Whether water or fire be most useful. (3)

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.