Rasaratnākara (manuscript)

endowed with the power of vegetation: whose motion is more perfect, more distinct, and, as the Greeks interpret it, poikilōteros more varied/intricate. Under vegetation are contained attraction, retention, digestion, assimilation, and other motions of that kind of the vegetative faculty, which we call natural actions: concerning which Galen wrote most extensively in his book on natural faculties. By the same reasoning, the form of multiform things (which we said before were called heterogeneis heterogeneous/of different kinds by the Greeks—that is, those which were generated not only from elements, but from natures mixed from elements) is more distinct and more perfect. And the better these very things have been tempered, and the more elaborately they have been mixed by nature, the more composite a form, distinction, and perfection they possess: and consequently, they have more numerous and more perfect motions. For plants surpass the elements in the perfection and number of their actions: but animals surpass plants: and man surpasses all these: because he is the most tempered and most elaborate of all things that have been generated in this world, and as it were, the most absolute and perfect work of nature. The finis end/purpose is that for the sake of which something is done: as a muscle for the sake of moving. The finis, however, is the first of all causes, and at the same time the last. The first indeed, because in all things that come to be, we consider this first and conceive it in our mind. The last indeed, because it happens last.