been often said j 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, 1 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, other- wise 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 hype- nemic eggs have a certain kind of soul potentially ; but what ? of necessity that ultimate soul, which is the appanage of vege- tables; 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 : 2 " 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 poten- tially; 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 : 3 " In those things endowed with life, in which the male and fe- male 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. 4 But whether is this that of the mother, or that
1 Gener. Anim. lib. ii, cap. 4. 2 Ibid. lib. ii, cap. 4. 3 Ibid. lib. i, cap. 20. 4 [The word anima of the original, which is translated soul above, I shall in what follows generally render vital principle. ED.]
