Concerning the First Principle of Cold (18-20)

But this is nothing to the question. For we have shown that there are many cold things which are bright and transparent, and many hot things which are obscure and dark. But ponderosity, stability, density, and immutability are qualities more properly belonging to cold, of none of which the air partakes, but of all of which the earth has a far greater share than the water. And yet in all these things cold, by the judgment of sense itself, appears to be hard, to cause hardness, and to make resistance. For Theophrastus tells us of fish that have been frozen by extremity of cold, when they have chanced to bounce ashore, that their bodies have been broken and crumbled to pieces like a vessel of glass or potter’s clay. You yourself have heard at Delphi, how that certain persons ascending to the top of Parnassus to succor the Thyades that were overtaken with a violent storm of wind and hail, their coats were frozen so hard and into a substance so like wood, that being spread upon the ground they broke and crumbled to pieces. It also stiffens the nerves and deprives the tongue of motion, congealing the moist and softer parts of the body.

This being obvious to sight, let us consider the effect. Every faculty, wherever it prevails, changes into itself whatever it overcomes. Thus whatever is overcome by heat is set on fire; that which is vanquished by wind is changed into air. That which falls into water becomes well moistened, unless quickly saved. Of necessity, therefore, those things which are violently affected by cold must be changed into the primitive cold. For freezing is an excess of refrigeration; which congelation ends in alteration and petrifaction, when the cold, prevailing every way, congeals the liquid substance and presses forth the heat; so that the bottom of the earth is, as it were, a kind of congelation, and altogether ice. For there the cold inhabits simple and unmixed, and removed hard and rigid at

To go no farther, what means our own yearly practice to alter our lodgings and habitations, while we remove in the winter so far as we can into the upper parts of our buildings, but in the summer descend again and seek convenient refuge in the lower edifices, sometimes enjoying ourselves under ground in the very arms of the earth? Do we not do it, as being guided by our senses for coolness’s sake to the earth, and thereby acknowledging that to be the seat of primitive cold? And certainly our coveting to live near the sea in winter may be thought to be a kind of flight from the earth, since we seem to forsake it,