Daedalus, Icarus, wax, and feathers

Meaning

Daedalus and Icarus make flight a lesson in governing extremes. Wax and feathers are narrative materials that later help explain a renewed capacity for ascent; they are not instructions to add wax and feathers to a chymical subject.

II.4.22 begins with an imagined objection: how can a fixed subject rise again? The answer invokes prudent flight between dangerous extremes. II.4.23 then decodes new feathers and wax through dissolution and restored subtlety before recongelation. It expressly says that ascent need not reach the top of the vessel. This does not cancel I.6.2's actual vapour rising and condensation; the passages assign different local senses to elevation. The myth teaches controlled renewed mobility while preserving the subject's body, not unqualified volatilization.

The English keeps the objection as an objection and the following explanation as the answer. Dedalle is retained as the printed French form, with Daedalus as English access.