Whether water or fire be most useful. (1-5)

Now then, is not that the most useful to us, which in all places and always and most of all we stand in need of, — like a piece of household-stuff or a tool, nay, like a friend that is ready at all hours and seasons? But fire is not always useful; for sometimes it is a prejudice to us and we avoid it if we can. But water is useful, winter and summer, to the healthy and sick, night and day; neither indeed is there any time but that a man has need of it. Therefore it is that the dead are called alibantes, as being without moisture (λιβάς) and by that means deprived of life; and man may be without fire, but never

But why do I so meanly confine my discourse to the nature of men, seeing there are many, nay, infinite sorts of creatures? The race of man is almost the only one that knows the use of fire; the others live and feed without fire. Indeed, beasts, birds, and creeping things live upon roots, fruits, and raw flesh, without fire; but without water neither fish nor fowl nor land animals can subsist. For all beasts that feed upon flesh, of which there are some (as Aristotle reports) that never drink, nevertheless support life and being merely by moisture. So that of necessity that must be most profitable without which no sort of life can subsist or endure.

Let us therefore make a step from animals that eat to things that we ourselves make use of, such are plants and fruits; of which some are altogether void of heat, others enjoy it but imperfectly and obscurely. But moisture

Then again, that is most useful which is no way detrimental. Now fire easily becomes most pernicious, but the nature of water is never prejudicial. In the next place, that is most useful which affords the benefit which it brings with least expense, and without any preparation. But the benefit of fire requires cost and materials, and therefore the rich make more use of it than the poor, and princes than private persons; but water has that kindness for mankind, that it freely offers itself to all alike, a benefit perfect in itself, indigent of nothing, and wanting neither tools nor implements.