to be nourished continually, either from outside through something brought to it, expressed as eating, or from wherever God wills, without specification.
(The Attracting, Retaining, Digesting, and Expelling Faculties)
It has four agents[2]: the attracting, retaining, digesting, and expelling faculties.
The attracting faculty's ruling is to transfer nourishment from place to place. It transfers it from the mouth to the stomach, from the stomach to the liver, from the liver to the heart, and to all the vessels and bodily parts. It distributes to all bodily parts what they need of that through which their strength subsists.
The expelling faculty assists it, pushing nourishment from its place when it sees that it has received its full due from that place and has no work remaining within it. It pushes it onward so that it will not crowd another when it arrives. It thus assists the attracting faculty.
The retaining faculty holds it within every place until governance receives its due within it[3]. When it sees that its due has been fulfilled, it releases its hand from it, and the expelling and attracting faculties take charge of it.
The digesting faculty changes nourishment's form and clothes it in another form, until it is no longer in its previous form. It had a beautiful form and a pleasant scent. When it came into this faculty's hand, it changed its shape's form and clothed it in a form altered in smell and dispersed in arrangement. Hence it is called digesting, hāḍim, from ihṭiḍām, breaking down.
Wisdom exists within this breaking down, however. Without digestion, the goal intended by the nourisher through nourishment would not occur. Outwardly
Notes
[2]
(The agents here are the faculties assisting the vegetative soul. The author names them and details the action of each in transferring and governing nourishment.)
[3]
(«يأخذ», ‘receives,’ was established by comparison with the new edition, instead of «بأخذ» in the preceding file.)
