st, and
afterwards the causes of things which are moved by others, and which
work by chance and without order. Of the second or concurrent causes of
sight I have already spoken, and I will now speak of the higher purpose
of God in giving us eyes. Sight is the source of the greatest benefits
to us; for if our eyes had never seen the sun, stars, and heavens, the
words which we have spoken would not have been uttered. The sight of
them and their revolutions has given us the knowledge of number and
time, the power of enquiry, and philosophy, which is the great blessing
of human life; not to speak of the lesser benefits which even the vulgar
can appreciate. God gave us the faculty of sight that we might behold
the order of the heavens and create a corresponding order in our own
erring minds. To the like end the gifts of speech and hearing were
bestowed upon us; not for the sake of irrational pleasure, but in order
that we might harmonize the courses of the soul by sympathy with the
harmony of sound, and cure ourselves of our irregular and graceless
ways.

Thus far we have spoken of the works of mind; and there are other
works done from necessity, which we must now place beside them; for
the creation is made up of both, mind persuading necessity as far as
possible to work out good. Before the heavens there existed fire, air,
water, earth, which we suppose men to know, though no one has explained
their nature, and we erroneously maintain them to be the letters or
elements of the whole, although they cannot reasonably be compared even
to syllables or first compounds. I am not now speaking of the first
principles of things, because I cannot discover them by our present mode
of enquiry. But as I observed the rule of probability at first, I will
begin anew, seeking by the grace of God to observe it still.

In our former discussion I distinguished two kinds of being--the
unchanging or invisible, and the visible or changing. But now a
third kind is required, which I shall call the receptacle or nurse of
generation. There is a difficulty in arriving at an exact notion of this
third kind, because the four elements themselves are of inexact natures
and easily pass into one another, and are too transient to be detained
by any one name; wherefore we are compelled to speak of water or fire,
not as substances, but as qualities. They may be compared to images made
of gold, which are continually assuming new forms. Somebody asks what
they