On Seven-Month Birth — First Draft Translation

ON SEVEN-MONTH BIRTH Concerning seven-month births — the account says from what they come to be. I myself have not yet encountered this matter with my own eyes, only by hearing. I will set out how it appears to me. There are many deviations and driftings of nature among living creatures, among plants, and across the eternal span of time. And already at some point female and male have been shaped — many-handed, many-eyed, many-eared, having all manner of contrary shapings — as some wondrous deviation of nature. For in all things there is a proper moment and a coming-together that governs each. For according to the original generation, when all things were first fashioned, living creatures were given their shaping; and now, know that through these same causes they are shaped according to their fixed ways. To me, at least, it seems that in the case of the human being, when things are stirring around the seven-month period, shapings come about in their forms just as we see in the surrounding world and in the earth, where early fruits are shaped before their season — just as in Egypt all things come to be early, many of them throughout every season, because of the earth's great fecundity and the heat of what encloses and holds it. In like manner, then, among the bodily frames, seven-month births are inclined to come about. And whenever the woman who is with child is well-placed to receive what the male provides, and the male is well-roused for the casting-down of the genesis of the shaping, then a bodily frame is brought together and comes to completion. For the circumstance is held by strong necessity to be perfected, just as what completes itself according to the shaping — otherwise it cannot come to pass; for the shaping must neither exceed nor fall short, but there must be a middling shaping in a great matter. If something is ever to arrive at human shapings, always the things fitting to the human must be present. And some people enter early into maturity and early into old age, just as those who have passed through health according to fixed way — for the shaping wears down and works into what is fitting for bones, sinews, veins, tendons, viscera, belly, and the rest, and into their completion. But perhaps some people will ask why the eight-month child does not live — nor in any wise the three-month child either — being chatterers and fools, as they are. For those things that have been allotted their span in this way are inclined to be shaped and brought together according to their like, just as among those things sown or planted into the ground, some come to be in more days, others in the fewest — not by measured time, for time is determined by the circuit of the sun and moon. Nor indeed, by the same reasoning, does an eleven-month or twelve-month infant live — nothing beyond what is fitting comes to be through shaping-according-measure; rather, the shaping that governs each is according to fixed way. For the whole working works out toward the eyes, or the ears, or the nose, or the mouth, held within the shapings, or according to the other comings-together. Just as now, being without knowledge concerning all the prior takings-up of shapings … [Lacuna: the conclusion of the argument is lost in the source text. The bracketed fragment — 'these things then, considering beforehand …' — is conjectural and does not restore the original.]