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Detail of Aristotle from Raphael's The School of Athens
| Aristotle's "The
History of Animals"
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Detail of Aristotle from Raphael's The School of Athens |
OF the animals that are comparatively obscure and short–lived the characters or dispositions are not so obvious to recognition as are those of animals that are longer–lived. These latter animals appear to have a natural capacity corresponding to each of the passions: to cunning or simplicity, courage or timidity, to good temper or to bad, and to other similar dispositions of mind.
Some also are capable of giving or receiving instruction–of receiving it from one another or from man: those that have the faculty of hearing, for instance; and, not to limit the matter to audible sound, such as can differentiate the suggested meanings of word and gesture.
In all genera in which the distinction of male and female is found, Nature makes a similar differentiation in the mental characteristics of the two sexes. This differentiation is the most obvious in the case of human kind and in that of the larger animals and the viviparous quadrupeds. In the case of these latter the female softer in character, is the sooner tamed, admits more readily of caressing, is more apt in the way of learning; as, for instance, in the Laconian breed of dogs the female is cleverer than the male. Of the Molossian breed of dogs, such as are employed in the chase are pretty much the same as those elsewhere; but sheep–dogs of this breed are superior to the others in size, and in the courage with which they face the attacks of wild animals.
Dogs that are born of a mixed breed between these two kinds are remarkable for courage and endurance of hard labour.
In all cases, excepting those of the bear and leopard, the female is less spirited than the male; in regard to the two exceptional cases, the superiority in courage rests with the female. With all other animals the female is softer in disposition than the male, is more mischievous, less simple, more impulsive, and more attentive to the nurture of the young: the male, on the other hand, is more spirited than the female, more savage, more simple and less cunning. The traces of these differentiated characteristics are more or less visible everywhere, but they are especially visible where character is the more developed, and most of all in man.
The fact is, the nature of man is the most rounded off and complete, and consequently in man the qualities or capacities above referred to are found in their perfection. Hence woman is more compassionate than man, more easily moved to tears, at the same time is more jealous, more querulous, more apt to scold and to strike. She is, furthermore, more prone to despondency and less hopeful than the man, more void of shame or self–respect, more false of speech, more deceptive, and of more retentive memory. She is also more wakeful, more shrinking, more difficult to rouse to action, and requires a smaller quantity of nutriment.
As was previously stated, the male is more courageous than the female, and more sympathetic in the way of standing by to help. Even in the case of molluscs, when the cuttle–fish is struck with the trident the male stands by to help the female; but when the male is struck the female runs away.
Excerpted and edited from http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/a/a8ha/book9.html
Originally from Aristotle's "The History of Animals," Book IX. Trans. D'Arcy W. Thompson, in O.T.A. Vol. 4, 1910.
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