Unsatisfied with the literary knowledge of this science, I sought to penetrate into its spirit; and as I perceived that the whole science, if it is to deserve this name, can contain nothing but the secrets of nature concealed in fables and allegories, I laboured to find out these secrets, and thereby to raise my merely literary knowledge to a rational knowledge. This, however, I could accomplish only in a very imperfect manner at the time, because I had yet very few ideas of the sciences in general. Still, by independent reflection I hit upon many applications of this kind. Thus, for example, I explained at once the first instance with which the Cabbalists commonly begin their science. It is this. Before the world was created, the divine being occupied the whole of infinite space alone. But God wished to create a world, in order that He might reveal those attributes of His nature which refer to other beings besides Himself. For this purpose He contracted Himself into the centre of His perfection, and issued into the space thereby left void ten concentric circles of light, out of which arose afterwards manifold figures (_Parzophim_) and gradations down to the present world of sense. I could not in any way conceive that all this was to be taken in the common sense of the words, as nearly all Cabbalists represent it. As little could I conceive that, before the world had been created, a time had past, as I knew from my _Moreh Nebhochim_, that time is a modification of the world, and consequently cannot be thought without it. Moreover, I could not conceive that God occupies a space, even though it be infinite; or that He, an infinitely perfect being, should contract Himself, like a thing of circular form, into a centre. Accordingly I sought to explain all this in the following way. God is prior to the world, not in time, but in His necessary being as the condition of the world. All things besides God must depend on Him as their cause, in regard to their essence as well as their existence. The creation of the world, therefore, could not be thought as a bringing forth _out of nothing_, nor as a formation of something independent on God, but only as a bringing forth _out of Himself_. And as beings are of different grades of perfection, we must assume for their explanation different grades of limitation of the divine being. But since this limitation must be thought as extending from the infinite being down to matter, we represent the beginning of the limitation in a figure as a centre (the lowest point) of the Infinite.