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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.
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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