And yet another point: privation of any sort is something simple and uncomplicated, whereas substances have many differences and powers. Silence, for example, is of only one kind, while sound varies, sometimes annoying, at other times delighting, the perception. Both colours and figures show the same variation, for they produce different effects on different occasions when they meet the eye; but that which cannot be touched and is without colour or any quality whatever, admits no difference, but is always the same.

Is cold, then, so like this sort of privation that it produces no effects that differ ? Or is the contrary true: Do not great and useful pleasures accrue to our bodies from the presence of cold, as well as mighty detriments and pains and depressions, before which the heat does not always depart and quit the field ? Often, rather, though cut off within, it makes a stand and gives battle. This struggle of hot and cold is called shivering or shaking; and if heat is overcome, freezing and torpor set in; but if cold is defeated, there is diffused through the body a relaxed and pleasantly warm sensation which HomerSee, e.g., , vi. 156; , xxiii. 598, 600; and cf. 454 d, 735 f. calls to be aglow. Surely these facts are obvious to everyone; and it is chiefly by these effects that cold is shown to be in opposition to heat, not as a negation or privation, but as one substance or one stateHeat, for example, may be said to be a state or condition of metal. to another: it is not a mere destruction or abolition of heat, but a positive substance or force. Otherwise we might just as well exclude winter from the list of seasons or the northerly blasts from that of winds, on the pretext that they are only a deficiency of hot weather or southerly gales and have no proper origin of their own.

Furthermore, given four primary bodies in the universeSee Diels-Kranz, 5, i, pp. 315 ff., Empedocles, frag. B 17. The doctrine is clearly stated by, for example, Pliny, ii. 10. The author of the (981 c) adds a fifth element, aether (cf. 951 d infra). which, because of their quantity, simplicity, and potentiality, most judges regard as being the elements or first principles of everything else - I mean fire, water, air, and earth - the number of primary, simple qualities must be the same. And what should these be but warmth and cold, dryness and moisture, which by their very nature cause all the elements to act and be acted upon?Post translates his emendation: by which all things are qualified through the natural action of the elements, pointing out that elements have nothing but size, shape, and motion. Fire causes heat, but its atoms are not themselves hot. Just as in grammar we have elements long and short and in music elements high and low in pitch - and in neither case is one element merely a negation of the other - so also in physical bodies we must assume an elementary opposition of wet to dry and cold to hot, and in this way we shall be faithful both to logic and to experience. Or are we, as old AnaximenesDiels-Kranz, 5, i, p. 95; cf. Diller, , lxvii, pp. 35 f. maintained, to leave neither hot nor cold in the realm of being, but to treat them as states belonging equally to any matter and occurring as a result of changes within it ? He affirms, in fact, that anything which undergoes contraction and condensation of matter is cold, while anything that suffers rarefaction and distention - this comes close to his own phrasing - is hot. So there is no contradiction in the remark that the man blew both hot and cold,See Aesop’s (no. 60 in Chambry’s Bude edition, vol. i, pp. 131 ff.), where the satyr renounces friendship with the man because the latter blows both hot and cold through the same mouth. for breath grows cold when it is compressed and condensed by the lips; but when it is expelled from the mouth left slack, it becomes hot through rarefaction. Aristotle,Probably (cf. the note on 950 b infra) , xxxiv. 7 (964 a 10 ff.); contrast Plato, , 79 a-c. however, holds that in this Anaximenes was mistaken: when the mouth is slack, what is exhaled is warm air from our own bodies; but when we compress the lips and blow, it is not air from ourselves, but the cold air in front of the mouth that is propelled forward and makes contact.

