What the Body Keeps Hidden

Since we are speaking of the inward parts, something must be said about the womb and about conception as well, so that we do not seem to have passed anything over. These things lie hidden out of sight, but they cannot lie hidden from perception and understanding. In males the vessel that holds the seed is double, and it lies a little deeper than the reservoir for the body’s foul moisture. For just as there are two kidneys, and likewise two testicles, so there are two seminal vessels, joined together in a single structure — as we see in the bodies of animals when they are killed and opened up. The one on the right holds male seed, the one on the left female; and in general, throughout the whole body, the right side is the male side and the left the female. Some think the seed itself flows into the generative vessel from the marrow alone, others from the whole body, and thickens there. But the human mind cannot grasp how this happens. In women, in the same way, the womb divides into two parts, which spread out in opposite directions, curve back, and coil around like a ram’s horns. The part that twists to the right is the male side; the one that twists to the left, the female. [a]

Varro and Aristotle think that conception happens like this. They say that seed is present not only in males but in females too, and that this is why children are usually born looking like their mothers; but that the woman’s seed is purified blood, and that if it is properly mixed with the man’s, the two thicken and curdle together and are given shape. They say the heart is formed first, since all life and all wisdom are in it, and that the whole work is finished on the fortieth day. Perhaps these conclusions were gathered from miscarriages. In the young of birds, though, there is no doubt that the eyes are formed first, as we have often found in eggs. So I do not think it can be otherwise than that the shaping begins at the head.

They think the likeness in a child’s body comes about this way. When the two seeds are mixed together and grow into one, if the man’s has the upper hand the child comes out like the father, whether it is a boy or a girl; if the woman’s prevails, the child answers to the mother’s image, whichever sex it is. The one that prevails is the more plentiful of the two, for it somehow embraces and encloses the other, and this is usually why a child shows the features of one parent only. But if the mixture is even, from an equal amount of seed on both sides, then the features are mixed as well, so that the child they share seems either to take after neither — because it does not have the whole of either one — or to take after both, because it has borrowed a part from each. For in the bodies of animals we see the colors of the parents either blended, so that a third color comes out that is like neither parent, or else both showing at once, so that the whole body is varied with patches of different colors in an agreeing mixture.

Mismatched natures are thought to come about in this way. If seed of male stock happens to fall into the left side of the womb, the opinion is that a boy is indeed born, but that because he was conceived on the female side he has something feminine about him, more than a man’s dignity allows: striking beauty, or too fair a skin, or a smooth body, or delicate limbs, or short stature, or a thin voice, or a weak spirit, or several of these. In the same way, if seed of the female sex has flowed into the right side, a girl is born; but since she was conceived on the male side, she has something manly about her, beyond what the make-up of her sex allows: strong limbs, or too great a height, or dark coloring, or a hairy face, or an unbecoming look, or a powerful voice, or a bold spirit, or several of these. But if the male seed reaches the right side and the female the left, both children come out right, so that women keep the beauty proper to their own nature in every respect, and men keep a man’s strength in mind as well as in body.

How wonderful this arrangement of God’s is: that to preserve each kind of creature he contrived two sexes, male and female, so that when they are joined to one another through the enticements of pleasure a succeeding generation is brought forth, and the condition of mortality does not put out every kind of living thing. But more strength was given to the males, so that women might be more easily compelled to bear the yoke of marriage. So the man is named vir, because there is greater force in him than in a woman, and courage got its name from that. In the same way woman, mulier, comes (as Varro explains it) from softness, with one letter changed and another dropped, as though she were called mollier. Once she has conceived, and the birth begins to draw near, her breasts swell and are stretched full with sweet juices, and her fruitful chest overflows with springs of milk to feed the child being born. It would not have been fitting for it to be otherwise: a wise creature should draw its food from the heart. And this too was most skillfully arranged, that a white, rich fluid should water the tenderness of a new body until the child is fitted with teeth and strengthened for taking heartier food. But let us return to our subject, and briefly explain what is left.

