For in all animals, at least in all the perfect kinds,
there are two parts more essential than the rest, namely the part
which serves for the ingestion of food, and the part which serves
for the discharge of its residue. For without food growth and even
existence is impossible. Intervening again between these two parts
there is invariably a third, in which is lodged the vital principle.
As for plants, though they also are included by us among things that
have life, yet are they without any part for the discharge of waste
residue. For the food which they absorb from the ground is already
concocted, and they give off as its equivalent their seeds and fruits.
Plants, again, inasmuch as they are without locomotion, present no
great variety in their heterogeneous parts. For, where the functions
are but few, few also are the organs required to effect them. The
configuration of plants is a matter then for separate consideration.
Animals, however, that not only live but feel, present a greater
multiformity of parts, and this diversity is greater in some animals
than in others, being most varied in those to whose share has fallen
not mere life but life of high degree. Now such an animal is man.
For of all living beings with which we are acquainted man alone
partakes of the divine, or at any rate partakes of it in a fuller
measure than the rest.
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