However this may be, all the Valentinian schools seem to have agreed upon the emanation which immediately proceeded from the Deep or the Father of All. From Bythos, either alone or with the help of Sige[340], there proceeded Mind or Nous (Νοῦς), called also Monogenes[341] and the Father, the beginning of all subsequent things. This Nous is said to be “equal and like” to him from whom he had emanated, and by himself capable of comprehending the greatness of Bythos[342]. With Nous there also came forth a female Power named Aletheia or Truth (Ἀλήθεια), and this pair gave birth to a second syzygy, viz. Logos or the Word (Λόγος) and Zoe or Life (Ζωὴ), who in their turn produced a third pair, namely: Anthropos, Man (Ἄνθρωπος) and Ecclesia, the Church (Ἐκκλησία)[343]. The later Valentinians, from whom Irenaeus quotes, added to these six aeons, Bythos and his spouse Sige, thus making up the originating Ogdoad or eightfold Godhead again called the root and substance of all [subsequent] things[344]. Valentinus himself, however, probably did not give Bythos a spouse and held that he remained apart from and uplifted above his six principal emanations[345]. This subdivision of the Divine, resembling as it does the system of Simon Magus before described, may seem at first sight incredibly foolish and complicated, especially when it is considered that these “aeons,” as Valentinus calls them, might be considered not only as powers but as worlds. So it did to the Fathers, who are never tired of pouring contempt upon it. Tertullian makes merry over the Valentinian conception of a universe with an endless series of heavens piled one over the other, as he says, like the “Lodgings to let” of a Roman _insula_ or tenement house, or, had he ever seen one, of a New York skyscraper[346]. Irenaeus jokes cumbrously, comparing the Valentinian aeons to vegetables as if, he says, a gourd should bring forth a cucumber and this in its turn a melon[347]. Hippolytus, indeed, cannot indulge in such jeers because to do so would have stamped him in the opinion of all the learned of his time as an uneducated barbarian, his pet theory of Gnosticism being that all its doctrine was a plagiarism from the Greek philosophers and notably from Plato. Yet he never loses an opportunity of calling Valentinus’ opinions “worthless”; and goes out of his way to tack on to them the system of the Jewish magician Marcus, who, if we can believe the statements of the Fathers, exploited the rising sense of religion of the age for his own immoral or interested purpose[348].