As the canker is first, and then growing dry and cleaving lets forth a winged animal, called psyche; so the egg is first as it were the subject-matter of the generation.

For it is certain that, in every change, that out of which the thing changes must be before the thing changing.

Observe how worms and caterpillars are bred in trees from the moisture corrupted or concocted; now none can say but that the engendering moisture is naturally before all these.

For (as Plato says) matter is as a mother or nurse in respect of the bodies that are formed, and we call that matter out of which anything that is made.

And with a smile continued he, I speak to those that are acquainted with the mystical and sacred discourse of Orpheus, who not only affirms the egg to be before the bird, but makes it the first being in the whole world.