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BOOK THREE
[p. 249]speak, an appetite for their own special quality, and an aversion to, or, as it were, a hatred
Note use of psychological terms in biology. cf. also p. 133, note 3.
of the foreign quality. And it is natural that when they feel an inclination they should attract, and that when they feel aversion they should expel.
From these facts, then, again, both the attractive and the propulsive faculties have been demonstrated to exist in everything.
"In everything." cf. p. 66, note 3.
But if there be an inclination or attraction, there will also be some benefit derived; for no existing thing attracts anything else for the mere sake of
attracting, but in order to benefit by what is acquired by the attraction. And of course it cannot benefit by it if it cannot retain it. Herein, then, again, the retentive faculty is shown to have its necessary origin: for the stomach obviously inclines towards its own proper qualities and turns away from those that are foreign to it.
Galen confuses the nutrition of organs with that of the ultimate living elements or cells; the stomach does not, of course, feed itself in the way a cell does. cf. Introduction, p. xxxii.
PART 7
But if the stomach both retains and benefits by its food, then it employs it for the end for which it [the stomach] naturally exists. And it exists to partake of that which is of a quality befitting and proper to
