(60) For in the first four qualifying or fountain spirits stands the divine birth or geniture; therefore they must be very earnest and strong also, though they, too, have among them their meek mother, the sweet water; and in the fifth stands the gracious, amiable and blessed love; and in the sixth the joy, and in the seventh the framing, imaging or comprehensibility.

(22) Thus also the qualifying or fountain spirits of man do not wholly comprehend the innermost birth or geniture of the Deity, which stands in the light; but every qualifying or fountain spirit reacheth, with its animated or soulish birth or geniture, into the heart of God, and uniteth, qualifieth or mixeth therewith in that place.

(107) Wheresoever one qualifying or fountain spirit in the divine power is touched or stirred, let the place be where it will or the thing what it will (except in the devils, and all wicked, damned men), there is the fountain of the divine birth or geniture directly at hand, and there already are all the seven qualifying or fountain spirits of God.

(55) For the astringent and fire-spirit holdeth it fast, and the meek water, which melteth from the body of nature in the kindling of the light, goeth through the severe, earnest, cold and fiery birth or geniture, and is very sweet, pleasant and lovely.

(87) Now when this was done, then in the mass the seven spirits of the qualities began to qualify or operate; and in the mass the seed of the seven qualifying or fountain spirits generated itself, as fire, air and water, as it did in the body of the deep.

(75) Hearken, thou hast the sweet water in thee, pour that into the fire, and then the fire goeth out: If thou lettest it burn, then it consumeth in thee the sap that is in all the seven qualifying or fountain spirits, so that thou wilt become dry.

(78) But now the Salitter of the earth and of the water is no more able to change or alter itself in its dead being, and shew forth itself infinitely, as it did in the heavenly place or seat; but when the qualifying or fountain spirits form the body, then it riseth up in the power and virtue of the light.

(22) Now this fountain-spirit taketh its original at first out of the sweet quality of the water. Understand this, how it is, and observe it exactly.

(79) The first is the astringent spirit, and that contracteth or draweth together in the astral birth of the seven qualifying or fountain spirits a mass or lump in the earth, through the kindling of the superior birth or geniture above the earth, and drieth up that with its sharp coldness; just as it contracteth or draweth the water together and makes ice thereof, so also it contracteth or draweth together the water in the earth, and makes thereof a dry mass or lump.

(5) For as soon as his qualifying or fountain spirits in the building of the body began to qualify or operate, and to generate themselves according to the right of nature, then rose up the flash of life in the heart in the sweet spring or fountain-water, and so the royal body was ready furnished or complete, and the spirit went forth in the heart from the light through the mouth into the heart of God.

(67) When the sweet spring or fountain-water riseth up in the light, through all the spirits, then the one tasteth the other; and then the spirits become living, and the power of life penetrateth through all.

(104) Now in the body or fountain is the heat, which generateth the fire, and which is a form or kind of thing that a man can search into; and out of the heat goeth the light through all the spirits and qualities; and the light is the living spirit, which a man cannot search into.

(104) The second spirit is the water: As the astringent or harsh quality is the father of the other six spirits, which attracteth or draweth them together, and so holds them, so the sweet water is the mother in which all spirits are conceived, kept and generated, that softeneth and saturateth them, wherein and whereby they get their life, and then the light and joyfulness riseth up therein.

(72) This spirit taketh its original in the fire-flash, that is, in the bitter quality, and riseth up in the flash through the sweet water, wherein it mitigateth itself, so that it becometh clear and bright, and is caught or held in the astringent quality, and there it toucheth or stirreth all the spirits; and from this touching or stirring riseth up the tone; its rising source or quality stands in the flash, and its body or root stands in the sweet water in the love.

(102) The sweet spring or fountain-water is generated by the driving about or rising up of the spirits, for when the light is generated in the heat, then the astringent quality is amazed or terrified for great joy, and this is a submitting or lying down or growing thin, and the hard corporeal being sinketh down like a meekness or mildness.

