are; if you do not know, the safest answer is to reply that they
are gold. In like manner there is a universal nature out of which all
things are made, and which is like none of them; but they enter into and
pass out of her, and are made after patterns of the true in a wonderful
and inexplicable manner. The containing principle may be likened to a
mother, the source or spring to a father, the intermediate nature to
a child; and we may also remark that the matter which receives every
variety of form must be formless, like the inodorous liquids which are
prepared to receive scents, or the smooth and soft materials on which
figures are impressed. In the same way space or matter is neither earth
nor fire nor air nor water, but an invisible and formless being which
receives all things, and in an incomprehensible manner partakes of the
intelligible. But we may say, speaking generally, that fire is that part
of this nature which is inflamed, water that which is moistened, and the
like.

Let me ask a question in which a great principle is involved: Is there
an essence of fire and the other elements, or are there only fires
visible to sense? I answer in a word: If mind is one thing and true
opinion another, then there are self-existent essences; but if mind is
the same with opinion, then the visible and corporeal is most real. But
they are not the same, and they have a different origin and nature.
The one comes to us by instruction, the other by persuasion, the one is
rational, the other is irrational; the one is movable by persuasion,
the other immovable; the one is possessed by every man, the other by the
gods and by very few men. And we must acknowledge that as there are two
kinds of knowledge, so there are two kinds of being corresponding to
them; the one uncreated, indestructible, immovable, which is seen by
intelligence only; the other created, which is always becoming in place
and vanishing out of place, and is apprehended by opinion and sense.
There is also a third nature--that of space, which is indestructible,
and is perceived by a kind of spurious reason without the help of
sense. This is presented to us in a dreamy manner, and yet is said to
be necessary, for we say that all things must be somewhere in space. For
they are the images of other things and must therefore have a separate
existence and exist in something (i.e. in space). But true reason
assures us that while two things (i.e. the idea and the image) are
dif