Men have determined in their minds to name two principles [_lit._ forms]; but one of these they ought {115} not to name, and in so doing they have erred. They distinguish them as antithetic in character, and give them each character and attributes distinct from those of the other. On the one hand there is the aethereal flame of fire, fine, rarefied, everywhere identical with itself and not identical with its opposite; and on the other hand, opposed to the first, is {120} the second principle, flameless darkness, dense and heavy in character. Of these two principles I declare to thee every arrangement as it appears to men, so that no knowledge among mortals may surpass thine. But since all things are called light and darkness, and the peculiar properties of these are predicated of one thing and another, everything is at the same time full of light and of obscure darkness, of both {125} equally, since neither has anything in common with the other. And the smaller circles are filled with unmixed fire, and those next them with darkness into which their portion of light penetrates; in the midst of these is the divinity who directs the course of all. For she controls dreaded birth and coition in every {130} part of the universe, sending female to join with male, and again male to female. First of all the gods she devised love. Thou shalt know the nature of the heavens and {135} all signs that are in the sky, the destructive deeds of the pure bright torch of the sun and whence they arose, and thou shalt learn the wandering deeds of the round-eyed moon and its nature. Thou shalt know also the sky surrounding all, whence it arose, and how necessity took it and chained it so as to serve as {140} a limit to the courses of the stars. How earth and sun and moon and common sky and the milky way of the heavens and highest Olympos and the burning (might of the) stars began to be. It (the moon) wanders about the earth, shining {145} at night with borrowed light. She is always gazing earnestly toward the rays of the sun. For as at any time is the blending of very complex members in a man, so is the mind in men constituted; for that which thinks is the same in all men and in every man, _viz._ the essence of the members of the body; and the element that is in {150} excess is thought. On the right hand boys, on the left hand girls. So, according to men’s opinions, did things arise, and so they are now, and from this state when they shall have reached maturity shall they perish. For each of these men has determined a name as a distinguishing mark. {K. 150} When male and female mingle seed of Venus in the form [the body] of one, the excellence from the two different bloods, if it preserves harmony, fashions a well-formed body; but if when the seed is mingled the excellencies fight against each other and do not unite into one, they will distress the sex that is coming into existence, as the twofold seed is mingled in the body of the unfortunate woman.