the semen of the cock and hen, or that any seminal fluid from either one or other is carried to the uterus, or that the embryo or any particle of it is fashioned from any seminal fluid transported to the uterus, or that the semen galli, as efficient cause and plastic agent, is anywhere stored up or reserved within the body of the hen to serve when attracted into the uterus, as the matter and nourishment whence the foetus which it has produced should continue to grow. The conditions are wanting which he himself admits, after Aristotle, to be necessary, viz., that the embryo be consti- tuted by that which is actual and preexists, and the chick by that which is present and exists in the place where the chick is first formed- and increases ; further, that it be produced by that which is accomplished immediately and conjunctly, and is the same by which the chick is preserved and grows through the whole of its life. For the semen galli (and whether it is viewed as animate or inanimate is of no moment) is nowise present and conjunct either in the egg or in the uterus; neither in the matter from which the chick is fashioned, nor yet in the chick itself already begun, and as contributing either to its formation or perfection.

He dreams, too, when he seeks illustrations of his opinions on an animated semen from such instances as the seeds of plants and acorns; because he does not perceive the differ- ence alleged by Aristotle 1 between the " geniture" admitted in

1 De Gener. Anim. lib. il, cap. 1.