Kitap 3
13
Now the lungs, the thorax, the arteries rough and smooth, the heart, the mouth, and the nostrils reverse their movements at very short intervals and change the direction of the matters they contain. On the other hand, the veins which pass down the from the liver to the intestines and stomach reverse the direction not at such short intervals, but sometimes once in many days.
13
The whole matter, in fact, is as follows: — Each of the organs draws into itself the nutriment alongside it, and devours all the useful fluid in it, until it is thoroughly satisfied; this nutriment, as I have already shown, it stores up in itself, afterwards making it adhere and then assimilating it — that is, it becomes nourished by it. For it has been demonstrated with sufficient clearness alreadycf. p. 39, chap. xi. that there is something which necessarily precedes actual nutrition, namely adhesion, and that before this again comes presentation. Thus as in the case of the animals themselves the end of eating is that the stomach should be filled, similarly in the case of each of the parts, the end of presentation is the filling of this part with its appropriate liquid. Since, therefore, every part has, like the stomach, a craving Lit. orexis.to be nourished, it too envelops its nutriment and clasps it all round as the stomach does. And this [action of the stomach], as has been already said, is necessarily followed by the digestion of the food, although it is not to make it suitable for the other parts that the stomach contracts upon it; if it did so, it would no longer be a physiological organ,Lit. a physical organ; that is, a mere instrument or organon of the Physis, — not one of the Psyche or conscious personality. cf. semen, p. 132, note 1. but an animal possessing reason and intelligence, with the power of choosing the better [of two alternatives].
