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ON THE NATURAL FACULTIES Book I
[p. 13]produces. Now, of course, I mean by an effect
Work or product. Lat. opus. cf. p. 3, note 2.
that which has already come into existence and has been completed by the activity
Operation, activiation, or functioning. Lat. actio. cf. loc. cit.
of these faculties- for example, blood, flesh, or nerve. And activity is the name I give to the active change or motion, and the cause of this I call a faculty. Thus, when food turns into blood, the motion of the food is passive, and that of the vein active. Similarly, when the limbs have their position altered, it is the muscle which produces, and the bones which undergo the motion. In these cases I call the motion of the vein and of the muscle an activity, and that of the food and the bones a symptom or affection
i.e. a concomitant (secondary) or passive affection. Galen is contrasting active and passive "motion." cf. p. 6, note 1.
, since the first group undergoes alteration and the second group is merely transported. One might, therefore, also speak of the activity as an effect of Nature
As already indicated, there is no exact English equivalent for the Greek term physis, which is a principle immanent in the animal itself, whereas our term "Nature" suggests someting more transcendent; we are forced often, however, to employ it in default of a better word. cf. p. 2, note 1.
- for example, digestion, absorption,
In Greek anadosis. This process includes two stages: (1) transmission of food from alimentary canal to liver (rather more than our "absorption"); (2) further transmission from liver to tissues. Anadosisis lit. a yielding-up, a "delivery;" it may sometimes be rendered "dispersal." "Distribution" (diadosis) is a further stage; cf. p. 163, note 4.
blood-production; one could not, however, in every case call the effect an activity; thus flesh is an effect of Nature, but it is, of course, not an activity. It is, therefore, clear that one of these terms is used in two senses, but not the other.
PART 3
It appears to me, then, that the vein, as well as each of the other parts, functions in such and such a way according to the manner in which the four qual-
