terms, being almost vacant of meaning, is equally suitable to express
indefinite existence,--are compared or united with the Other or Diverse,
and out of the union or comparison is elicited the idea of intelligence,
the 'One in many,' brighter than any Promethean fire (Phil.), which co-
existing with them and so forming a new existence, is or becomes the
intelligible world...So we may perhaps venture to paraphrase or interpret
or put into other words the parable in which Plato has wrapped up his
conception of the creation of the world. The explanation may help to fill
up with figures of speech the void of knowledge.

The entire compound was divided by the Creator in certain proportions and
reunited; it was then cut into two strips, which were bent into an inner
circle and an outer, both moving with an uniform motion around a centre,
the outer circle containing the fixed, the inner the wandering stars. The
soul of the world was diffused everywhere from the centre to the
circumference. To this God gave a body, consisting at first of fire and
earth, and afterwards receiving an addition of air and water; because solid
bodies, like the world, are always connected by two middle terms and not by
one. The world was made in the form of a globe, and all the material
elements were exhausted in the work of creation.

The proportions in which the soul of the world as well as the human soul is
divided answer to a series of numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 8, 27, composed of the
two Pythagorean progressions 1, 2, 4, 8 and 1, 3, 9, 27, of which the
number 1 represents a point, 2 and 3 lines, 4 and 8, 9 and 27 the squares
and cubes respectively of 2 and 3. This series, of which the intervals are
afterwards filled up, probably represents (1) the diatonic scale according
to the Pythagoreans and Plato; (2) the order and distances of the heavenly
bodies; and (3) may possibly contain an allusion to the music of the
spheres, which is referred to in the myth at the end of the Republic. The