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THE THIRD BOOK OF THE COURTIER eloquently before judges? Of handicrafts it would be too long to tell, nor is there need to bring proof regarding that. " Therefore, if in essential substance man is not more perfect than woman, nor in non-essentials either (and of this, quite apart from argument, the effects are seen), I do not know in what consists this perfection of his. i4._'< And since you said that nature's aim is always to bring forth the most perfect things, and that she therefore would always bring forth man if she could, and that the bringing forth of woman is rather an errour or defect in nature than of pur- pose,— I reply that this is totally denied; nor do I see how you can say that nature does not aim to bring forth women, without whom the human species cannot be preserved, whereof this same nature is more desirous than of everything else. For by means of this union of male and female she brings forth chil- dren, who repay the benefits received in childhood by maintain- ing their parents when old ; then in turn they beget other chil- dren of their own, from whom they look to receive in old age that which they in their youth bestowed upon their parents; thus nature, moving as it were in a circle, fills out eternity and in this way grants immortality to mortals. W^oman being therefore as necessary in this as man, I do not see how the one was made more by chance than the other. " It is very true that nature aims always to bring forth the most perfect things, and hence means to bring forth man after his kind, but not male rather than female. Nay, if she were always to bring forth male, she would be working imperfection; for just as from body and soul there results a compound more noble than its parts, which is man, — so from the union of male and female there results a compound which preserves the human species, and without which its members would perish. And hence male and female are by nature always together, nor can the one exist without the other; thus that ought not to be called male which has no female, according to the definition of each; nor female, that which has no male. And as one sex alone shows imperfection, the theologians of old attribute both the one and the other to God:"*' wherefore Orpheus said that Jove was male and female; and we read in Holy Writ that God 184