Whether fire or water is most useful (8-9)

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

is barren and unfruitful, but fire, when it takes possession and inflames, causes it to swell to the point of generation; and it is impossible to find anyother reason why rocks and the bare bones of mountains are barren except that they have either no part at all, or very little share, in fire.

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

putrefy, since putrefaction is not a change from dry to moist, but rather a corruption of the moisture in flesh. Death, then, is nothing but the total disappearance of heat and so dead men are extremely cold; if you attack them with a razor-blade, you will blunt the edge of it through excess of cold. In the living creature itself, too, the parts that have the least heat are the least sensitive, like bones and hair and the parts that are a long way from the heart. And, in general, the presence of fire makes a greater difference[*] than that of moisture; for it is not mere moisture that produces plants and fruits, but warm moisture; cold water, of course, is either less productive or not productive at all. Yet if by its own nature water were fruitful, it would always bear fruit by itself b; but on the contrary it is even harmful.