On the Secrets of Women and the Virtues of Herbs

P R E F A C E .

the text begins mid-word, completing "generation" ...tion accepted according to the principles of the individual is corruptible subject to decay and death; for this reason, the generation of an individual human is cast aside meaning it is finite. Therefore, the generation of humans will not be eternal according to number meaning the specific individual does not live forever; nevertheless, the generation of humans is still the most perfect.

This is proven in this way: because man is the most noble creature. This is clear from the intention of the Philosopher Aristotle, often referred to simply as "the Philosopher" in medieval texts in many places, and especially in the second book of On the Soul, because the more operations functions or activities a thing has, the more noble it is.

Furthermore, man is distinguished from the rest of living things by intellective reason the unique human capacity for rational thought, as is clear in the same place. This is also the view of all philosophers, especially Boethius An influential 6th-century philosopher in the second book of The Consolation of Philosophy, where he says that humans are like God in their mind.

For this is evident in the Physics Aristotle's work on the natural world, because movement takes its nature and type from the goal toward which it moves original: "termino ad quem". Therefore, since human nature being present in Socrates or Plato, or in any other existing individual man, is the movement called "generation," it is the most perfect among the generation of all animals.

Likewise, generation is a movement from non-being to being. Now, being existence is what is most greatly desired, especially by humans, because among all movements, this one is excellent in its capacity for change. And understand this as a movement that alters something upon which it acts, through these...