FABLE OF CUPID. G5 



noons of summer because they are found to be more ardent 

 in the middays of those seasons; also, that in colder 

 regions the feebleness of the heat is sometimes compen 

 sated by the delay and length of the summer days; but 

 that the power and efficacy of the mean is remarkable in 

 the conveyance of heat. For that hence the temperature 

 of the seasons is very various, so that the atmosphere is 

 found, by an inconstancy that is discoverable, to be some 

 times cold in summer days, sometimes moist in winter 

 days, the sun in the mean while preserving his legitimate 

 course and ordinary distance ; that the com and vine are 

 more changed by the south winds and a stormy sky ; and 

 that the whole position and emission of the atmosphere, at 

 one time pestilential and morbid, at another genial and 

 healthful, according to the various revolutions of the year, 

 has its rise from this, namely, from the varying of the 

 medium of the air, which gathers its diverse disposition 

 from the very vicissitude and alteration of the seasons, 

 perhaps in a long series. But that as there is a multifold 

 ratio, so is there a very great virtue of the succession of 

 heat, and of the order in which heat follows heat. For 

 that the sun could not send out so numerous and prolific 

 a generation, unless the configuration of the body of the 

 sun moving toward the earth, and the parts of the earth, 

 were a partaker of the very great inequality and variation ; 

 for the sun is moved both in a circle and rapidly, and 

 obliquely, and recalls itself, so as to be both absent and 

 present, both nearer and more remote, and more perpen 

 dicular and more oblique, and returning swifter and slower, 

 so as that the heat emanating from the sun is never 

 the same, nor ever recovers itself in a little while (except 

 ing under the tropics) ; so that so great a variation of the 

 power generating admirably agrees with this so great varia 

 tion in that which is generated. To which can be added 

 the very diverse nature of the medium or vehicle. That 

 the other circumstances asserted of the inequality and 

 degrees of heat alone, can be referred to the vicissitudes 

 and varieties of succession in different heats. That Aris 

 totle therefore rightly attributed the generation and corrup 

 tion of things to the oblique path of the sun, making that 

 as it were their efficient cause, if he -had not indeed cor 

 rupted the truth he discovered, through his unbounded 

 rage for uttering decisions and of making himself the law 

 giver of nature, and of adapting and of settling all things 

 so as to make them harmonize with his dogmas. For that 



VOL. xv. 



