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These things they hold against the common conceptions; but those which follow they hold also against their
own, engendering that which is most hot by refrigeration,
and that which is most subtile by condensation. For the
soul, to wit, is a substance most hot and most subtile. But
this they make by the refrigeration and condensation of the
body, changing, as it were, by induration the spirit, which
of vegetative is made animal. Moreover, they say that the
sun became animated, his moisture changing into intellectual fire. Behold how the sun is imagined to be engendered by refrigeration! Xenophanes indeed, when one
told him that he had seen eels living in hot water, answered,
We will boil them then in cold. But if these men engender heat by refrigeration and lightness by condensation, it
follows, they must also generate cold things by heat, thick
things by dissolution, and heavy things by rarefaction, that
so they may keep some proportion in their absurdity.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 4.
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