Hildegard thus supposes that the whole universe is permeated by a single living spirit, the figure of the vision. This spirit of the macrocosm, the _Nous_ or ‘world spirit’ of the hermetic and Neoplatonic literature, the impersonated _Nature_, as we may perhaps render it, is in its turn controlled by the Godhead that pervades the form and is represented rising from its vertex as a second human face. Nature, the spirit of the cosmic order, controls and holds in subjection the hideous monster, the principle of death and dissolution, the _Hyle_ or primordial matter of the Neoplatonists, whose chaotic and anarchic force would shatter and destroy this fair world unless fettered by a higher power. With the details of the visionary figure we need not delay,[73] but we pass to the description of the structure of the macrocosm itself, to which the second vision is devoted (Plate VII). Here appears the same figure of the macrocosmic spirit. But now the head and feet only are visible, and the arms are outstretched to enclose the disk of the universe which conceals the body. Although the macrocosm now described is considerably altered from Hildegard’s original scheme of the universe, she yet declares, ‘I saw in the bosom of the form the appearance of a disk of like sort to that which twenty-eight years before I had seen in the third vision, set forth in my book of _Scivias_’.[74] The zones of this disk are then described (Plates VII, VIII, and XI and Fig. 2). They are from without inwards: (_a_) The _lucidus ignis_, containing the three outer planets, the sixteen principal fixed stars, and the south wind. (_b_) The _ignis niger_, containing the sun, the north wind, and the materials of thunder, lightning, and hail. (_c_) The _purus aether_, containing the west wind, the moon, the two inner planets, and certain fixed stars. (_d_) The _aer aquosus_, containing the east wind. (_e_) The _fortis et albus lucidusque aer_, where certain other fixed stars are placed. (_f_) The _aer tenuis_, or atmosphere, in the outer part of which is the zone of the clouds. From all these objects, from the spheres of the elements, from the sun, moon, and other planets, from the four winds each with their two collaterals, from the fixed stars, and from the clouds, descend influences, indicated by lines, towards the figure of the macrocosm. The microcosm is then introduced. ‘And again I heard the voice from heaven saying, “God, who created all things, wrought also man in his own image and similitude, and in him he traced [_signavit_] all created things, and he held him in such love that he destined him for the place from which the fallen angel had been cast.”’[75]