Page - 776 - in The Complete Aristotle

3 Ripening is a sort of concoction; for we call it ripening when there is a concoction of the nutriment in fruit. And since concoction is a sort of perfecting, the process of ripening is perfect 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’. This is what ‘ripening’ means when the word is applied to fruit. However, many other things that have undergone concoction are said to be ‘ripe’, the general character of the process being the same, though the word is applied by an extension of meaning. The reason for this extension is, as we explained before, that the various modes in which natural heat and cold perfect the matter they determine have not special names appropriated to them. In the case of boils and phlegm, and the like, the process of ripening is the concoction of the moisture in them by their natural heat, for only that which gets the better of matter can determine it. So everything that ripens is condensed from a spirituous into a watery state, and from a watery into an earthy state, and in general from being rare becomes dense. In this process the nature of the thing that is ripening incorporates some of the matter in itself, and some it rejects. So much for the definition of ripening. Rawness is its opposite and is therefore an imperfect concoction of the nutriment in the fruit, namely, of the undetermined moisture. Consequently a raw thing is either spirituous or watery or contains both spirit and water. Ripening being a kind of perfecting, rawness will be an imperfect state, and this state is due to a lack of natural heat and its disproportion to the moisture that is undergoing the process of ripening. (Nothing moist ripens without the admixture of some dry matter: water alone of liquids does not thicken.) This disproportion may be due either to defect of heat or to excess of the matter to be determined: hence the juice of raw things is thin, cold rather than hot, and unfit for food or drink. Rawness, like ripening, is used to denote a variety of states. Thus the liquid and solid excreta and catarrhs are called raw for the same reason, for in every case the word is applied to things because their heat has not got the mastery in them and compacted them. If we go further, brick is called raw and so is milk and many other things too when they are such as to admit of being changed and compacted by heat but have remained unaffected. Hence, while we speak of ‘boiled’ water, we cannot speak of raw water, since it does not thicken. We have now defined ripening and rawness and assigned their causes. Boiling is, in general, a concoction by moist heat of the indeterminate matter contained in the moisture of the thing boiled, and the word is strictly applicable only to things boiled in the way of cooking. The indeterminate 776