This being supposed, let us proceed to the next stage: In the
likeness of what animal did the Creator make the world? It would
be an unworthy thing to liken it to any nature which exists as a
part only; for nothing can be beautiful which is like any
imperfect thing; but let us suppose the world to be the very
image of that whole of which all other animals both individually
and in their tribes are portions. For the original of the
universe contains in itself all intelligible beings, just as this
world comprehends us and all other visible creatures. For the
Deity, intending to make this world like the fairest and most
perfect of intelligible beings, framed one visible animal
comprehending within itself all other animals of a kindred nature.
Are we right in saying that there is one world, or that they are
many and infinite? There must be one only, if the created copy is
to accord with the original. For that which includes all other
intelligible creatures cannot have a second or companion; in that
case there would be need of another living being which would
include both, and of which they would be parts, and the likeness
would be more truly said to resemble not them, but that other
which included them. In order then that the world might be
solitary, like the perfect animal, the creator made not two
worlds or an infinite number of them; but there is and ever will
be one only-begotten and created heaven.
Now that which is created is of necessity corporeal, and also
visible and tangible. And nothing is visible where there is no
fire, or tangible which has no solidity, and nothing is solid
without earth. Wherefore also God in the beginning of creation
made the body of the universe to consist of fire and earth. But
two things cannot be rightly put together without a third; there
must be some bond of union between them. And the fairest bond is
that which makes the most complete fusion of itself and the
things which it combines; and proportion is best adapted to
effect such a union. For whenever in any three numbers, whether
cube or square, there is a mean, which is to the last term what
the first term is to it; and again, when the mean is to the first
term as the last term is to the mean-then the mean becoming first
and last, and the first and last both becoming means, they will
all of them of necessity come to be the same, and having become
the same with one another will be all one. If the universal frame
had been created a surface only and having no depth, a single
mean would have sufficed to bind together itself and the other
terms; but now, as the world must be solid, and solid bodies are
always compacted not by one mean but by two, God placed water and
air in the mean between fire and earth, and made them to have the
same proportion so far as was possible (as fire is to air so is
air to water, and as air is to water so is water to earth); and
thus he bound and put together a visible and tangible heaven. And
for these reasons, and out of such elements which are in number
four, the body of the world was created, and it was harmonised by
proportion, and therefore has the spirit of friendship; and
having been reconciled to itself, it was indissoluble by the hand
of any other than the framer.
Now the creation took up the whole of each of the four
elements; for the Creator compounded the world out of all the
fire and all the water and all the air and all the earth, leaving
no part of any of them nor any power of them outside. His
intention was, in the first place, that the animal should be as
far as possible a perfect whole and of perfect parts: secondly,
that it should be one, leaving no remnants out of which another
such world might be created: and also that it should be free from
old age and unaffected by disease. Considering that if heat and
cold and other powerful forces which unite bodies surround and
attack them from without when they are unprepared, they decompose
them, and by bringing diseases and old age upon them, make them
waste away-for this cause and on these grounds he made the world
one whole, having every part entire, and being therefore perfect
and not liable to old age and disease. And he gave to the world
the figure which was suitable and also natural. Now to the animal
which was to comprehend all animals, that figure was suitable
which comprehends within itself all other figures.
