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First of all, must we not be wary of one point in this argument ? It eliminates many obvious forces by considering them not to be qualities or properties, but merely the negation of qualities or properties, weight being the negation of lightness and hardness that of softness, black that of white, and bitter that of sweet, and so in any other case where there is a natural opposition of forces rather than a relation of positive and negative. Another point is that all negation is inert and unproductive: blindness, for example, and deafness, silence or death. Here you have the defection of a definite form and the annihilation of a reality, not something that is in itself a part of nature or reality. It is the nature of coldness, however, to produce affects and alterations in bodies that it enters no less than those caused by heat. Many objects can be frozen solid, or become condensed or made viscous, by cold.As steam is condensed and oil becomes viscous. Moreover, the property whereby coldness promotes rest and resists motion is not inert, but acts by pressure and resistance. being constrictive and preservative because of its strength. This explains how, though negation is a disappearance and departure of the contrary force, many things may yet becomeThe verb is ambiguous: become cold or dry or perhaps congealed. cold while all the time containing within themselves considerable warmth. There are even some objects which cold solidifies and consolidates the more readily the hotter they are: steel, for example, plunged in water. The StoicsCf. Mor. 1052 f; von Arnim, S.V.F. ii, pp. 134, 222; and see Hartman’s explanation, De Plutarcho, p. 566. Von Arnim thinks that the next five chapters also contain Stoic material. also affirm that in the bodies of infant children the breath is tempered by cooling and, from being a physical substance, becomes a soul. This, however, is debatable; yet since there are many other effects which may be seen to be produced through the agency of cold, we are not justified in regarding it as a negation.
