Similarly all questions concerning the semen and
the milk may be dealt with in the treatise on Generation, for the
former of these fluids is the very starting-point of the generative
process, and the latter has no other ground of existence than
generative purposes.
8
We have now to consider the remaining homogeneous parts, and will
begin with flesh, and with the substance that, in animals that have no
flesh, takes its place. The reason for so beginning is that flesh
forms the very basis of animals, and is the essential constituent of
their body. Its right to this precedence can also be demonstrated
logically. For an animal is by our definition something that has
sensibility and chief of all the primary sensibility, which is that of
Touch; and it is the flesh, or analogous substance, which is the organ
of this sense. And it is the organ, either in the same way as the
pupil is the organ of sight, that is it constitutes the primary
organ of the sense; or it is the organ and the medium through which
the object acts combined, that is it answers to the pupil with the
whole transparent medium attached to it. Now in the case of the
other senses it was impossible for nature to unite the medium with the
sense-organ, nor would such a junction have served any purpose; but in
the case of touch she was compelled by necessity to do so.
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