(9) For the holy Element continually longs, [or groans] through the four Elements, to be released from the Vanity of the four Elements; in like Manner also the Qualifying [or Influence] of the grim [Constellations or] Stars [labours;] and therefore it drives Man to seek such wonderful Forms [or Ways,] that the eternal Wonders of God might be manifested, which (in the Breaking of the World) shall stand all (in the P Figure) in the Shadow.

(33) For by the great Longing of the Darkness after the Light and Virtue of God, this World has been generated out of the Darkness, where the holy Virtue of God [shone, or] beheld itself in the Darkness, and therefore this great Desiring and Longing after the divine Virtue, continues in the Spirit of the Sun, Stars, and Elements, and in all Things. All groan and pant after the divine Virtue, and would fain be delivered from the Vanity of the Devil: But seeing that cannot be, therefore all Creatures must wait till their Dissolution, when they [shall] go into their Ether, and get a Place in Paradise, yet only in the Figure and Shadow, and the Spirit [must] be dissolved, which here has had such Lust [or Longing.]

(2) Art therefore, perceiving this innate desire thus implanted by nature, and distributed about it (art itself also being multiformly distributed about nature), variously attracts and derives it as through a channel. Hence it transfers that which in itself is orderly and arranged into the privation of order, and fills that which is beautiful and commensurate with deformity. But the venerable end in each particular thing, which is connascent with union, it transfers to another indecorous plenitude, which is an assemblage of different things according to a common passion. It likewise imparts a matter from itself, which is unadapted to the whole generation of what is beautiful, either because it does not entirely receive it, or because it transfers it to other things. It also mingles many different physical powers, which it manages as it pleases for the purposes of generation. Hence we have universally shown, that the apparatus of a venereal connexion of this kind proceeds from a certain human art, and not from a certain dæmoniacal or divine necessity.

(27) And thus now the Matrix stands incomprehensibly, and longs after the fiery Nature, [or Condition,] and the fiery Nature longs after the Matrix. For the Spirit of God (which is a Spirit of Meekness) beholds itself in the watery Matrix; and the Matrix receives Virtue from thence. Thus there is a constant Will to generate and work, and the whole Nature stands in a great Longing and Anguish, willing continually to generate the divine Virtue, God and Paradise being hidden therein, but it generates after its Kind, according to its Ability.

(103) But if nature led them, like the irrational animals, to procreation, yet they were impelled to do it more quickly than. was proper because they were still young and had been led away by deceit. Thus God's judgment against them was just, because they did not wait for his will. But birth is holy. By it were made the world, the existences, the natures, the angels, powers, souls, the commandments, the law, the gospel, the knowledge of God. And "all flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withers, the flower falls; but the word of the Lord abides" which anoints the soul and unites it with the spirit. Without the body how could the divine plan for us in the Church achieve its end? Surely the Lord himself, the head of the Church, came in the flesh, though without form and beauty, to teach us to look upon the formless and incorporeal nature of the divine Cause. "For a tree of life" says the prophet, "grows by a good desire," teaching that desires which are in the living Lord are good and pure.

(3) Now because this Birth [of the Sun] has a Beginning through the Will of God, and enters again into its Ether, therefore it has not the Virtue or Power of the Wisdom; but it continually works according to its Kind, it vivifies and kills; what it does, it does [not regarding whether it be] evil, crooked, lame, or good, beautiful or potent, it causes to live and to die, it affords Power and Strength, and destroys the same again; and all this without any premeditated Wisdom; whereby it may be perceived, Or Nature, that it is not the divine Providence and Wisdom itself, as the Heathens supposed, and foolishly relied upon the Virtue thereof.

(14) So he who hath the whole authority o'er [all] the mortals in the cosmos and o'er its lives irrational, bent his face downwards through the Harmony, breaking right through its strength, and showed to downward Nature God's fair form. And when she saw that Form of beauty which can never satiate, and him who [now] possessed within himself each single energy of [all seven] Rulers as well as God's own Form, she smiled with love; for 'twas as though she'd seen the image of Man's fairest form upon her Water, his shadow on her Earth. He in turn beholding the form like to himself, existing in her, in her Water, loved it and willed to live in it; and with the will came act, and [so] he vivified the form devoid of reason. And Nature took the object of her love and wound herself completely around him, and they were intermingled, for they were lovers.

(8) And this is done to the End (because the Spirit of this World continually seeks the noble Virgin of the divine Wisdom, and knows that she is in Man) that Man should seek the great Or from the Creatures of the four Elements. Wonders that are in mit, and bring them to Light: mlt still supposes, that it shall through Man bring the noble Tincture to light, that the Paradise might appear, and that it might be freed from Vanity.

