Ice and snow

Meaning

Ice and snow provide a familiar instance of the relation between first and last matter. They congeal from water and return to water when heat removes their frozen condition. What comes first in generation can thus be last in resolution, without requiring that the intermediate form persist. The example lends intelligibility to the author’s more general maxim; it does not prove that every substance can be restored by the same physical treatment. In particular, the passage distinguishes the pure earth under discussion from ordinary earth, so the analogy cannot erase the difference between the philosophical subject and common soil.