d so two or three infants
are born.

CHAPTER XI. WHENCE IT IS THAT CHILDREN REPRESENT THEIR PARENTS AND
PROGENITORS.

Empedocles says, that the similitude of children to their parents
proceeds from the vigorous prevalency of the generating sperm; the
dissimilitude from the evaporation of the natural heat it contains.
Parmenides, that when the sperm falls on the right side of the womb,
then the infant gives the resemblance of the father; if from the left,
it is stamped with the similitude of the mother. The Stoics, that the
whole body and soul give the sperm; and hence arise the likenesses
in the characters and faces of the children, as a painter in his copy
imitates the colors in a picture before him. Women have a concurrent
emission of seed; if the feminine seed have the predominancy, the child
resembles the mother; if the masculine, the father.

CHAPTER XII. HOW IT COMES TO PASS THAT CHILDREN HAVE A GREATER
SIMILITUDE WITH STRANGERS THAN WITH THEIR PARENTS.

The greatest part of physicians affirm, that this happens casually
and fortuitously; for, when the sperm of the man and woman is too much
refrigerated, then children carry a dissimilitude to their parents.
Empedocles, that a woman's imagination in conception impresses a shape
upon the infant; for women have been enamoured with images and statues,
and the children which were born of them gave their similitudes. The
Stoics, that the resemblances flow from the sympathy and consent of
minds, through the insertion of effluvias and rays, not of images or
pictures.

CHAPTER XIII. WHENCE ARISETH BARRENNESS IN WOMEN, AND IMPOTENCY IN MEN?

The physicians maintain, that sterility in women can arise from the
womb; for if it be after any ways thus affected, there will be a
barrenness,--if it be more condensed, or more thin, or more hardened,
or more callous, or more carneous; or it may be from languor, or from
an atrophy or vicious condition of body; or, lastly, it may arise from
a twisted or distorted position. Diocles holds that the sterility in
men ariseth from some of these causes,--either that they cannot at all
ejaculate any sperm, or if they do, it is less than nature doth require,
or else there is no generative faculty in the sperm, or the genital
members are flagging; or from the obliquity of the yard. The Stoics
attribute the cause of sterility to the contrariant qualities and
dispositions of those who lie with one another; but if it chance that