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CHAPTER 9 441A30–442A11 441a30 However many flavors show up in fruits, these exist also in earth. 441b1 Therefore many of the ancient students of nature say that water is of the same kind as whatever earth it passes through. This is most evident in salty water, for salt is a kind of earth. And that which is filtered through ash, which is bitter, produces a bitter flavor. There are also many springs, some bitter, some sharp-tasting, and others with every other kind of flavor. 441b7 And so it is reasonable that the genus of flavors is produced especially in growing things. 441b8 For the moist is naturally affected by its contrary, as are other things, and the contrary is the dry. Therefore it is also affected in some way by fire, for the nature of fire is dry. And heat is proper to fire and dryness to earth, as was said in the discussion of elements. 441b12 As fire, then, and as earth, they by nature neither act nor are affected at all; nor is this the case with anything else. Rather, they act and are acted on inasmuch as there is contrariety in each of them. 441b15 Accordingly, just as those who soak colors and flavors in moisture make the water be of the same kind, nature does likewise with the dry and earthen : by filtering the moist through what is dry and earthen, and by changing it through heat, it makes the moist be of a certain quality. 441b19 And this is flavor: an affection caused in moistness by the dryness just mentioned, an affection capable of changing the sense of taste in potentiality to actuality. 441b21 For it brings the sensitive part which already exists in potentiality to this. For sensing is not like learning,1 but contemplation. 441b23 Now we must take it that flavors are affections or privations not of every kind of dryness, but only the kind that nourishes, because it is neither dryness without moistness nor moistness without dryness. For food for animals is not one simple thing, but something mixed. Neither is food for plants: it is something mixed. 441b27 Of the sensible qualities of the food provided to animals, the objects of 79 touch are what produce growth and diminution: for the cause of these is the heat and cold that is provided, for these produce growth and diminution. But what is provided nourishes according as it is an object of taste: for everything is nourished by sweetness, whether it is simple or mixed. 442a3 We must determine about these points in the discussion of generation, but touch on them now as far as is necessary. Heat augments, and it prepares nourishment, because it draws out what is light, but leaves what is bitter and salty because of its weight. Thus what the external heat does in external bodies is what the heat in the nature of animals and plants does. Therefore they are nourished by sweetness. 442a8 But other flavors, like spicy and sharp, are mixed into food for seasoning . And they are for opposing, because sweetness is excessively nourishing, and floating. Commentary 441a30 After the Philosopher has eliminated opinions of others on the cause of the origin of flavors, here he gives the true cause according to his own opinion. On this point he does three things. First he gives the cause of the generation of flavors. Second he defines flavor, where he says And this is flavor (441b19). Third he clarifies something he said, where he says Now we must take it that flavors are affections (441b23). On the first point he does three things. First he shows that flavors pertain to earth, and not only, as the Ancients held, water. Second he shows that water is changed with respect to flavors by dryness of earth, where he says For the moist is naturally affected (441b8). Third he concludes to the cause of generation of flavors, where he says Accordingly, just as those who soak colors (441b15). On the first point he does two things. First he proposes what he intends . Second he clarifies the proposal, where he says Therefore many of the ancient students of nature (441b1). Accordingly he first says that all flavors that show up in fruits of plants, in which flavors are clearly differentiated, are also present in earth. Not that pure earth has flavor, for it has no moisture: but with a small admixture of moisture, together with an alteration caused...

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