Questions concerning Aristotle's On Animals (The Fathers of the Church, Mediaeval Continuation, Volume 9): Mediaeval Continuation, Volume 9)

Book Twelve

353 BOOK TWELvE Question 1: Whether homogenous [consimiles] parts are generated immediately from the elements. E HAVE ALREADY stated above that the members,” etc.1 In his twelfth book the Philosopher establishes the composition of parts. Therefore, with respect to this, the twelfth book, we first inquire whether similar parts are immediately generated from the elements. 1. And it seems they are. This is because generation is analogous to decomposition [resolutio], although they differ either according to their causes or their ends, since that “which is first in generation is last in decomposition”2 and contrariwise. But homogenous parts can be immediately decomposed into elements ; therefore, they can also be immediately generated from them. 2. Besides, just as official parts come from homogenous ones, so too do homogenous ones come from the elements. But official parts are generated immediately from the homogenous ones. Therefore, homogenous ones are immediately generated from the elements. On the contrary: One and the same thing is both the principle of nutrition and of generation, because “we exist from and are nourished by the same things.”3 But homogenous parts do not take their nourishment immediately from the elements; therefore, neither are they generated from them. To this, one must respond that homogenous parts are not generated immediately from the elements, for although prime 1. Ar., Part. An. 2.1 (646a8f.). Cf. Avic., DA, 11 (fol. 44vb); Averroes, Part. An. 2.1; A., DA, 12.1.2.1–7 (SZ 2: 894–96). 2. Ar., Eth. Nic. 3.5 (1112b23f.). 3. Ar., DG 2.8 (355a10f.). “ 354 ALBERT THE GREAT matter is in potency to every form, it nevertheless cannot receive every form immediately. Thus the Philosopher says in the eighth book of the Metaphysics that wine does not come from vinegar immediately nor does a living being come from a corpse immediately, because wine is generated on a vine.4 Thus in order for wine to come from vinegar, it would first be necessary that the vinegar be changed into a nutriment for the vine. And, in the same manner, nature proceeds through several intermediaries when producing an animal, since the semen comes from a superfluity of nourishment, the blood from the semen, and the embryo from the blood. Thus, in order for the homogenous parts to come from the elements, it is first necessary that a mixture suitable to nutrition come forth from the elements, and then that mixture is converted into food, and then into chyle (that is, into a humor) and then it can nourish.5 1. On to the arguments. To the first argument one should respond that generation and corruption occur differently. For generation has being as its goal, and corruption has non-being, and this is why nature proceeds in an ordered way when generating , but proceeds as if in a disordered way in corruption. Or one can state it in another way, namely, that when corrupting something, nature uses all the things acquired through generation as if for a single end, and that is why the elements come forth immediately from the homogenous parts, but not contrariwise. 2. To the second argument one should respond that it is not the same for the official parts in respect to the homogenous ones or for the homogenous parts in respect to the elements. For official and homogenous parts are produced from one nature and are informed by one common form, and so too that does not come from the homogenous parts and the elements, and this is why, etc. 4. Ar., Metaph. 8.5 (1044b31f.). Cf. A., Metaph. 8.2.3. 5. Chyle is the semi-liquid contents of the digestive tract during the first stages of digestion. See DA 1.3.3.563; 3.2.3.100, 3.2.4.125; 20.1.4.16, 18 (chymus nutrimentalis); and DA 23.77(40) (SZ 1: 262–63; 393–94; 405–6; 2: 1366–67). BOOK TWELvE 355 Question 2: Whether the elements exist in act in homogenous parts. Further one inquires whether the elements may exist in act in homogenous parts.6 1. And it seems that they may. For alteration is a change in quality, with the subject remaining the same. But “mixture is a union of altered mixables [miscibilium alteratorum].”7 Therefore , the mixables remain in substance, changed only in quality . 2. In addition, according to the Philosopher in On Generation [and Corruption], a mixture...