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 Jerian Grant Koszulki a certain magnitude in the process of being broiled or boiled or of Juan Agudelo Drakter 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 Hernanes Pelipaita 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.
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Ripening is a sort of concoction; for we call it ripening when there is a concoction Emiliano Martinez Drakter of the nutriment in fruit. And since concoction is a sort of perfecting, Kostas Manolas Pelipaita 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 Zakaria Bakkali Drakter is applied to fruit. However, many other things that have undergone concoction are said to be ‘ripe’, the general Sergi Samper Pelipaita 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 |
