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.