(34) Every spirit has its own quality or source, though indeed it is generated of the others; and so it is with the apprehension of man; he has indeed the fountain of all seven spirits in him, but in what quality or fountain soever the spirit riseth up, the qualifying or fountain spirit thereof, wherein that same spirit is most strongly imaged, is that [one] which he comprehendeth most sharply in that rising up.

(4) That water extinguishes fire and fire consumes other things should not astonish us. The thing destroyed derived its being from outside itself: this is no case of a self-originating substance being annihilated by an external; it rose on the ruin of something else, and thus in its own ruin it suffers nothing strange; and for every fire quenched, another is kindled.

In the immaterial heaven every member is unchangeably itself for ever; in the heavens of our universe, while the whole has life eternally and so too all the nobler and lordlier components, the Souls pass from body to body entering into varied forms- and, when it may, a Soul will rise outside of the realm of birth and dwell with the one Soul of all. For the embodied lives by virtue of a Form or Idea: individual or partial things exist by virtue of Universals; from these priors they derive their life and maintenance, for life here is a thing of change; only in that prior realm is it unmoving. From that unchangingness, change had to emerge, and from that self-cloistered Life its derivative, this which breathes and stirs, the respiration of the still life of the divine.

The conflict and destruction that reign among living beings are inevitable, since things here are derived, brought into existence because the Divine Reason which contains all of them in the upper Heavens- how could they come here unless they were There?- must outflow over the whole extent of Matter.

Similarly, the very wronging of man by man may be derived from an effort towards the Good; foiled, in their weakness, of their true desire, they turn against each other: still, when they do wrong, they pay the penalty- that of having hurt their Souls by their evil conduct and of degradation to a lower place- for nothing can ever escape what stands decreed in the law of the Universe.

This is not to accept the idea, sometimes urged, that order is an outcome of disorder and law of lawlessness, as if evil were a necessary preliminary to their existence or their manifestation: on the contrary order is the original and enters this sphere as imposed from without: it is because order, law and reason exist that there can be disorder; breach of law and unreason exist because Reason exists- not that these better things are directly the causes of the bad but simply that what ought to absorb the Best is prevented by its own nature, or by some accident, or by foreign interference. An entity which must look outside itself for a law, may be foiled of its purpose by either an internal or an external cause; there will be some flaw in its own nature, or it will be hurt by some alien influence, for often harm follows, unintended, upon the action of others in the pursuit of quite unrelated aims. Such living beings, on the other hand, as have freedom of motion under their own will sometimes take the right turn, sometimes the wrong.

Why the wrong course is followed is scarcely worth enquiring: a slight deviation at the beginning develops with every advance into a continuously wider and graver error- especially since there is the attached body with its inevitable concomitant of desire- and the first step, the hasty movement not previously considered and not immediately corrected, ends by establishing a set habit where there was at first only a fall.

Punishment naturally follows: there is no injustice in a man suffering what belongs to the condition in which he is; nor can we ask to be happy when our actions have not earned us happiness; the good, only, are happy; divine beings are happy only because they are good.

(37) Thus also in man: When one qualifying or fountain spirit riseth up, then it toucheth all the others, and seeth all the others, for it riseth up in the middle or central fountain or wellspring of the heart, where, in the heat, the flash of light kindleth itself, wherein the spirit in its rising up, in the same flash, seeth through all the spirits.

(39) For when he and all his angels had kindled in their bodies the qualifying or fountain spirit of the fire, then the unctuosness, marrow or fatness burnt in the sweet water, and the flash or terror, which riseth up fiercely in the birth of the light, became raging and tearing, burning and stinging, and a being or substance of a mere opposite or contrary will.

(65) As the Son of God, without or distinct from the angels, is generated in the middle or central fountain spring, in the heat, in the sweet water, out of or from all the seven spirits of God, and reenlighteneth back again all the seven spirits of God, whence they have their life and joy: