Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 5 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"Plutarch
Philosophy
Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 5 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"
Plutarch
Classical literature; Essays; Ethics; Philosophy
4. Then again, we find that there is the same sense and feeling of
cold as of heat; but privation is neither to be seen, heard, or felt,
neither is it known to any of the other senses. For the object of sense
is substance; but where no substance appears, there we understand
privation to be,—which is a negation of substance, as blindness of
sight, silence of voice, and vacuity of corporeal substance. For
there is no sense or perception of vacuity by feeling; but where
there is no body to be felt, there a vacuity is implied. Neither do
we hear silence; but where we do not hear any thing at all, there we
imply silence. In like manner we have no perception of blindness,
nakedness, or being unarmed; but we know them from the negation of our
sense. Therefore if cold were a privation of heat, there would be no
being sensible of cold; but only where heat ceased to be, there cold
would be implied. But if, as heat is perceptible by the warmth and
laxative softness of the flesh, so cold is no less perceptible by the
contraction and condensation of it, it is from thence apparent, that
there is some peculiar original and fountain of cold as well as heat.
5. Further then, privation of every kind is something single and
simply particular; but in substances there are several differences and
efficacies. For silence is a thing but of one sort; but of sounds there
are great variety, sometimes molesting, sometimes delightful to the
sense. There are also the same differences in colors and figures, which
vary as they occur to the senses. But that which is not to be felt,
which is without color and void of quality, can never be distinguished,
but is always like itself.
6. Is cold therefore to be numbered among those privations that are
not distinguished in their action? Rather the contrary, in regard that
pleasures very great and beneficial to our bodies arise from cold
things; as no less terrible mischiefs, pains, and stupefaction on the
other side; which the heat does not always avoid and give way to, but
many times enclosed within the body, withstands and opposes. Which
contention of theirs is called quivering and shaking, at what time, if
the cold overcome the heat, thence proceed numbness and stiffness of
the limbs; but if the cold be vanquished by the heat, there follow a
pleasing warmth and opening of the skin, which Homer expresses by the
word ἰαίνεσθαι. These things are past dispute; and chiefly by these
passive qualities it is, that we find cold to be opposite to heat, as
substance to substance, or passive quality to passive quality, not as
negation or privation; neither is it the destruction or abolishing
of hot, but a kind of nature and power tending to its destruction.
Otherwise we should exempt the winter out of the seasons, and the north
winds out of the number of the winds, as being privations of the warmer
seasons and the southern gales, and not having any proper original.
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