This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
But if we must grant that both heat and cold are substances, let us proceed a little farther in our discourse, and
[p. 314]
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.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.