第33章

Of these concoction is due to heat; its species are ripening, boiling, broiling. Inconcoction is due to cold and its species are rawness, imperfect boiling, imperfect broiling. (We must recognize that the things are not properly denoted by these words: the various classes of similar objects have no names universally applicable to them; consequently we must think of the species enumerated as being not what those words denote but something like it.) Let us say what each of them is. Concoction is a process in which the natural and proper heat of an object perfects the corresponding passive qualities, which are the proper matter of any given object. For when concoction has taken place we say that a thing has been perfected and has come to be itself. It is the proper heat of a thing that sets up this perfecting, though external influences may contribute in some degrees to its fulfilment. Baths, for instance, and other things of the kind contribute to the digestion of food, but the primary cause is the proper heat of the body. In some cases of concoction the end of the process is the nature of the thing-nature, that is, in the sense of the formal cause and essence. In other cases it leads to some presupposed state which is attained when the moisture has acquired certain properties or a certain magnitude in the process of being broiled or boiled or of putrefying, or however else it is being heated. This state is the end, for when it has been reached the thing has some use and we say that concoction has taken place. Must is an instance of this, and the matter in boils when it becomes purulent, and tears when they become rheum, and so with the rest.

Concoction ensues whenever the matter, the moisture, is mastered. For the matter is what is determined by the heat connatural to the object, and as long as the ratio between them exists in it a thing maintains its nature. Hence things like the liquid and solid excreta and ejecta in general are signs of health, and concoction is said to have taken place in them, for they show that the proper heat has got the better of the indeterminate matter.

Things that undergo a process of concoction necessarily become thicker and hotter, for the action of heat is to make things more compact, thicker, and drier.

This then is the nature of concoction: but inconcoction is an imperfect state due to lack of proper heat, that is, to cold. That of which the imperfect state is, is the corresponding passive qualities which are the natural matter of anything.

So much for the definition of concoction and inconcoction.

3

Ripening is a sort of concoction; for we call it ripening when there is a concoction of the nutriment in fruit. And since concoction is a sort of perfecting, the process of ripening is perfect when the seeds in fruit are able to reproduce the fruit in which they are found; for in all other cases as well this is what we mean by 'perfect'. This is what 'ripening' means when the word is applied to fruit. However, many other things that have undergone concoction are said to be 'ripe', the general character of the process being the same, though the word is applied by an extension of meaning. The reason for this extension is, as we explained before, that the various modes in which natural heat and cold perfect the matter they determine have not special names appropriated to them. In the case of boils and phlegm, and the like, the process of ripening is the concoction of the moisture in them by their natural heat, for only that which gets the better of matter can determine it. So everything that ripens is condensed from a spirituous into a watery state, and from a watery into an earthy state, and in general from being rare becomes dense. In this process the nature of the thing that is ripening incorporates some of the matter in itself, and some it rejects. So much for the definition of ripening.

Rawness is its opposite and is therefore an imperfect concoction of the nutriment in the fruit, namely, of the undetermined moisture.

Consequently a raw thing is either spirituous or watery or contains both spirit and water. Ripening being a kind of perfecting, rawness will be an imperfect state, and this state is due to a lack of natural heat and its disproportion to the moisture that is undergoing the process of ripening. (Nothing moist ripens without the admixture of some dry matter: water alone of liquids does not thicken.) This disproportion may be due either to defect of heat or to excess of the matter to be determined: hence the juice of raw things is thin, cold rather than hot, and unfit for food or drink. Rawness, like ripening, is used to denote a variety of states. Thus the liquid and solid excreta and catarrhs are called raw for the same reason, for in every case the word is applied to things because their heat has not got the mastery in them and compacted them. If we go further, brick is called raw and so is milk and many other things too when they are such as to admit of being changed and compacted by heat but have remained unaffected. Hence, while we speak of 'boiled' water, we cannot speak of raw water, since it does not thicken. We have now defined ripening and rawness and assigned their causes.