shall contradict the opinion of St. Thomas and Navarro; for how can their opinion be maintained, when all philosophers and naturalists agree that no generation is possible without the conjunction of the male and female seed? This argument will hold equally for that which has been said about cats, and for the stories that are told about Spanish mares being caused to conceive simply by a breath of wind in a certain place.
With regard to the monstrosities to which women give birth, these may be said to proceed either from a superfluity and excess of generative matter; or possibly from the force of imagination, which operates as a sort of seal stamping the image of a mother’s fancy on the child she has conceived in her womb. Or perhaps we should rather believe that God, whose judgments are inscrutable, in this manner punishes mothers who abandon themselves to unnatural and abominable copulations. For we are not bound to believe the stories of Merlin, the Huns, the men of Cyprus, and others having sprung from demons: such stories are sometimes written by historians, but most often merely upon hearsay, and without corroboration of the truth.
It is said that Rhea, the mother of Romulus and Remus, was made pregnant by the God Mars; and Olympias, the mother of Alexander, by Jupiter in the form of a swan; but who is to believe that? Why should we not rather believe that these women used the Gods as a screen to cover their incests and adulteries? And therefore I maintain that the widow of whom Bodin speaks was made pregnant by a natural man, and not by a demon; and that God permitted her to give
