(So much then in respect to those powers of his that existed before the beginning of the world; and co‐ordinate with these are his works over the whole visible world, in that he fills it with good gifts. For since he is the genuine son of the Good and from it has received his blessed lot in fulness of perfection, he himself distributes that blessedness to the intellectual gods, bestowing on them a beneficent and perfect nature. This then is one of his works. And a second work of the god is his most perfect distribution of intelligible beauty among the intellectual and immaterial forms. For when the generative substance(700) which is visible in our world desires to beget in the Beautiful(701) and to bring forth offspring, it is further necessary that it should be guided by the substance that, in the region of intelligible beauty, does this very thing eternally and always and not intermittently, now fruitful now barren. For all that is beautiful in our world only at times, is beautiful always in the intelligible world. We must therefore assert that the ungenerated offspring in beauty intelligible and eternal guides the generative cause in the visible world; which offspring(702) this god(703) called into existence and keeps at his side, and to it he assigns also perfect reason. For just as through his light he gives sight to our eyes, so also among the intelligible gods through his intellectual counterpart—which he causes to shine far more brightly than his rays in our upper air—he bestows, as I believe, on all the intellectual gods the faculty of thought and of being comprehended by thought. Besides these, another marvellous activity of Helios the King of the All is that by which he endows with superior lot the nobler races—I mean angels, daemons,(704) heroes, and those divided souls(705) which remain in the category of model and archetype and never give themselves over to bodies. I have now described the substance of our god that is prior to the world and his powers and activities, celebrating Helios the King of the All in so far as it was possible for me to compass his praise. But since eyes, as the saying goes, are more trustworthy than hearing—although they are of course less trustworthy and weaker than the intelligence—come, let me endeavour to tell also of his visible creative function; but let first me entreat him to grant that I speak with some measure of success.)