QVEST. XII. Whether the wombe haue any operatiue or actiue power in the conformation of the Creature.
IT wil not be hard to vntie this knot. According to the Philosophers rule there is a double agent, one Principall another Helpfull or assistant onely. A prin∣cipall agent no man will say the wombe is, because then a woman could con∣ceiue alone without the helpe of the man, and besides Females onely, Males neuer should be formed. The wombe therfore worketh as Causa sine qua non, a cause not so much of the being, as without which it could not be; because it awaketh and stirreth vp the sleepy and hidden vertue of the seede. The Physitians make three kindes of Efficient causes Principall, Helping, or that without which a thing cannot be done.
So in Purgations the principall cause is the propriety of the medicine, the Helping cause is the hot Temper; the cause sine qua non is our naturall heate, without which the power of the medicine being drowsie would neuer be brought into act. So in the conformation of the Infant, the principal cause is the Seed, I meane the spirits of the seed, by which as by workemen the Soule which is the noble and chiefe Architect frameth a mansion fit for the performance of her different functions. The Helping cause is a laudable Temper of the seedes and of the wombe. The Causa sine qua non is the wombe. For because the seeds are not actually Animated but only potentially, they need another principle whereby their power may be brought into act: the wombe therefore worketh diuerse wayes. First of all it draweth the Seede of the man through the necke, no otherwise then a Hart draweth a Snake by his nosethrilles out of the earth. For the seede is not powred into the cauity of the wombe as some of the Auntients thought but into the necke thereof. The bottome therefore of the wombe meeteth with the Seede halfe way, and with his inward mouth as with a hand it snatcheth it vnto it selfe and layeth it vp safely in her bosome. And euen as, sayeth Galen in his first Booke de semine, a hungery stomack runneth with his bottom euen vnto the throate to snatch the meate out of the mouth before it be halfe chewed; so the wombe which is the very seat of Concupiscence, being desirous and longing after the seed, moueth it selfe wholly euen to the priuities, and this is the first action of the womb, to wit, the traction of the Seede of the man.
The second action of the wombe is the permixtion of the seedes; now they be mixed ei∣ther by themselues or by another; not of themselues because they are not alwayes auoided at the same time, as we haue in the question before going proued out of Hippocrates & A∣ristotle; neither yet are they eiaculated into the same place, for the mans seede is cast into the neck of the wombe, the womans into the sides of the bottome which we call the horns of the wombe: the wombe therefore maketh this permixtion of the seedes which the Bar∣barians call Aggregation.
The third action of the wombe is the Retention of the seedes, in which the woman fee∣leth a manifest motion of the wombe: for it gathereth, crumpleth and corrugateth it selfe, and so exquisitly shutteth his orifice that it will not admit the poynt of a Probe.
The last action of the wombe is the suscitation or raising vp of the seedes which wee commonly call Conception. Now the faculty of the seed is raysed or rowsed, not so much by the heate of the wombe as by his in-bred propriety, for if the seede should be cast into a∣ny other part of the body though it were hotter then the vvombe, it would not be concey∣ued but putrified.
After Conception the action of the vvombe ceaseth; the vvhole processe of the vvorke of Nature, in fourming, nourishing and increasing is left vnto the Infant: this one thing the vvombe performeth, it conteyneth, preserueth and cherisheth the Infant, because