n, it must be granted that they were formed
for the use of the seed and procreation, and fixed in their proper
places, to operate and contribute virtue and efficiency to the seed; and
this, say they, is further proved from hence, that if women at years of
maturity use not copulation to eject their seed, they often fall into
strange diseases, as appears by young women and virgins, and also it
appears that, women are never better pleased than when they are often
satisfied this way, which argues, that the pleasure and delight, say
they, is double in women to what it is in men, for as the delight of men
in copulation consists chiefly in the emission of the seed, so women are
delighted, both in the emission of their own and the reception of the
man's.

But against this, all our modern authors affirm that the ancients are
very erroneous, inasmuch as the testicles in women do not afford seed,
but are two eggs, like those of a fowl or other creatures; neither have
they any such offices as in men, but are indeed an ovarium, or
receptacle for eggs, wherein these eggs are nourished, by the sanguinary
vessels dispersed through them; and from hence one or more, as they are
fecundated by the man's seed, are conveyed into the womb by the
oviducts. And the truth of this, say they, is so plain, that if you boil
them, the liquor shall have the same taste, colour and consistency with
the taste of bird's eggs. And if it be objected that they have no
shells, the answer is easy; for the eggs of fowls while they are in the
ovary, nay, after they have fallen into the uterus, have no shell: and
though they have one when they are laid, yet it is no more than a fence
which nature has provided for them against outward injuries, they being
hatched without the body, but those of women being hatched within the
body have no need of any other fence than the womb to secure them.

They also further say, that there are in the generation of the foetus,
or young ones, two principles, _active_ and _passive_; the _active_ is
the man's seed elaborated in the testicles out of the arterial blood and
animal spirits; the _passive_ principle is the ovum or egg, impregnated
by the man's seed; for to say that women have true seed, say they, is
erroneous. But the manner of conception is this; the most spirituous
part of the man's seed, in the act of copulation, reaching up to the
ovarium or testicles of the woman (which contains divers eggs, sometimes
fewer) impregna