 But Aristotle’s views on the effects of temperature on the blood, and through the blood on the soul’s faculties, present certain challenges of interpretation: in the same passage of the Parts of Animals just cited, Aristotle says first that cold, thin blood is best for intelligence, and then that hot, thin blood is best. Marinella exploits this ambiguity, elaborating on Castiglione’s point that women are, in themselves, temperate rather than cold (see Castiglione 1528, 219). She agrees that women are colder, and embraces the notion that cold blood is intelligent blood. But she goes further than Castiglione in asserting that hot blood is associated with intemperate passions, and deduces the superiority of women with respect to intelligence, temperance, and general virtue or nobility. She says,