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BOOK THREE
[p. 223]
PART 1
It has been made clear in the preceding discussion that nutrition occurs by an alteration or assimilation of that which nourishes to that which receives nourishment,
"Of food to feed," i.e. of the environment to the organism. cf. p. 39, chap. xi.
and that there exists in every part of the animal a faculty which in view of its activity we call, in general terms, alterative, or, more specifically,
assimilative and nutritive. It was also shown that a sufficient supply of the matter which the part being nourished makes into nutriment for itself is ensured by virtue of another faculty which naturally attracts its proper juice [humour] that juice is proper to each part which is adapted for assimilation, and that the faculty which attracts the juice is called, by reason of its activity, attractive or epispastic.
"Drawing" ; cf. p. 116, note 2.
It has also been shown that assimilation is preceded by adhesion, and this, again, by presentation,
For these terms (prosthesis and prosphysis in Greek) cf. p. 39, notes 5 and 6.
the latter stage being, as one might say, the end or goal of the activity corresponding to the attractive faculty. For the actual bringing up of nutriment from the veins into each of the parts takes place through the activation of the attractive faculty,
Lit. "through the energizing (or functioning) of the attractive faculty"; the faculty (δυfαμιf) in operation is an activity (ἐfέργεια). cf. p. 3, note 2.
