Book 5
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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 contained in the same. Parmenides, that when the sperm descends from 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 resemblances in the characters and figures of the children, as a painter in his copy imitates the colors which are in the picture before him. Women have a concurrent emission of seed; if the feminine seed have the predominancy, then 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.
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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 when she conceives impresses a shape upon the infant; for women have been enamored 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, by the insertion of effluvias and rays, not of images or pictures.
