of these moulded anew, and joined in better
order, the animal afterward is formed. As the canker is first, and then
growing dry and cleaving lets forth a winged animal, called psyche; so
the egg is first as it were the subject-matter of the generation. For
it is certain that, in every change, that out of which the thing changes
must be before the thing changing. Observe how worms and caterpillars
are bred in trees from the moisture corrupted or concocted; now none can
say but that the engendering moisture is naturally before all these. For
(as Plato says) matter is as a mother or nurse in respect of the bodies
that are formed, and we call that matter out of which anything that
is made. And with a smile continued he, I speak to those that are
acquainted with the mystical and sacred discourse of Orpheus, who not
only affirms the egg to be before the bird, but makes it the first being
in the whole world. The other parts, because deep mysteries, we shall
now pass by; but let us look upon the various kinds of animals, and we
shall find almost every one beginning from an egg,--fowls and fishes;
land animals, as lizards; amphibious, as crocodiles; some with two
legs, as a cock; some without any, as a snake; and some with many, as
a locust. And therefore in the solemn feast of Bacchus it is very well
done to dedicate an egg, as the emblem of that which begets and contains
everything in itself.

To this discourse of Firmus, Senecio replied: Sir, your last similitude
contradicts your first, and you have unwittingly opened the world
(instead of the door, as the proverb goes) against yourself. For the
world was before all, being the most perfect; and it is rational that
the perfect in Nature should be before the imperfect, as the sound
before the maimed, and the whole before the part. For it is absurd
that there should be a part when there is nothing whose part it is; and
therefore nobody says the seed's man or egg's hen, but the man's seed
and hen's egg; because those being after these and formed in them, pay
as it were a debt to Nature, by bringing forth another. For they are not
in themselves perfect, and therefore have a natural appetite to produce
such a thing as that out of which they were first formed; and therefore
seed is defined as a thing produced that is to be perfected by another
production. Now nothing can be perfected by or want that which as yet
is not. Everybody sees that eggs have the nature of a concretion or
co