lowness as they proceeded in
their eight courses, God lighted a fire, which we now call the sun, in
the second from the earth of these orbits, that it might give light to
the whole of heaven, and that the animals, as many as nature intended,
might participate in number, learning arithmetic from the revolution of
the same and the like. Thus then, and for this reason the night and
the day were created, being the period of the one most intelligent
revolution. And the month is accomplished when the moon has completed
her orbit and overtaken the sun, and the year when the sun has completed
his own orbit. Mankind, with hardly an exception, have not remarked the
periods of the other stars, and they have no name for them, and do not
measure them against one another by the help of number, and hence they
can scarcely be said to know that their wanderings, being infinite in
number and admirable for their variety, make up time. And yet there
is no difficulty in seeing that the perfect number of time fulfils
the perfect year when all the eight revolutions, having their relative
degrees of swiftness, are accomplished together and attain their
completion at the same time, measured by the rotation of the same and
equally moving. After this manner, and for these reasons, came into
being such of the stars as in their heavenly progress received reversals
of motion, to the end that the created heaven might imitate the eternal
nature, and be as like as possible to the perfect and intelligible
animal.

Thus far and until the birth of time the created universe was made in
the likeness of the original, but inasmuch as all animals were not yet
comprehended therein, it was still unlike. What remained, the creator
then proceeded to fashion after the nature of the pattern. Now as in the
ideal animal the mind perceives ideas or species of a certain nature and
number, he thought that this created animal ought to have species of a
like nature and number. There are four such; one of them is the heavenly
race of the gods; another, the race of birds whose way is in the air;
the third, the watery species; and the fourth, the pedestrian and land
creatures. Of the heavenly and divine, he created the greater part out
of fire, that they might be the brightest of all things and fairest to
behold, and he fashioned them after the likeness of the universe in the
figure of a circle, and made them follow the intelligent motion of the
supreme, distributing them ove