I could set out for you now the wonderful design of the organs of generation themselves, if a sense of shame did not call me back from talk of that kind. So let the parts that are shameful be covered by us with a garment of modesty. On this subject one complaint is enough: that godless and unholy men commit the worst of outrages when they take a divine and wonderful work of God — provided and carried out by unimaginable skill for the continuing of the race — and turn it either to the filthiest profits or to the shameful acts of obscene lust, so that they now look for nothing from a most holy thing except an empty and barren pleasure. [i]

What about the other parts of the body? Are they without order and beauty? Look at the flesh rounded off into the buttocks: how well suited it is to the business of sitting, and firmer there than in the other limbs, so that it does not give way to the bones under the pressure of the body’s bulk. Then the thighs, drawn out long and strengthened with broader muscles so that they can more easily hold up the weight of the body; and as the thigh gradually narrows, the knees bound it, and their shapely joints supply a bend perfectly fitted for walking and sitting. The lower legs, too, are not drawn out evenly, which would leave the feet looking ungainly; they are strengthened and set off at once by well-turned calves that stand out gently and taper away.

In the soles of the feet the plan is the same as in the hands, and yet very different. Since these are, so to speak, the foundations of the whole body, the marvelous Craftsman did not make them round, or a man would not be able to stand, or would need other feet to stand on, as four-footed animals do. He shaped them longer and more spread out, so that they would hold the body steady by being flat — which is where their name comes from. The toes are the same number as the fingers, more for looks than for use; that is why they are joined together, short, and set in a graded row. And the largest of them, since it would not have been fitting for it to stand apart from the rest as it does on the hand, has been set in the row so that it seems to differ from the others only in size and by the small gap between. This handsome kinship among them does no small work in strengthening the tread of the feet, for we cannot break into a run unless our toes press against the ground and take purchase on the soil to gather momentum and a spring. I seem to have explained everything whose design can be understood. Now I come to the things that are either uncertain or obscure.

Plainly there are many things in the body whose force and purpose no one can make out except the one who made them. Can anyone suppose he is able to say what the use is, and what the effect, of that thin, transparent membrane in which the stomach is netted over and wrapped? Or of the twofold likeness of the kidneys, which Varro says are named renes because streams of foul moisture rise from them — which is far from the truth, since they rise on either side of the spine, are joined together, and are set apart from the intestines? What is the spleen for? What is the liver for — organs that look as though they were curdled together out of disordered blood? What of the very bitter fluid of the gall? What of the heart? Unless, that is, we happen to think that the men are to be believed who hold that the feeling of anger is placed in the gall, fear in the heart, and joy in the spleen. They will also have it that the liver’s task is to digest the food in the stomach by its embrace and its warmth; and some think that the desires of sexual passion are held in the liver. [m]

First of all, human perception, sharp as it is, cannot make these things out, because their functions lie hidden; and when they are laid open they do not show what they are for. If they did, then perhaps the gentler animals would have no gall at all, or less of it than the wild beasts; the more timid would have more heart, the more lustful more liver, the more playful more spleen. Just as we are aware that we hear with our ears, that we see with our eyes, that we smell with our nostrils, so we should certainly be aware that we are angry with the gall, that we desire with the liver, that we rejoice with the spleen. Since, then, we have no perception at all of which part those feelings come from, it is possible that they come from somewhere else, and that these organs do something other than what we suppose.

All the same, we cannot prove that the men who argue about these things are speaking falsely. But I think that everything having to do with the movements of the mind and the soul is so obscure and so deep that it is beyond a man’s power to see through it clearly. This much, though, ought to be certain and beyond doubt: that so many parts and so many organs have one and the same task — to hold the soul in the body. What task belongs to each in particular, who can know except the Craftsman, to whom alone his own work is known?

And what account can we give of the voice? Grammarians and philosophers define the voice as air struck by the breath, and say that this is where the Latin word for words comes from. That is plainly false. The voice is not produced outside the mouth but inside it, and so this opinion is more likely: that the breath, once compressed, strikes against the barrier the throat presents and forces out the sound of the voice. It is like what happens when we put a hollow hemlock stalk to the lips and send the breath down into it. The breath echoes back from the hollow of the stalk and is rolled back from the bottom, and as it returns it runs into the breath still coming down and meets itself; and struggling for a way out, it makes a sound. The air, rebounding off itself, is brought to life as a voice. [o]

Whether this is true, God the Craftsman may see. For the voice seems to come not from the mouth but from deep in the chest. In fact, even when the mouth is shut, such sound as is possible comes out through the nostrils. And besides, the voice is not made by the hardest breath, the kind we gasp with, but by a light breath, not compressed at all, as often as we like. So it has not been grasped how the voice happens, or what it is at all. Do not imagine that I am slipping into the opinion of the Academy: not everything is beyond understanding. Many things must be admitted to be unknown, since God has willed that they should pass a man’s understanding; but it must equally be admitted that there are many that can be both perceived by the senses and grasped by reason. I will give a whole book to refuting the philosophers. So let us finish the course we are now running.

