On the Principle of Cold (intro-4)

This little essay, or open letter to Favorinus, is not written in a controversial spirit, though a few sharp comments are made from time to time. Having established (chapters 5-7) that an element of Cold really exists, Plutarch proceeds to consider what that element may be. Since fire is obviously excluded, can it be air, as the Stoics believe (8-12), or water, as Empedocles, and an early Peripatetic, Strato, hold (13-16)? Or, indeed, may it be earth itself (17-22)? This latter opinion is apparently put forward by Plutarch as an original contribution to theoretical physics and there is no reason to believe it is not his. The essay closes, however, with a recommendation to scepticism,[*] so that our author may not have regarded his attempted proof as cogent, as indeed it is not.

The work was probably written in Delphi (cf. 953 c-d and e) after A.D. 107-(949 e, note) and addressed to the young philosopher Favorinus,[*] the great lover of Aristotle (Mor. 734 f), who is also a speaker in Symposiacs, viii. 10. Though Favorinus was in all

Bernardakis’s text of this work is one of his most unsatisfactory; even for an editio minor it is careless and confused to a deplorable extent. Nor are the means of correcting and supplementing it at hand, the fifth Teubner volume being still, one fears, in the remote future. Then, too. the only photographs available were those of E and Β. which are not likely to add much to our knowledge.[*] Consequently the only course that seemed prudent was to return to

The work is no. 90 in the catalogue of Lamprias.

Is there, then, Favorinus,[*] an active principle or substance of Cold (as fire is of Heat) through the presence of which and through participation in which everything else becomes cold? Or is coldness rather a negation of warmth, as they say darkness is of light and rest of motion? Cold, indeed, seems to have the quality of being stationary, as heat has that of motion; while the cooling off of hot things is not caused by the presence of any force,[*] but merely by the displacement of heat, for it can be seen to depart completely at the same time as the remainder cools off. The steam, for example, which boiling water emits, is expelled in company with the departing heat; that is why the amount becomes less by cooling off; for this removes the heat and nothing else takes its place.

First of all, must we not be wary of one point in this argument ? It eliminates many obvious forces by considering them not to be qualities or properties, but merely the negation of qualities or properties, weight being the negation of lightness and hardness that of softness, black that of white, and bitter that of sweet, and so in any other case where there is a natural opposition of forces rather than a relation of positive and negative. Another point is that all negation is inert and unproductive: blindness, for

Besides, a negation does not permit degrees of less or more. Surely nobody will affirm that one blind man is blinder than another, or one dumb man more silent than another, or one corpse deader than its fellow; but among cold things there is a wide range of deviation from much to little, from very cold to not very, and, generally speaking, in degrees of intensity

For the opposition of a negation to a positive quality is an irreconcilable hostility, since the existence of the one is the annihilation of the other. The other opposition, however, of positive forces, if it occurs in due measure, is often operative in the arts, and very often indeed in various phenomena of nature, especially in connexion with the weather and the seasons and those matters from which the god derives his title of harmonizer and musician, because he organizes and regulates them. He does not receive these names merely for bringing sounds of high and low pitch, or black and white colours, into harmonious fellowship, but because he has authority over the association and disunion of heat and cold in the universe, to see that they observe due measure in their combination and separation, and because, by eliminating the excess of either, he brings both into proper order.

Furthermore, we find that cold can be perceived