Perhaps we should now leave the question whether heat and cold are substances; if so, let us advance the argument to the next point and inquire what sort of substance coldness has, and what is its first principle and nature. Now those who affirm that there are certain uneven, triangular formations in our bodiesCf. Plato, , 53 c, 54 b-c. and that shivering and trembling, shuddering and the like manifestations, proceed from this rough irregularity, even if they are wrong in the particulars, at least derive the first principle from the proper place; for the investigation should begin, as it were from the very hearth,Or, perhaps, with Hestia, as the first principle of the cosmos (see, for example, Ritter, on Plato, , 247 a, pp. 123-124 of his edition). This passage is somewhat obscurely quoted below in 954 f. There were already three different interpretations known to the scholiast on Plato, , 3 a (p. 2, ed. Greene). from the substance of all things. This is, it would seem, the great difference between a philosopher and a physician or a farmer or a flute-player; for the latter are content to examine the causes most remote from the first cause, since as soon as the most immediate cause of an effect is grasped - that fever is brought about by exertion or an overflow of blood, that rusting of grain is caused by days of blazing sun after a rain, that a low note is produced by the angle and construction of the pipes - that is enough to enable a technician to do his proper job. But when the natural philosopher sets out to find the truth as a matter of speculative knowledge, the discovery of immediate causes is not the end, but the beginning of his journey to the first and highest causes. This is the reason why Plato and Democritus,Wyttenbach suggested Xenocrates for Democritus in this passage, which may be right, though his proposal is not considered by either Mullach or Heinze. when they were inquiring into the causes of heat and heaviness, were right not to stop their investigation with earth and fire, but to go on carrying back sensible phenomena to rational origins until they reached, as it were, the minimum number of seeds.

Nevertheless it is better for us first to attack things perceptible to the senses,in which EmpedoclesCf. Diels-Kranz, 5, i, p. 319, frag. B 21, part of which is quoted below in 949 f. and StratoSee Fritz Wehrli, , Part V. frag. 49. and the StoicsCf. 952 c, 1053 f; von Arnim, ii, pp. 140 f. locate the substances that underlie the qualities, the Stoics ascribing the primordially cold to the air, Empedocles and Strato to water; and someone else may, perhaps, be found to affirm that earth is the original substance of coldness.As Plutarch himself: see below, 952 c ff. (chapters 17-22). But let us examine Stoic doctrine before the others.

Since fire is not only warm but bright, the opposite natural entity (they say) must be both cold and dark: as gloomy is the opposite of bright, so is cold of hot. Besides, as darkness confounds the sight, so cold confuses the sense of touch. Heat, on the other hand, transmits the sensation of touching, as brightness does that of seeing. It follows, then, that in nature the primordially dark is also the primordially cold; and that it is air which is primordially dark does not, in fact, escape the notice of the poets since they use the term air for darkness: Thick air lay all about the ships, nor could The moon shine forth from heaven.Homer, , ix. 144-145. Words for air in Homer often mean mist or fog. And another instance: So clad in air they visit all the earth.Hesiod, , 255. And another: The air at once he scattered and dispelled the mist; The sun shone forth and all the battle carne in view.Homer, , xvii. 649-650. They also call the lightless air knephas, being as it were, kenon phaous void of light; and collected and condensed air has been termed nephos cloud because it is a negation of light.Plutarch’s etymologies here are no more scientific or convincing than those to be found in his , L.C.L. vol. iv, pp. 6-171. Flecks in the sky and mist and fog and anything else that does not provide a transparent medium for light to reach our senses are merely variations of air; and its invisible and colourless part is called Hades and Acheron.Invisible; cf. 953 a below and Plato, , 403 a ff.; , 81 c-d and contrast 942 f supra; colourless, achroston, Acheron. Cf. L. Parmentier, Recherches sur le traite d’Isis et d’Osiris de Plut., ii. 2 (1912/13), pp. 71 ff. In the same way, then, as air is dark when light is gone, so when heat departs the residue is cold air and nothing else. And this is the reason why it has been termed Tartarus because of its coldness. Hesiod, 119; contrast Plato, , 112 a ff. makes this obvious when he writes murky Tartarus; and to shake and shiver with cold is to tartarize. Cf. Servius on Vergil, vi. 577. Such, then, is the reason for these names.