Accretion and nutrition

by Rene Descartes Icon

4 minutes • 741 words

Table of contents

Imperfect and Perfect Nourishment
- Imperfect Nourishment
- Perfect Nourishment
The 7 Particles

Accretion and nutrition are twofold.

That of the dead and non-nourishing

This occurs through simple juxtaposition of parts without any change or at least without great change.

This is how metals grow in ore, honey grows in bees, and so on. This happens without any change in their parts.

There is also transmutation of wood or another body into stone through this kind of accretion, when the pores of the stone absorb the parts of the wood. The preceding parts either assimilate or expel or partly this and partly that.

That of the living, or nourished

This always occurs with some change in the parts.

For example, parts of various shapes, sizes, and colors mix with each other and combine in such a way that they acquire certain determined shapes.

Sometimes, fluid parts are produced from these, with the less fluid ones remaining behind.

These less fluid ones form a hard body from being impacted by the various streams of mixed fluids flowing everywhere.

If the thicker parts of these streams remain in the place of the surrounding thinner parts, then there is nourishment.

If one stream is divided into two or more, then there is growth or accretion.

The body grows in this way through countless such streams. In old age, the harder parts are impacted in such a way that the streams surrounding them cannot dilate any further to become two or more. This makes growth stop, and only nourishment remains.

But if, over time, these harder parts become even more compacted, then they cannot be displaced by others. This causes both nourishment and life to cease.

Imperfect and Perfect Nourishment

This accretion or nourishment is either imperfect or perfect.

Imperfect Nourishment

Imperfect nourishment is when the matter that fills these streams comes from elsewhere, already mixed or nearly so, and thus mixes and forms.

Nourished in this way are:

Hair, nails, horns
fungi, tubers, and all parts of animals and plants
plants that lack a certain semen
some animals, such as oysters, which do not generate in the same way.

Perfect Nourishment

Perfect nutrition or accretion contains the production of seed or offspring.

This occurs when the material that fills the rivers is of such a nature that it can completely assimilate another substance, not necessarily absolutely pure, but not too dissimilar or of diverse natures.

Thus, for example, if we take the case of 3 genera of particles:

very fine prisms
somewhat larger conoids
others that are adapted to join these two in a certain way

From all the matter that is mixed with them, new prisms, conoids, and parts adapted to join these two will arise.

Other different parts may emerge from the same matter.

But these three alone constitute the seed.

Other parts are joined together in various ways, or even new ones are formed without them, to compose wood, bark, roots, leaves, flowers, fruit, and so on in plants; and in animals, flesh, bones, brain, membranes, blood, and so on.

It is also possible that parts of the seed do not immediately produce similar parts, but rather others that are different, and eventually these different parts produce parts that are completely similar to the seed.

This seems to happen more often in animals than in plants.

This is why:

most animals and plants have seed that is different from the rest of their body
some are sterile and propagate in a different way than from seed.

The 7 Particles

There are 7 principal types of particles that make up the human body:

Acidic (Shukra in Sankrit)

This includes all the spirits that are released through insensible transpiration, as well as the subtle humors from which pimples and similar things that are said to arise from yellow bile are formed.

The acidic particles serve as vehicles for other substances.