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Water, however, seems to be cold of itself, and primordially so. It is the antithesis, in its coldness, to the heat of fire, just as in its wetness to the dryness of fire, and in its heaviness to the other’s lightness. To sum up: fire is of a disintegrating and separative nature, while water is adhesive and retentive, holding and gluing together by means of its moistness. EmpedoclesDiels-Kranz, Frag. der Vorsok. 5, i, p. 318, frag. B 19. Plutarch seems to have mistaken Empedocles’ meaning, though some would invoke frag. B 34. In general, while Plutarch is said to have written ten books on Empedocles (Lamprias catalogue no. 43), he does not seek the difficult poet’s meaning very carefully. alluded to this, when, as often as he mentioned them, he termed Fire a Destructive Strife and Water Tenacious Love. For the nourishment of fire is that which can be changed into fire and only things that have affinity and a close relationship to it can be so changed; while its opposites, like water, are not easily changed to fire. Water itself is practically incombustible, and it renders matter such as damp grass and moist timber very hard to consume; the greenness in them produces a dusky, dull flame because, by dint of cold, it struggles against heat as against its natural enemy.
