To Florus 5.11

This new natural philosopher therefore passes over those points and declares false what we said: ‘Just as the clay taken up at the beginning was the material of the human being, not his maker (Genesis 2:7), so now that power of pleasure which produces and mixes the seed does not perform the role of God’s activity. Rather, from nature’s storehouses it offers God the material from which he deigns to make a human being.’ He testifies that I said this correctly, except for my statement that seed is produced by the power of pleasure. He philosophizes as follows: ‘That pleasure of fleshly desire does not produce seed. The seed is already in bodies, created by the true God. It is not made by pleasure, but is stirred and emitted with pleasure’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.26).

He plainly said this not through fraud but through failure to understand. By ‘the power of pleasure’ I meant the very constitution of the male body, which I had to call virility. This virility—to use a word we have now made familiar—consists in the structure and health of the genitals and internal organs. It supplies the powers of both appetite and performance, and I called it the power of pleasure and desire. I preferred ‘power of pleasure’ to simply ‘pleasure’ precisely to indicate the whole ardor felt both before and during the act. Those disabled in their genital organs, namely eunuchs, do not possess seed, although certain embers of the extinguished fire still stir them. Because a particular disability has deprived them of the strength of the parts by whose service seed is produced from internal fluids, they are incapable of generation. God therefore established a power in the body which, unfolding at the proper time and provided health is present, reaches the capacity for fertility. Seed is consequently produced in bodies with the help of mature puberty. That is why premature pleasure stimulates the immature, but without the laws of age its kindling spark remains sterile.

That seed is mixed with pleasure, yet that one pleasure floats upon the senses while another lies deeper within the organs and closer to the result, is discussed at great length in medical writers. Hence even the Mantuan poet, more knowledgeable about nature than the Carthaginians’ little philosopher, notes that cattle should be made lean: when familiar pleasure first draws them toward mating, they should be kept from leafy fodder and springs. Often people shake them up by running and exhaust them in the sun, when the threshing floor groans under grain heavily pounded and light chaff is carried away on the breeze. This is done so that excessive abundance does not make the generative field less responsive or clog its sluggish furrows; instead the inner parts should experience a certain dryness, and thus thirstily seize the mating fluid and store it more deeply within (Virgil, Georgics 3.130–137). But it is enough to have noted the man’s sharpness even in these matters, which are not greatly needed for the case.