not to partake of their deviations. And as this circular movement
required no feet, the universe was created without legs and
without feet.
Such was the whole plan of the eternal God about the god that was
to be, to whom for this reason he gave a body, smooth and even,
having a surface in every direction equidistant from the centre,
a body entire and perfect, and formed out of perfect bodies. And
in the centre he put the soul, which he diffused throughout the
body, making it also to be the exterior environment of it; and he
made the universe a circle moving in a circle, one and solitary,
yet by reason of its excellence able to converse with itself, and
needing no other friendship or acquaintance. Having these
purposes in view he created the world a blessed god.
Now God did not make the soul after the body, although we are
speaking of them in this order; for having brought them together
he would never have allowed that the elder should be ruled by the
younger; but this is a random manner of speaking which we have,
because somehow we ourselves too are very much under the dominion
of chance. Whereas he made the soul in origin and excellence
prior to and older than the body, to be the ruler and mistress,
of whom the body was to be the subject. And he made her out of
the following elements and on this wise: Out of the indivisible
and unchangeable, and also out of that which is divisible and has
to do with material bodies, he compounded a third and
intermediate kind of essence, partaking of the nature of the same
and of the other, and this compound he placed accordingly in a
mean between the indivisible, and the divisible and material. He
took the three elements of the same, the other, and the essence,
and mingled them into one form, compressing by force the
reluctant and unsociable nature of the other into the same. When
he had mingled them with the essence and out of three made one,
he again divided this whole into as many portions as was fitting,
each portion being a compound of the same, the other, and the
essence. And he proceeded to divide after this manner:—First of
all, he took away one part of the whole (1), and then he
separated a second part which was double the first (2), and then
he took away a third part which was half as much again as the
second and three times as much as the first (3), and then he took
a fourth part which was twice as much as the second (4), and a
fifth part which was three times the third (9), and a sixth part
which was eight times the first (8), and a seventh part which was
twenty-seven times the first (27). After this he filled up the
double intervals (i.e. between 1, 2, 4, 8) and the triple (i.e.