Whether fire or water is most useful (4-5)

urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0007.tlg128.perseus-eng3:4-5

Refs	`{'start': {'reference': '4', 'human_reference': 'Section 4'}, 'end': {'reference': '5', 'human_reference': 'Section 5'}}`
Ancestors	`[]`
Children	`[]`

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Let us pass from the people who use fire to the things that we use, namely plants and produce,[*] of which some are completely devoid of heat, while others have an infinitesimal and uncertain amount. Moisture, however, is the element in nature that makes them all burgeon, growing and bearing fruit. And why should I enumerate honey and wine and oil and all the rest that come to us from the vintage, the milking of herds, or taking off of honey - and it is obvious where they belong[*] - when even wheat itself, though it is classed as a dry food, moves into the category of liquids by alteration, fermentation, and deliquescence?[*]

Moreover, what is never detrimental is more

useful. Now fire, when it forms a stream, is most destructive; but the nature of water is never harmful. Then again, of two elements that is more beneficial which is cheaper and provides its help without any preparation. Now the use of fire requires a supply of fuel, for which reason rich people have more of it than poor, and kings than private persons; but water has another merit in service to man, that of equality, with no discrimination. For it needs no tools or implements, being a self-sufficient, self-fulfilling good.

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