Aristotle ON THE PARTS OF ANIMALS Complete

Translated by W. Ogle.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

144 pages - You are on Page 71

In the heart of animals there is also a kind of joint-like division, something like the sutures of the skull. This is not, however, attributable to the heart being formed by the union of several parts into a compound whole, but is rather, as already said, the result of a joint-like division. These jointings are most distinct in animals of keen sensibility, and less so in those that are of duller feeling, in swine for instance. Different hearts differ also from each other in their sizes, and in their degrees of firmness; and these differences somehow extend their influence to the temperaments of the animals. For in animals of low sensibility the heart is hard and dense in texture, while it is softer in such as are endowed with keener feeling. So also when the heart is of large size the animal is timorous, while it is more courageous if the organ be smaller and of moderate bulk. For in the former the bodily affection which results from terror already pre-exists; for the bulk of the heart is out of all proportion to the animal's heat, which being small is reduced to insignificance in the large space, and thus the blood is made colder than it would otherwise be.

The heart is of large size in the hare, the deer, the mouse, the hyena, the ass, the leopard, the marten, and in pretty nearly all other animals that either are manifestly timorous, or betray their cowardice by their spitefulness.

What has been said of the heart as a whole is no less true of its cavities and of the blood-vessels; these also if of large size being cold. For just as a fire of equal size gives less heat in a large room than in a small one, so also does the heat in a large cavity or a large blood-vessel, that is in a large receptacle, have less effect than in a small one. Moreover, all hot bodies are cooled by motions external to themselves, and the more spacious the cavities and vessels are, the greater the amount of spirit they contain, and the more potent its action. Thus it is that no animal that has large cavities in its heart, or large blood-vessels, is ever fat, the vessels being indistinct and the cavities small in all or most fat animals.

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