hen who says that most men are deceived and
err, in holding that which is hot to be heating and that which is cold
to be cooling, is himself in an error, unless he should allow that his
assertion ends in the doctrine that one thing is not more of one nature
than another. He farther adds afterwards that oftentimes wine entering
into a body brings with it thither neither a calefying nor refrigerating
virtue, but, the mass of the body being agitated and disturbed, and
a transposition made of the parts, the heat-effecting atoms being
assembled together do by their multitude cause a heat and inflammation
in the body, and sometimes on the contrary disassembling themselves
cause a refrigeration.

But it is moreover wholly evident, that we may employ this argument to
all those things which are called and esteemed bitter, sweet, purging,
dormitive, and luminous, not any one of them having an entire and
perfect quality to produce such effects, nor to act rather than to be
acted on when they are in the bodies, but being there susceptible,
of various temperatures and differences. For Epicurus himself, in
his Second Book against Theophrastus, affirming that colors are not
connatural to bodies, but are engendered there according to certain
situations and positions with respect to the sight of man, says: "For
this reason a body is no more colored than destitute of color." And a
little above he writes thus, word for word: "But apart from this, I
know not how a man may say that those bodies which are in the dark have
color; although very often, an air equally dark being spread about them,
some distinguish diversities of colors, others perceive them not through
the weakness of their sight. And moreover, going into a dark house or
room, we at our first entrance see no color, but after we have stayed
there awhile, we do. Wherefore we are to say that every body is not more
colored than not colored. Now, if color is relative and has its being in
regard to something else, so also then is white, and so likewise blue;
and if colors are so, so also are sweet and bitter. So that it may truly
be affirmed of every quality, that it cannot more properly be said
to exist than not to exist. For to those who are in a certain manner
disposed, they will be; but to those who are not so disposed, they will
not be." Colotes therefore has bedashed and bespattered himself and
his master with that dirt, in which he says those lie who maintain that
things are no