Whether fire or water is most useful (5-9)

Moreover, what is never detrimental is more

Then too, that which by multiplication destroys its own contribution is the less useful. Such a thing is fire which, like an all-devouring beast, consumes everything near, so that it is useful rather by skilful handling and craft and moderation in use than by its own nature; but water is never dangerous. Further, of two things the one which may be joined with its fellow is more useful. Now fire does not admit moisture and is of no use when in conjunction with it; but water is of service when combined with fire, for hot water is healing and well adapted to medicinal purposes. A watery fire you will never see; but water is as useful to mankind when hot as when cold.

Furthermore, though there are but four elements,[*] water provides from itself a fifth, so to say, the sea, one no less beneficial than the others, especially for commerce among other things. This element, therefore, when our life was savage and unsociable, linked it together and made it complete, redressing defects by mutual assistance and exchange and so

What could anyone find to say on the other side from this point on? This, that God, the master workman, had as material four elements from which to construct the universe. Among these, again, there is a simple mutual distinction, namely, that earth and water are a foundation at the bottom of the universe, being, like raw material, the substance of which things are constructed and moulded, having just so much form and organization, and indeed of capacity for growth and procreation, as is imparted to them by the other elements, air and fire, which are makers and artisans and rouse them, lying lifeless as they were until then, to the act of creation. Between these two, again, fire and air, there is the distinction that fire assumes the rule and leadership. This is clear by induction[*]: earth without warmth

And, in general, water is so far from being selfsufficient for the preservation or generation of other things that the want of fire is water’s destruction. For heat maintains everything in its proper being and keeps it in its proper substance, water itself as well as everything else. When fire withdraws and fails, water putrefies: the dearth of heat is the death and destruction of water. It is, of course, marsh waters and such as are stagnant, some too that have drained into depressions with no outlet, that are bad[*] and finally putrefy[*] because they have very little motion, which preserves everything by stirring up its heat. This is the reason why we commonly say that those waters are living which have most motion and the strongest current; the heat is maintained by their motion. How, then, should that not be the more useful of two things which has provided what is necessary for the other’s existence, as fire does for water? And surely that is the more useful, the lack of which, if it be entirely taken away, causes the living creature to die. For it is obvious that anything without which a creature cannot live must have been a necessary cause of its existence, while it did exist. Now even corpses have moisture which does not entirely vanish; otherwise dead bodies would not