Aristotle

  • If men start to engage in sexual activity at too early an age... this will affect the growth of their bodies. Nourishment that would otherwise make the body grow is diverted to the production of semen. ... Aristotle is saying that at this stage the body is still growing; it is best for sexual activity to begin when its growth is 'no longer abundant', for when the body is more or less at full height, the transformation of nourishment into semen does not drain the body of needed material.1

  • For Aristotle, semen is the residue derived from nourishment, that is of blood, that has been highly concocted to the optimum temperature and substance. This can only be emitted by the male as only the male, by nature of his very being, has the requisite heat to concoct blood into semen.2

  • ‘Sperms are the excretion of our food, or to put it more clearly, as the most perfect component of our food’3

Footnotes:

1. Aristotle & Kraut, Richard (1997), Politics, (Richard Kraut, trans.), Oxford University Press, pg 152

2. Salmon, J. B., Foxhall, L., (1998), Thinking Men: Masculinity and Its Self-representation in the Classical Tradition, (Routledge), pg 158

3. Sumathipala, A., Siribaddana, S.H., Bhugra, D., (2004), Culture-bound syndromes: the story of dhat syndrome. British Journal of Psychiatry. 184: 200-209, table 2