counsellor, nor any other thing that by any figure of speech could be understood as essence.[106] But He was alone and solitary, as they say, and resting alone within Himself. And when He was filled with fruit, He saw fit to beget and bring forth the most [Sidenote: p. 281.] beautiful and perfect thing He had within Himself. For He did not love to be alone.[107] For He, Valentinus says, was all Love and love is not love unless there be something to be loved. Then the Father himself projected and engendered, as He was alone, Mind and Truth,[108] that is a dyad, which became the lady and beginning and mother of all the aeons reckoned by them as being within the Pleroma. But Nous and Aletheia having been projected by the Father, a fruitful (projection) from the fruitful, imitating the Father projected also the Word and Life;[109] and Logos and Zoe projected Man and the Church.[110] But Nous and Aletheia when they saw that their own special progeny had become fruitful, gave thanks to the Father of the universals and offered to him a perfect number, ten Aeons. For than this, he says, Nous and Aletheia could offer to the Father no more perfect number. For the Father being perfect ought to be glorified with a perfect number. And the ten is perfect because as the first of things that came into being by addition, it is complete.[111] But the Father is more perfect because he [Sidenote: p. 282.] alone is unbegotten, and by the first single syzygy of Nous and Aletheia supplied the projection of all the roots of the things that are.