Message #168474

[Bathos]

Part 2

We must now describe the next kinds of processes which the qualities
already mentioned set up in actually existing natural objects as matter.

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.