Περὶ τοῦ πρώτως ψυχροῦ

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İngilizce İngilizce Yunanca

22 We must, therefore, believe that the reason why ancient learned men held that there is no commerce between earthly and celestial things was not that they distinguished up and down by relative position, as we do in the case of scales; but rather it was the difference in powers that led them to assign such things as are hot and bright, swift and buoyant, to the eternal and imperishable part of nature, while darkness and cold and slowness they considered the unhappy heritage of transitory and submerged beings. Then too, the body of a living creature, as long as it; breathes and flourishes, does, as the poets say, enjoy both warmth and lifePerhaps some such passage as Homer, Iliad, xxii. 363 is meant.; but when these forsake it and it is abandoned in the realm of earth alone, immediately frigidity and congelation seize upon it, since warmth naturally resides in anything else rather than in the earthy.

23 Compare these statements, Favorinus, with the pronouncements of others; and if these notions of mine are neither less probable nor much more plausible than those of others, say farewell to dogma, being convinced as you are that it is more philosophic to suspend judgement when the truth is obscure than to take sides.See the introduction to this essay.