[12] Becoming and perishing: Latin, generatio et corruptio.
[13] “Ad substantiam productio seu ad formam processus” (Linacre).
[14] “Preformationist” doctrine of Anaxagoras. To him the apparent alteration in qualities took place when a number of minute pre-existing bodies, all bearing the same quality, came together in sufficient numbers to impress that quality on the senses. The factor which united the minute quality-bearers was Nous. “In the beginning,” says Anaxagoras, “all things existed together—then came Nous and brought them into order.”
[15] “De ea alteratione quae per totam fit substantiam” (Linacre).
[16] The systematizer of Stoicism and successor of Zeno.
[17] Note characteristic impatience with metaphysics. To Galen, as to Hippocrates and Aristotle, it sufficed to look on the qualitative differences apprehended by the senses as fundamental. Zeno of Citium was the founder of the Stoic school; on the further analysis by this school of the qualities into bodies cf. p. 144, [note 3].
[18] A rallying-ground: lit. a place where two glens meet.
[19] Thus according to Gomperz (Greek Thinkers), the hypothesis of Anaxagoras was that “the bread ... already contained the countless forms of matter as such which the human body displays. Their minuteness of size would withdraw them from our perception. For the defect or ‘weakness’ of the senses is the narrowness of their receptive area. These elusive particles are rendered visible and tangible by the process of nutrition, which combines them.”
[20] Therefore the blood must have come from the bread. The food from the alimentary canal was supposed by Galen to be converted into blood in and by the portal veins, cf. p. [17].
[21] By “elements” is meant all homogeneous, amorphous substances, such as metals, &c., as well as the elementary tissues.