‘In secundo libro qui Microcosmus dicitur, id est minor mundus, Noys ad Naturam loquitur et de mundi expolitione gloriatur et in operis sui completione se hominem plasmaturam pollicetur. Iubet igitur Uraniam, quae siderum regina est, et Physin, quae rerum omnium est peritissima, sollicite perquirat. Natura protinus iubenti obsequitur et per caelestes circulos Uraniam quaeritans eam sideribus inhiantem reperit. eiusque itineris causa praecognita se operis et itineris comitem Urania pollicetur.... Subitoque ibi Noys affuit suoque velle eis ostenso trinas speculationes tribus assignando tribuit & ad hominis plasmationem eas impellit. Physis igitur de quatuor elementorum reliquiis hominem format et a capite incipiens membratim operando opus suum in pedibus consummat.... ‘Noys ego scientia et divinae voluntatis arbitraria ad dispositionem rerum, quem ad modum de consensu eius accipio, sic meae administrationis officia circumduco.... ‘(Noys) erat fons luminis, seminarium vitae, bonum bonitatis divinae, plenitude scientiae quae mens altissimi nominatur. Ea igitur noys summi & exsuperantissimi Dei est intellectus et ex eius divinitate nata natura.... Erat igitur videre velut in speculo tersiore quicquid generationi quicquid operi Dei secretior destinarat affectus.’[83] Hildegard’s conception of macrocosm and microcosm, which was thus probably borrowed from Bernard Sylvestris, has analogies also to those well-known figures illustrating the supposed influence of the signs of the zodiac on the different parts of the body.[84] Such figures, with the zodiacal symbols arranged around a figure of Christ, may be seen in certain MSS. anterior to Hildegard,[85] while the influence of the ‘Melothesia’, to give it the name assigned by Porphyry, has been traced through its period of efflorescence at the Renaissance (Plates XV,[86] XVI,[87] and XVII,[88] compare with Plates VII and VIII) right down to our own age and country, where it still appeals to the ignorant and foolish.[89] Hildegard often interprets natural events by means of a peculiarly crude form of the doctrine, as when she describes how ‘if the excess of waters below are drawn up to the clouds (by the just judgment of God in the requital of sinners), then the moisture from the _aer aquosus_ transudes through the _fortis et albus lucidusque aer_ as a draught drunk into the urinary bladder; and the same waters descend in an inundation’.[90] Again, events in the body of man are most naively explained on the basis of the nature of the external world as she has pictured it.