7
Furthermore, given four primary bodies in the universeSee Diels-Kranz, Frag. der Vorsok. 5, i, pp. 315 ff., Empedocles, frag. B 17. The doctrine is clearly stated by, for example, Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 10. The author of the Epinomis (981 c) adds a fifth element, aether (cf. 951 d infra). which, because of their quantity, simplicity, and potentiality, most judges regard as being the elements or first principles of everything else - I mean fire, water, air, and earth - the number of primary, simple qualities must be the same. And what should these be but warmth and cold, dryness and moisture, which by their very nature cause all the elements to act and be acted upon?Post translates his emendation: by which all things are qualified through the natural action of the elements, pointing out that elements have nothing but size, shape, and motion. Fire causes heat, but its atoms are not themselves hot. Just as in grammar we have elements long and short and in music elements high and low in pitch - and in neither case is one element merely a negation of the other - so also in physical bodies we must assume an elementary opposition of wet to dry and cold to hot, and in this way we shall be faithful both to logic and to experience. Or are we, as old AnaximenesDiels-Kranz, Frag. der Vorsok. 5, i, p. 95; cf. Diller, Hermes, lxvii, pp. 35 f. maintained, to leave neither hot nor cold in the realm of being, but to treat them as states belonging equally to any matter and occurring as a result of changes within it ? He affirms, in fact, that anything which undergoes contraction and condensation of matter is cold, while anything that suffers rarefaction and distention - this comes close to his own phrasing - is hot. So there is no contradiction in the remark that the man blew both hot and cold,See Aesop’s Fables (no. 60 in Chambry’s Bude edition, vol. i, pp. 131 ff.), where the satyr renounces friendship with the man because the latter blows both hot and cold through the same mouth. for breath grows cold when it is compressed and condensed by the lips; but when it is expelled from the mouth left slack, it becomes hot through rarefaction. Aristotle,Probably (cf. the note on 950 b infra) Problemata, xxxiv. 7 (964 a 10 ff.); contrast Plato, Timaeus, 79 a-c. however, holds that in this Anaximenes was mistaken: when the mouth is slack, what is exhaled is warm air from our own bodies; but when we compress the lips and blow, it is not air from ourselves, but the cold air in front of the mouth that is propelled forward and makes contact.
