4. To the Foundations of the Second Opinion

35. Hereby to the foundations or arguments of the preceding opinion [n.13]

[To the first] - The example of the intellective soul [n.14] is to the opposite effect, because the intellective soul is related to matter in a non-extensive way and non-extensively, and so it has no new part from the fact that it perfects a new part of matter. But the opposite follows about a form that is extensible in matter.

36. [To the second] - The authority of the Philosopher [n.15], about flesh according to species and flesh according to matter, is solved in the fourth conclusion [nn.27-34]. For the Philosopher does not understand that the part according to matter (that is, matter alone) flows and reflows and that the part according to form (that is, form according to its whole self) remains, but that both the part according to matter and the part according to form are an integral part of the whole and are truly a composite of matter and form; hence he says ‘flesh according to matter’ and ‘flesh according to species’ are composite of matter and form, but not ‘the matter of flesh’ and ‘the species of flesh’. But which part, composed of the matter and form of flesh, is flesh according to species, and which part is flesh according to matter, was stated in the fourth conclusion [n.34]. And how flesh according to matter is in flux is plain from the first way of distinguishing flesh into flesh according to species and into flesh according to matter [n.33]. But according to the second way [n.34], a part according to matter is in flux, that is, is in proximate disposition to flowing - and this when speaking of a part according to matter because of its deficiency in quantity of virtue. But, when speaking of a part according to matter, this difference between flowing and not flowing is not to be understood because of the deficiency of it in quantity of mass; rather the part according to species grows while the part according to matter does not grow, because (as will be said directly [n.40]) it is not that the smallest part or some notably large part in the whole grows, but rather that some part of determinate quantity grows that is sufficient for a part according to species.

37. The part according to species, then, is not in flux - because, according to the first understanding [nn.34-35], it remains in the whole; and because, according to the second understanding, it has virtue for preserving itself in the whole; and because, according to the third understanding, it has sufficient quantity for some part to be generated at it [cf. n.21] for its own conservation. And, contrariwise, the part according to matter, understood in three ways, is in flux in three ways.

38. [To the third] - To the third [n.16] I say that in nutrition and growth there is a certain juxtaposition, and yet for the thing nourished or increased (and this whether the whole or part of it) juxtaposition is not only what happens.

There is need of understanding here: posit some part of such quantity and virtue that it not only act along with the whole but could, while existent in the whole, have its own action, and let this part be called a. It has small parts, and let there be ten of them (because perhaps more are required in one thing than in another, as that in a plant one suffices, in a brute two, in a man three or more - I care not). Each of these parts has an equal virtue intensively, and let them be called b, c, etc. Suppose food were drawn through depositings and purifyings in whatever number to the point that now it is in a form proximate to the form of the body to be nourished - whether this were done before or after the parts to be nourished have the food sent to their place by the regulative power of the whole body itself (and this through certain subtle paths that subserve this sending function, of which sort are the veins in the bodies of animals and other such things corresponding to them in plants). This food now, under a changed or glutinous form, is proximate to the part to be nourished and is received within certain pores left behind by the flowing away of certain of the parts according to matter (which parts were present there before and have now, through their own flowing off, left behind pores filled with some more subtle humors); and thus the whole food, lacking the density in its parts that is required for the body’s wellbeing, is, while existing there, converted into the thing to be nourished. And, just as before the conversion it was juxtaposed by way of contiguity with the parts of the thing to be nourished, so is it after the conversion juxtaposed by way of continuity with some of the parts that remain.

39. So then: a is a part great enough that being nourished and increased befits it; in the pores within the body are everywhere received the parts of the food, and these parts, while existing there, are generated into [cf. n.21] parts b and c, and are juxtaposed with other pre-existing parts. But not juxtaposed with the whole, because they are something within the whole, although no newly generated part is within another part of the nourished part, even if it be the smallest part which being nourished or growing may properly in such wise fit that each part of it be nourished and increased. And this is something necessary, to set down some smallest part, thus increased, of noticeable quantity; for if every part in the whole (however small the part) were properly to increase, it would be necessary that what increases always increase double, or at least increase to a noticeable amount greater than before - which is manifestly false.

40. Thus therefore is it plain, in response to this third argument [n.16], how there is juxtaposition of something and juxtaposition with what thing or things, namely with the smallest parts, which are properly not nourished. But there is no juxtaposition with that which is properly nourished (namely with that of which some part has flowed away and a new part afterwards restored), but there takes place in it a certain generation-in [cf. n.21], that is, an intrinsic generation of a new part in the place of the old part that has flowed away.

41. But from these points one does not yet have anything of the manner of growth, because the generation that happens in nutrition is momentary. But growth is not in an instant, since it is a motion. Generation can also come about without growth, as is plain from the Philosopher On Generation 1.5.322a31-33. Nor is there need here to add the manner of the growth, because we are asking about nutrition here only so as to grasp how homogeneous parts in nutrition remain the same or not the same.