22. All things, then, which are to be described, and those which not having yet been discovered must be left out of the account, were destined to be fitted for the cosmos which was to come into being at the proper time by the help given to it by such and so great a God, whose quality[40] the creature can neither conceive nor define. And these things existed stored within the seed, as, in a new-born [Sidenote: p. 348.] child, we see teeth and the power of fatherhood and brains accrue later; and those things which belong to the man but do not at first exist, evolve gradually out of the child. For it would be impossible to say that any projection by the God-who-was-Not became something non-existent,--since Basilides entirely shuns and has in horror [the notion of] substances of things begotten [arising] by way of projection.[41] For what, says he, is the need of projection or of any substructure of matter in order that God may fashion a cosmos as the spider makes webs, or mortal man takes brass or wood or some other portion of matter to work with?).--But He spoke, says he, and it came to pass; and this is, as these [heretics] say, what Moses spake:--“Let there be light and there was light.”[42] Whence, says he, came the light? From nothing. For it is not written says he, whence it came, but only that it came forth from the word of the speaker. For the speaker, says he, was not, nor did that which was spoken [formerly] exist. The seed of the cosmos, he says, came into being from non-existent things [and this seed is] the word which was spoken: “Let there be light.” And this, says he, is the saying in the Gospels: “This is [Sidenote: p. 349.] the true light which lighteneth every man who cometh into the world.”[43] It takes its beginnings[44] from that seed and gives light. This is the seed which contains within itself all the Seed-Mass which Aristotle says is the genus divided into boundless species, since we divide from the non-existent animal ox, horse [and] man. Further, of the underlying cosmic seed, they say, “whatever I may say came into being after this, seek not to know whence it came.” For it contained all seeds stored and shut up within itself, as it were things which were not, but which were foreordained to exist by the God-who-was-Not. Let us see then what they say came into being in the first, second or third place from the cosmic seed. There existed (Basilides) says within the seed itself, a Sonhood, threefold throughout, of the same essence[45] with the God-who-was-Not and begotten of the things that were not. Of this triple divided Sonhood, one part was subtle, (one coarse) and one wanting purification. Now the subtle (part) [Sidenote: p. 350.] straightway and as it became the first emission of the seed by the One-who-was-Not, escaped and ascended and went on high from below with the speed described by the poet-- “like wing or thought,”[46]