Meteorology
Aristotle
tr. E.W. Webster

"Ripening [pepansis] is a sort of concoction [pepsis]; for we call it ripening when tehre is a concoction of the nutriment in fruit. And since concoction is a sort of perfecting [teleiosis], the process of ripening is perfect [teleia] when the seeds in fruit are able to reproduce the fruit in which they are found; for in all other cases as well this is what we mean by perfect." (380a11-16)

"All the homoegeneous bodies consist of the elements described, as matter, but their essence [ousia] is determined by their definition [logos]. This fact is always clearer in the case of the later products, of those, in fact, that are instruments [organa], as it were, and have an end [heneka tou]: it is clearer, for instance, that a dead man is a man only in name. And so the hand of a dead man, too, will in the same way be a hand in name only, just as stone flutes might still be called flutes; for these too, seem to be instruments of a kind. But in the case of flesh and done the fact is not so clear to see, and in that of fire and water even less. For the end [hou heneka] is least obvious there where matter predominates most. If you take the extremes, matter is pure matter and the essence pure definition; but the bodies intermediate [metaxu] between the two are related to each in proportion as they are near to either. For each of these elements has an end [heneka tou] and is not water or fire in any and every condition of itself, just as flesh is not flesh nor viscera viscera, and the same is true in a higher degree with face and hand. What a thing is is always determined [horismena] by its function [ergon]: a thing really [alethos] is itself when it can perform its function; an eye, for instance, when it can see. When a thing cannot do so it is that thing only in name, like a dead eye or one made of stone, just as a wooden saw is no more a saw than one in a picture. The same, then, is true of flesh, except that its function is less clear than that of the tongue. So, too, with fire, but its function is perhaps even harder to specify by physical inquiry than that of flesh. The parts of plants, and inanimate bodies like copper and silver, are in the same case. They all are what they are in virtue of a certain power of action or passion - just like flesh and sinew." (389b28-390a19)

END