That the nature of the mind is also beyond understanding — who can fail to know it, except a man with no mind at all? For it is not known in what place the mind is set, or what sort of thing it is. So the philosophers have argued this way and that about its nature and its place. I will not hide what I myself think — not that I would state it as a fact, since in a doubtful matter that is a fool’s part, but so that, once I have laid out how hard the question is, you may understand how great the works of God are. [r]

Some will have it that the seat of the mind is in the chest. If that is so, how remarkable it is that a power lodged in a dim, dark dwelling should be busy in so great a light of reason and understanding; and then that the senses come together to it from every part of the body, so that it seems to be present in whatever quarter of the limbs you like. Others have said its seat is in the brain, and they have used likely arguments: that surely the thing which governs the whole body ought to have its home in the highest place, as if in the body’s citadel, and that nothing should stand higher than what rules the whole by reason — just as the Lord and Ruler of the universe himself is in the highest place. Then they say that the organs which serve each sense — hearing, sight, smell — are set in the head, and that the channels from all of them run not to the chest but to the brain; otherwise we would have to be slower in using our senses, while the power of sensation traveled the long way down through the neck to the chest.

These men are not far wrong, and perhaps not wrong at all. The mind, which has command of the body, seems to be placed in the highest part, the head, as God is in heaven; but when it is busy with some thought, it seems to pass down into the chest and to withdraw into some private recess, so that it may draw counsel out as if from a hidden storeroom. That is why, when we are set on thinking, and the mind, being occupied, has hidden itself away in the depths, we usually neither hear what is sounding around us nor see what is standing in our path. Whether that is what happens is certainly a thing to wonder at, since there is no passage from the brain to the chest. And if it is not what happens, it is no less a thing to wonder at that by some divine plan or other it is made to look as though it were. Can anyone fail to marvel that the living, heavenly power which is called the mind, or the soul, is so quick to move that it does not rest even when a man is asleep; so fast that it takes in the whole sky in one moment of time, and, if it likes, flies over seas, crosses lands and cities — in short, sets in its own sight whatever it pleases, however far off and however widely scattered?

Does anyone wonder, then, that the divine mind of God, stretched through every part of the universe, runs to and fro and rules all things and governs all things, present everywhere, spread through everything — when the strength and power of the human mind, shut inside a mortal body, is so great that not even the walls of this heavy, sluggish body it is bound to can keep it from granting itself, in its impatience with rest, the freedom to wander wherever it will? So whether the mind has its dwelling in the head or in the chest, can anyone understand what power of reason brings it about that this incomprehensible thing stays fixed either in the marrow of the brain or in that blood, divided into two parts, which is shut inside the heart? And can anyone fail to gather from this very thing how great the power of God is, seeing that the soul does not see itself, or what sort of thing it is, or where it is — and that even if it did see, it would still not be able to make out how something without a body is joined to something that has one? Or if the mind has no fixed place, but runs here and there scattered through the whole body — which is possible, and was maintained by Xenocrates, Plato’s disciple — then, since understanding is present in every part of the body, it cannot be made out what that mind is or what it is like, since its nature is so fine and so thin that, poured into solid organs by a living and, as it were, burning awareness, it is mingled with every limb.

But take care never to think it likely, as Aristoxenus said, that the mind does not exist at all, and that the power of perception comes from the make-up of the body and the arrangement of its organs, the way harmony does on a lyre. Musicians give the name harmony to the tightening of the strings and their sound in whole melodies, apart from any striking of separate notes to match them. So they will have it that the soul exists in a man in the way tuneful sound exists on the lyre: that the tight joining of the separate parts of the body and the vigor of all the limbs agreeing together produces that motion we perceive, and tunes up the mind, as things well stretched give out a harmonious sound. And just as on a lyre, when anything has been broken off or has gone slack, the whole plan of the tune is thrown out and ruined, so in the body, when any part of the limbs takes an injury, the whole is weakened, and when everything has been spoiled and thrown into confusion, the power of perception is destroyed. This is what is called death.

But if the man had had any mind, he would never have carried harmony over from the lyre to a human being. A lyre cannot send out a sound of its own accord, so that there could be any comparison or likeness here to a living person; but the soul both thinks and moves of its own accord. If there were anything in us like harmony, it would be moved by a blow from outside, as the strings of the lyre are by the hands, while without the player’s handling and the stroke of his fingers they lie mute and motionless. No doubt he was the one who should have been beaten by hand, so that he might finally notice something; for his mind, badly strung together out of his limbs, was in a stupor.