Ordinary water

Meaning

Rain or cloud-water and an ordinary spring are explicitly excluded when the main treatise calls its matter water. This negative definition is essential, not a minor qualification: the same unit calls the matter thick, enduring, salty and, from another viewpoint, dry enough not to wet the hand. Those descriptions would become misleading if the reader simply substituted everyday water. The English’s “neither ... nor” preserves the paired exclusions. Yet exclusion does not supply a positive modern identification. The passage gives a cluster of philosophical names and asserted relations, not enough information to decide that any familiar liquid or chemical must be the intended thing.