The soul provides for the body; the fish and its slime
A prose meditation likening the fish's viscous sweat to pitch on a ship.
A philosophical prose passage: every body is composed of the members and humours necessary to its maintenance, provided for by the soul that has chosen that bodily form as its dwelling for a time. As an example, the fish, by its continual rubbing against the water, is made by its soul, daughter of nature, to secrete through the porosity between the joints of its scales a viscous sweat that clings to it and does for the fish what pitch does for a ship. The full leaf is written in faint red-chalk mirror-writing with no diagram.
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The soul provides the body's needs
Every body is composed of the members and humours necessary to its maintenance; this necessity is well known and provided for by the soul, which has chosen that form of body as its dwelling for a time.
The fish's protective slime, like pitch on a ship
The fish, by continual rubbing against the water, is made by its soul to bring forth, through the porosity between the joints of its scales, a viscous sweat that separates from it with difficulty and serves the fish as pitch serves the ship.