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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
[p. 327]
the greatest distance from the sky. But as for those
things which are conspicuous, as rocks and precipices,
Empedocles believes them to be thrust forth and supported
by the fire that burns in the bottom of the earth. Which
appears the more, in regard that, wherever the heat is
pressed forth and vanishes away, all those things are congealed or stiffened by the cold; and therefore congelations
are called πάγοι (stiffened). And the extremities of many
things where heat fails, growing black, make them look
like brands when the fire is out. For cold congeals some
things more, some things less; more especially such things
wherein it is primitively existent. For as, if it be the
nature of hot to render light, that which is hottest is lightest; if of moist to soften, that which is moistest is softest;
so if it be the nature of cold to congeal, of necessity that
which is coldest must be most congealed,—that is to say
the earth,—and that which is most cold must be that
which is by nature and primitively cold, which is no more
than what is apparent to sense. For mud is colder than
water, and earth being thrown upon fire puts it out. Your
smiths also, when their iron is melted and red hot, strew
upon it the dust of marble to cool it and stop the running
of it too fluidly. Dust also cools the bodies of the wrestlers, and dries up their sweat.
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