In the abstract and implicit manner natural to the sage of a mature and over-blown culture, Boethius had illustrated the relation between Providence and Fate by the relation between the centre of the circle and its circumference. This analogy is stated in mathematical fashion. A series of concentric circles offer points of external contact more numerous in some and less numerous in others, according as their circumference is nearer or further from the common centre, but the centre itself is unaffected by such chances; it remains always the same, one and indivisible. The stable centre is Divine Providence; by the various contact of the circumferences with external things is represented the vicissitude of Fate or Fortune. This refined similitude was translated by king Alfred, out of the diamond-cut succinct Latin of Boethius, into the homely speech of his own people, by means of a concrete figure that was familiar to every son of the soil. Accordingly some things in this world are subject to Fate, some are no whit subject thereto: but Fate, and all the things subject to it, are in subjection to Divine Providence. Concerning this I can rehearse unto thee a similitude, whereby thou mayest the better understand, which men be subject to Fate, and which be not. All this moving and revolving creation revolves upon God, who is immovable, unchangeable, and one: and he wieldeth all creatures just as he at the first had ordained, and still doth ordain. As on a waggon’s axle the wheels revolve and the axle standeth still and beareth the whole waggon and governs all the motion; while the wheel turns about, and the nave next to the axle moves more steadily and more securely than the fellies do: in such a manner that the axle is the highest good, which we call God, and the happiest men move nighest to God, even as the nave moveth nighest to the axle, and the middling sort are just like the spokes; forasmuch as every spoke hath one end fast in the nave and the other end in the felly. So it is with men of the middling sort; at one time he thinks in his mind about this earthly life, at another time about the heavenly; like a man looking with one eye to heaven and with the other to earth. Just as the spokes have one end sticking in the felly and the other in the nave, while the middle of the spoke is equally near to both, even so are the middling men in the middle of the spoke, and the better men nearer to the nave, and the meaner men nearer to the fellies: they are, however, in connexion with the nave, and the nave with the axle. So now, the fellies though they are attached to the spokes, yet are they altogether rolling upon the earth; so are the meanest connected with the middling and the middling with the best and the best with God. Though the meanest men all direct their love to this world, yet can they not rest thereon, nor be of any account,