[3] But such a statement is neither true nor worth the hearing. For just as in uncultivated plants, such as wild vines and figs and olives, Nature has implanted the principles, though crude and imperfect, of cultivated fruits, so on irrational animals she has bestowed a love of offspring, though imperfect and insufficient as regards the sense of justice and one which does not advance beyond utility; but in the case of man, a rational and social animal, Nature, by introducing him to a conception of justice and law and to the worship of the gods and to the founding of cities and to human kindness, has furnished noble and beautiful and fruitful seeds of all these in the joy we have in our children and our love of them, emotions which accompany their first beginnings; and these qualities are found in the very constitution of their bodies. For although Nature is everywhere exact and workmanlike with no deficiency or superfluity,
and has, as Erasistratus
1
said,
no trumpery about her; yet when it comes to the processes of procreation, it is impossible to describe them in a fitting manner, and perhaps it would not be decent to fix our attention too precisely upon the names and designations of these forbidden topics, but it is proper that we should apprehend the admirable adaptation of those hidden and concealed parts to the functions of procreation and bringing to birth. However, the production
2
and administering of milk is sufficient proof of Nature’s foresight and care. For in women the amount of blood exceeds the use for it because of the sluggishness and paucity of their breath and, coming to the surface, wanders at large and burdens them; at other times it is Nature’s custom and care to discharge the blood at monthly periods by opening canals and channels for it, to lighten and cleanse the rest of the body and in season to render the womb fertile ground for ploughing, as it were, and sowing. But when the womb receives the seed as it encounters it and enfolds it and it has taken root
3
there (
for the umbilical cord grows at first in the womb, as Democritus
4
says,
as an anchorage against the swell and drift, a cable and vine for the fruit now conceived that is to be), Nature shuts the monthly canals of purification and, taking the drifting blood, uses it for nourishment and irrigates
5
the embryo,
6
which already is beginning to be formed and shaped, until, having been carried the number of months proper to its growth within the womb, it needs other nourishment and abiding-place. At that time, then, Nature, more carefully than any gardener or irrigator, turns and changes the blood from one use to another and has in readiness subterranean springs, as it were, of a fresh-flowing stream; and the springs receive the blood in no perfunctory or unemotional manner, but are even able, by the gentle heat and soft womanliness of respiration, to digest, mollify, and change it; for such a disposition and temper does the breast have within it. Yet there are no outflowing streams of milk nor spouts which discharge it all at once,
7
but the breast terminates in flesh that is full of springs and can filter the milk gently through minute passage-ways; and it thus gives a store of food that is comfortable for the infant’s mouth and pleasant for it to touch and to grasp.
But there would be no benefit in these many kinds of equipment for procreation, or in such ways and means, such zeal and forethought, if Nature had not implanted in mothers affection and care for their offspring.
the poet tells no falsehood if it is about a new-born babe that he speaks.
9
For there is nothing so imperfect, so helpless, so naked, so shapeless, so foul, as man observed at birth, to whom alone, one might almost say, Nature has given not even a clean passage to the light
10
; but, defiled with blood and covered with filth and resembling more one just slain than one just born, he is an object for none to touch or lift up or kiss or embrace except for someone who loves with a natural affection. Therefore, while the other animals have their dugs hanging loose beneath the belly, in women they grow above on the breast where mothers can kiss and embrace and fondle the infant, the inference being that the end and aim of bearing and rearing a child is not utility, but affection.
There is nothing more wretched than a man,
8
Of all that breathes and creeps upon the earth -
De Amore Prolis. Plutarch. William Clark Helmbold (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1939.
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Funding provided by The National Endowment for the Humanities.