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Therefore it was the opinion of the ancient philosophers and learned men, that terrestrial and celestial things
[p. 330]
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.
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. 5.
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