22. Therefore it was the opinion of the ancient philosophers and learned men, that terrestrial and celestial things were not to be mixed together, not so much out of a local consideration of uppermost and lowermost, in respect of place, but with a respect to the difference of faculties attributing hot and splendent, swift and light to the immortal and sempiternal Nature, but believing dark and cold and slow to be the unhappy portion of the dead under the shackles of corruption. Since the body of a living creature, while it breathes and flourishes (as the poets say), enjoys both heat and life; but being deprived of these, and only the terrestrial parts remaining, presently cold and stiffness take place, as if heat were naturally existent in every thing else but only the earth. 23. These things, dear Favorinus, compare with what has been said by others; and if they neither come too short of probability nor too much exceed it, bid all their opinions farewell, as believing it much more becoming a philosopher to pause in dubious matters, rather than over hastily to side with any one particular party. WHETHER WATER OR FIRE BE MOST USEFUL. 1. “Water is the best of things, but gold is like burning fire,” says Pindar[123]. Therefore he positively assigns the second place to fire; with whom Hesiod agrees, where he says, First of all Chaos being had.[124] For most believe that by the word chaos he meant water, from χύσις, signifying _diffusion_. But the balance of argument as to this point seems to be equal. For there are some who will have it that fire is the principle of all things, and that like sperm it begets all things out of itself, and resolves all things again by conflagration. Therefore, not to mention the persons, let us consider the arguments on both sides, which are to us the most convincing.