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Yet, to take the opposite point of view, that is more useful which we alone make great use of, since by the powers of our reason we are able to choose what is better. For what is more useful and more profitable to man than reason? But brute beasts do not have it. What then? Is what has been discovered by the foresight of our better part for this reason less useful?
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And since we have arrived at this point in our argument: What is more profitable to life than Art? And it was fire that discovered and still preserves all the arts. That is why they make Hephaestus the first of artificers. Man has been granted but a little time to live and, as AristonVon Arnim, S.V.F. i. p. 90, frag. 403; cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, i. 13. 12 (1102 b 7). says, sleep, like a taxcollector, takes away half of that. But I would rather say that it is a question of darkness; for although a man might stay awake all night, yet no good would come of his wakefulness if fire did not give him the benefits of day and remove the difference between day and night.A very corrupt passage. Adler’s reconstruction (Wien. Stud. xxxi. 308), with additions by Post, has been followed. If, then, there is nothing more advantageous to man than life and life is many times increased by fire, how should fire not be the most useful of all things?
