lastly, every man may
be said to share in true opinion, but mind is the attribute of the gods
and of very few men. Wherefore also we must acknowledge that there
is one kind of being which is always the same, uncreated and
indestructible, never receiving anything into itself from without, nor
itself going out to any other, but invisible and imperceptible by any
sense, and of which the contemplation is granted to intelligence only.
And there is another nature of the same name with it, and like to it,
perceived by sense, created, always in motion, becoming in place and
again vanishing out of place, which is apprehended by opinion and sense.
And there is a third nature, which is space, and is eternal, and admits
not of destruction and provides a home for all created things, and is
apprehended without the help of sense, by a kind of spurious reason, and
is hardly real; which we beholding as in a dream, say of all existence
that it must of necessity be in some place and occupy a space, but that
what is neither in heaven nor in earth has no existence. Of these and
other things of the same kind, relating to the true and waking reality
of nature, we have only this dreamlike sense, and we are unable to cast
off sleep and determine the truth about them. For an image, since the
reality, after which it is modelled, does not belong to it, and it
exists ever as the fleeting shadow of some other, must be inferred to be
in another (i.e. in space), grasping existence in some way or other,
or it could not be at all. But true and exact reason, vindicating the
nature of true being, maintains that while two things (i.e. the image
and space) are different they cannot exist one of them in the other and
so be one and also two at the same time.

Thus have I concisely given the result of my thoughts; and my verdict is
that being and space and generation, these three, existed in their three
ways before the heaven; and that the nurse of generation, moistened by
water and inflamed by fire, and receiving the forms of earth and air,
and experiencing all the affections which accompany these, presented
a strange variety of appearances; and being full of powers which were
neither similar nor equally balanced, was never in any part in a state
of equipoise, but swaying unevenly hither and thither, was shaken by
them, and by its motion again shook them; and the elements when moved
were separated and carried continually, some one way, some another; as,
when