Abstract

This article considers the relations between hylomorphism and the explanation of sexual reproduction in Aristotle’s Generation of Animals. It focuses on GA I 19 where Aristotle states that menses are analogous to male’s sperma. According to the theory of the double seed, male and female make the same causal contribution to generation. By contrast Aristotle argues that the menses are not sperma ; indeed, menses and sperma have two different causal functions in the generation of animals : menses provide the matter and the sperma provides the moving cause and the form. But hylomorphism also presupposes that there exists an identity between these two contributions, since the menstrual material is potentially what the motions of the male’s seed are in actuality. So Aristotle maintains that there is a kind of identity between the two contributions. He conceives it in two ways : usually as an analogical identity (menses are analogous to sperma), but sometimes also as a quasi-generic identity (male’s semen and menses are both sperma, although the menses are less pure and elaborate). Aristotle hesitates between these two solutions : in the first case, the final residue becomes menses in females and sperma in males ; in the other, the sperma becomes menses in the females and semen in the males. Aristotle is reluctant to affirm explicitly that the sperma is either form or matter. This would have led him to a kind of double sperma theory, a position he refuses because of the deep identity that exists, according to him, between menses and the male’s seed.