G4 FABLE OF CUPID. 



which three have nevertheless an inherent and mutual con 

 nexion and causality. That heat itself differs in power, 

 quantity, speed, mean, and succession : that succession 

 itself is varied in most bodies by tendency to approach or 

 recede, whether by greater or less effort, by sudden motion, 

 by gradual, or by return or repetition through greater and 

 lessintervals, and by changes of this kind. That calorics 

 are therefore of a vast diversity in their nature and power, 

 according to their purity and impurity, respect being had to 

 their first source, the sun. Nor does heat cherish every kind 

 of heat: but after they differ mutually a good number of 

 degrees, they mutually destroy themselves not less than 

 cold natures, and assume their peculiar powers of action, 

 and are opposed to the acts the one of the other ; so that 

 Telesius makes the less with respect to the much greater 

 caloric natures to hold the place as it were of traitors and 

 conspirators with the cold against them. And so that 

 vivid heat, which is in fire and darts, utterly destroys that 

 slight heat which seems to glide secretly in water ; and in 

 like manner the preternatural heat of putrid humors suf 

 focates and extinguishes natural heat: but that there is a 

 great difference as to the fulness of a body of heat, is too 

 plain to need explanation. For one or two coals of fire do 

 not throw out such a warmth as many do together; and 

 that the effect of the fulness of heat is remarkably shown 

 in the multiplication of the sun s heat through the reflection 

 of his rays; for the number of his rays is doubled through 

 simple reflection, multiplied though various. But to the 

 quantity or copiousness of heat there should be ascribed or 

 added also its union, which is best seen by the obliquity 

 and perpendicular of rays, with which the nearer the direct 

 and reflex ray meets, and toward the acuter angles, the 

 greater degree of heat it sends forth in proportion. Nay 

 even the Sun himself, when amongst those greater and 

 more potent fires of the fixed stars, the Serpent, the Dog- 

 star, Spica, emit greater heat. But that the delay of 

 heat is evidently an operation of the greatest moment, 

 since all the influences of nature have respect to times, 

 so as that some time is required to the putting its in 

 fluences into action, and a considerable time to the giving 

 them strength. That so the delay of heat turns equal heat 

 into progressive and unequal, because the antecedent and 

 subsequent heat is joined at the same time; that that is 

 apparent in the autumnal heats because they are perceived 

 to be more ardent in the solstitial heats, and in the after- 



