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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 ἰαίνεσθαι. 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
[p. 313]
being privations of the warmer seasons and the southern
gales, and not having any proper original.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 5.
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