Whether water or fire be most useful. (12)

And since our discourse has brought us to it, what is more beneficial to life than art? Yet fire invented and preserves all manner of arts. And therefore Vulcan is feigned to be the prince of all artificers. Man has allowed him but a little time to live; and as Aristo said, sleep, like a toll-gatherer, deprives him of the one-half of that too. I would rather say that the darkness does this; for a man may watch all night. But he would have no benefit of his watchfulness unless fire afforded him all the benefit of the light of day, and removed the difference between night and day. Since then there is nothing more beneficial to man than life, and this is prolonged by fire, why should not fire be accounted the most beneficial of all things?