Is cold therefore to be numbered among those privations that are not distinguished in their action? Rather the contrary, in regard that pleasures very great and beneficial to our bodies arise from cold things; as no less terrible mischiefs, pains, and stupefaction on the other side; which the heat does not always avoid and give way to, but many times enclosed within the body, withstands and opposes. Which contention of theirs is called quivering and shaking, at what time, if the cold overcome the heat, thence proceed numbness and stiffness of the limbs; but if the cold be vanquished by the heat, there follow a pleasing warmth and opening of the skin, which Homer expresses by the word ἰαίνεθαι . These things are past dispute; and chiefly by these passive qualities it is, that we find cold to be opposite to heat, as substance to substance, or passive quality to passive quality, not as negation or privation; neither is it the destruction or abolishing of hot, but a kind of nature and power tending to its destruction. Otherwise we should exempt the winter out of the seasons, and the north winds out of the number of the winds, as being privations of the warmer seasons and the southern gales, and not having any proper original. Now in regard there are four first bodies in the universe, which, by reason of their number, their being uncompounded, and their efficacy, are allowed for the most part to be the principles and beginnings of all other,— that is to say, fire and water, air and earth,—is there not the same necessity that there should be as many first and uncompounded qualities? And what are they but heat and cold, drought and moisture, by virtue of which it comes to pass that all the principles act and suffer? Thus, as there are in grammar lengthenings and shortenings of sounds, in music, deep and acute sounds, though not one of them is the privation of the other; we must leave the dry opposed to the moist principles, and the hot to the cold, if we intend to have the effects answerable to reason and what is visible in Nature. Unless, as it was the opinion of the ancient Anaximenes, we will not allow either cold or hot to be in substance, but only to be common passive qualities accompanying the alterations of the matter. For he affirms the contraction and condensation of the matter to be cold; but the rarefication and laxation of it (for by that word he calls it) to be hot. Whence it may not be improperly said, that a man breathes hot and cold at once. For the breath grows cold being compressed and thickened by the lips, but coming out of the open mouth it is hot, as being rarefied by that emission. But for this, Aristotle convinces the same person of ignorance; for that when we blow with the mouth open, we blow hot from our own bodies; but when we blow with compressed lips, we do not breathe forth the air from ourselves, but the air that is before our mouths, being cold, is thrust forward, and lights upon what is next it. But if we must grant that both heat and cold are substances, let us proceed a little farther in our discourse, and enquire what sort of substance is cold, and what is its first principle and nature. They then who affirm that there are certain irregular triangular figures in our body, and tell us also that shuddering, trembling, and quivering, and whatever else we suffer of the same nature, proceed from the roughness of those figures, if they mistake in the parts, nevertheless derive the beginning from whence they ought. For we ought to begin the question—as it were from Vesta— from the substance of all things. By which it chiefly appears wherein a philosopher differs from a physician, a husbandman, or a piper. For it is sufficient for these to contemplate the last causes. For if the consideration of the nearest causes of the affection go no farther than to find that the cause of a fever is intenseness of heat, or the lighting of some humor where it ought not to be, that the cause of blasting is the scorching heat of the sun after rain, and that the cause why pipes give a bass sound is the inclination of the pipes or the bringing them near one to another; this is enough for the artist to know in reference to his business. But when a philosopher for contemplation’s sake scrutinizes into the truth, the knowledge of remote causes is not the end but the beginning of his proceeding in search of the first and ultimate causes. Wherefore Plato and Democritus, enquiring after the cause of heat and gravity, did not stop at the consideration of earth and fire, but bringing things perceptible to sense to beginnings intelligible only by the mind, they went on even to the smallest, as it were the seeds of what they sought for. But it is much the better way for us in the first place to move forward upon those things which are perceptible to sense, wherein Empedocles, Strato, and the Stoics placed the substances of active qualities; the Stoics ascribing primitive cold to the air, Empedocles and Strato to the water; and perhaps there might be somebody else who might affirm the earth to be the substance of cold. But first let us consider the opinions of those already named. Seeing then that fire is both hot and bright, therefore there must be something opposite to fire which is cold and dark. For as dark is opposite to light, so is cold to hot. Besides, as dark confounds the sight, so cold confounds the feeling. But heat diffuses the sense of feeling, as light diffuses the sense of seeing. Therefore that which is first dark in nature is first cold. Now that the air is first dark, was not unknown to the poets; for that they call the air darkness: The thickened air the fleet with darkness covered, Nor could the moonlight be from heaven discovered. Odyss. IX. 144. And again: Then darkness scattered and the fog dispelled, The sun brake forth, and all the fight beheld. Il. XVI. 649. They also call the air, when it is without light κνεφας , as being as it were κενὸν φάους ( void of light .) The air collected and condensed into a cloud is called νέφος , from its negation of light ( νή-φάος ). The words also ἀχλύς and ὁμίκλη ( mist ), and whatever else restrains the perception of light from the sense, are but distinctions of the air; insomuch that the same part of it which is invisible and without color ( ἀειδές and ἀρχωστον ) is called Hades and Acheron. So that, as the air grows dark when the splendor of it fails, in like manner when heat fails, that which is left is no more than cold air, which by reason of its coldness is called Tartarus. And this Hesiod makes manifest, when he calls it Τάρταρον ἠερόεντα (or cloudy Tartarus ); and when a man quakes and shivers for cold, he is said to tartarize. And so much for this. But in regard corruption is the alteration of those things that are corrupted into that which is contrary to every one of them, let us consider whether it be a true saying, The death of fire is the generation of air. For fire dies like a living creature, being quenched by force or going out of its own accord. Now quenching makes the alteration of it into air more conspicuous. For smoke is a sort of air, or, according to Pindar, a fuliginous vapor and exhalation, lashing the air with steaming smoke. Pind. Isthm. IV. 112. On the other side, when fire goes out for want of fuel, as in candles, you shall observe a thick and cloudy air ascending from the top of them. Moreover, the vapor steaming from our bodies upon the pouring of cold water after hot bathing or sweating sufficiently declares the alteration of extinguished heat into air, as being naturally opposite to air; whence it follows that the air was at first dark and cold.