These are the elements of necessity which the Creator received in
the world of generation when he made the all-sufficient and
perfect creature, using the secondary causes as his ministers,
but himself fashioning the good in all things. For there are two
sorts of causes, the one divine, the other necessary; and we
should seek to discover the divine above all, and, for their
sake, the necessary, because without them the higher cannot be
attained by us.
Having now before us the causes out of which the rest of our
discourse is to be framed, let us go back to the point at which
we began, and add a fair ending to our tale. As I said at first,
all things were originally a chaos in which there was no order or
proportion. The elements of this chaos were arranged by the
Creator, and out of them he made the world. Of the divine he
himself was the author, but he committed to his offspring the
creation of the mortal. From him they received the immortal soul,
but themselves made the body to be its vehicle, and constructed
within another soul which was mortal, and subject to terrible
affections—pleasure, the inciter of evil; pain, which deters from
good; rashness and fear, foolish counsellors; anger hard to be
appeased; hope easily led astray. These they mingled with
irrational sense and all-daring love according to necessary laws
and so framed man. And, fearing to pollute the divine element,
they gave the mortal soul a separate habitation in the breast,
parted off from the head by a narrow isthmus. And as in a house
the women’s apartments are divided from the men’s, the cavity of
the thorax was divided into two parts, a higher and a lower. The
higher of the two, which is the seat of courage and anger, lies
nearer to the head, between the midriff and the neck, and assists
reason in restraining the desires. The heart is the house of
guard in which all the veins meet, and through them reason sends
her commands to the extremity of her kingdom. When the passions
are in revolt, or danger approaches from without, then the heart
beats and swells; and the creating powers, knowing this,
implanted in the body the soft and bloodless substance of the
lung, having a porous and springy nature like a sponge, and being
kept cool by drink and air which enters through the trachea.