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First, we might question this way of arguing, as being
that which would abolish several manifest faculties, as
being neither qualities nor habits, but the privations of
habits and qualities; so as to make ponderosity the privation of levity, hardness the privation of softness, black of
white, bitter of sweet, and so with other things which are
naturally opposed to each other in their power and not as
a privation to a habit. Or else for this reason, because all
privation is a thing altogether sluggish and without action,
as blindness, deafness, silence, and death; for they are the
[p. 310]
departure of forms, and the utter defacings of substances,
not being natures nor substances of themselves; but cold,
wherever it resides, causes no less affections and alterations
in bodies than heat. For many things are congealed by
cold, many things thereby condensed. So that whatever
is solid in it and difficult to be moved cannot be said to be
sluggish and void of action, but firm and ponderous, as
being supported by its own strength, which is endued with
a power to preserve it in its proper station. Wherefore
privation is the deficiency and departure of the opposite
power, but many things are subject to be cold, though
abounding with heat within themselves. And there are
some things which cold the more condenses and consolidates the hotter they are, as iron quenched in water. The
Stoics also affirm, that the spirit which is in the bodies of
infants is quickened by refrigeration, and changing its
Nature, turns to a soul. But this is a thing much to be
disputed. Neither is it rational to believe that cold, which
is the productive agent in many other things, can be a
privation.
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