(3) For if thou should’st regard that supreme [point] of time when . . . the one nature doth pour forth the young into the other one, and when the other greedily absorbs [it] from the first, and hides it [ever] deeper [in itself]; then, at that time, out of their common congress, females attain the nature of the males, males weary grow with female listlessness. And so the consummation of this mystery, so sweet and requisite, is wrought in secret; lest, owing to the vulgar jests of ignorance, the deity of either sex should be compelled to blush at natural congress,—and much more still, if it should be subjected to the sight of impious folk. XXII

(20) Seeing then all the Forms of the eternal Nature were to come forth, [it is so come to pass,] as you may see in Toads, Adders, Worms, and evil Beasts; for that is the Form which sticks in the Midst in the Birth of all Creatures, viz. the Poison, [Venom,] or Brimstone-Spirit; as we see that all Creatures have Poison and Gall; and the Life of the Creatures sticks in the Power [or Might] of it, [the Poison;] as you may find before in this Book, in all the Chapters, how the eternal Nature takes its Original, how it works, and how, [or after what Manner,] its Essence [Being or Substance] is.

(70) Although indeed, Nature takes hold of the Child in the Mother's Body [or Womb,] and [shapes, figures, or] images it; yet the Region of the Stars has no other than the Image in the four Elements, and not [that] in the holy Element. And although indeed it images [or frames] a Man in the outward bestial Mind with a little Understanding many Times, yet that is no Matter; the outward Man is the Beast of the Stars, but the inward in the [one] Element is the Image of God; and the divine Framing [Figuring or Imaging] is not performed in the a outward, but in the inward Element.

(2) There is, obviously, no question here of hands or feet, of any implement borrowed or inherent: Nature needs simply the Matter which it is to work upon and bring under Form; its productivity cannot depend upon mechanical operation. What driving or hoisting goes to produce all that variety of colour and pattern?

The wax-workers, whose methods have been cited as parallel to the creative act of Nature, are unable to make colours; all they can do to impose upon their handicraft colours taken from elsewhere. None the less there is a parallel which demands attention: in the case of workers in such arts there must be something locked within themselves, an efficacy not going out from them and yet guiding their hands in all their creation; and this observation should have indicated a similar phenomenon in Nature; it should be clear that this indwelling efficacy, which makes without hands, must exist in Nature, no less than in the craftsman- but, there, as a thing completely inbound. Nature need possess no outgoing force as against that remaining within; the only moved thing is Matter; there can be no moved phase in this Nature-Principle; any such moved phase could not be the primal mover; this Nature-Principle is no such moved entity; it is the unmoved Principle operating in the Kosmos.

We may be answered that the Reason-Principle is, no doubt, unmoved, but that the Nature-Principle, another being, operates by motion.

But, if Nature entire is in question here, it is identical with the Reason-Principle; and any part of it that is unmoved is the Reason-Principle. The Nature-Principle must be an Ideal-Form, not a compound of Form and Matter; there is no need for it to possess Matter, hot and cold: the Matter that underlies it, on which it exercises its creative act, brings all that with it, or, natively without quality, becomes hot and cold, and all the rest, when brought under Reason: Matter, to become fire, demands the approach not of fire but of a Reason-Principle.

This is no slight evidence that in the animal and vegetable realms the Reason-Principles are the makers and that Nature is a Reason-Principle producing a second Reason-Principle, its offspring, which, in turn, while itself, still, remaining intact, communicates something to the underlie, Matter.

The Reason-Principle presiding over visible Shape is the very ultimate of its order, a dead thing unable to produce further: that which produces in the created realm is the living Reason-Principle- brother no doubt, to that which gives mere shape, but having life-giving power.

(4) And Nature, asked why it brings forth its works, might answer if it cared to listen and to speak:

"It would have been more becoming to put no question but to learn in silence just as I myself am silent and make no habit of talking. And what is your lesson? This; that whatsoever comes into being is my is my vision, seen in my silence, the vision that belongs to my character who, sprung from vision, am vision-loving and create vision by the vision-seeing faculty within me. The mathematicians from their vision draw their figures: but I draw nothing: I gaze and the figures of the material world take being as if they fell from my contemplation. As with my Mother (the All-Soul] and the Beings that begot me so it is with me: they are born of a Contemplation and my birth is from them, not by their Act but by their Being; they are the loftier Reason-Principles, they contemplate themselves and I am born."

Now what does this tell us?

It tells: that what we know as Nature is a Soul, offspring of a yet earlier Soul of more powerful life; that it possesses, therefore, in its repose, a vision within itself; that it has no tendency upward nor even downward but is at peace, steadfast, in its own Essence; that, in this immutability accompanied by what may be called Self-Consciousness, it possesses- within the measure of its possibility- a knowledge of the realm of subsequent things perceived in virtue of that understanding and consciousness; and, achieving thus a resplendent and delicious spectacle, has no further aim.

Of course, while it may be convenient to speak of "understanding" or "perception" in the Nature-Principle, this is not in the full sense applicable to other beings; we are applying to sleep a word borrowed from the wake.

For the Vision on which Nature broods, inactive, is a self-intuition, a spectacle laid before it by virtue of its unaccompanied self-concentration and by the fact that in itself it belongs to the order of intuition. It is a Vision silent but somewhat blurred, for there exists another a clearer of which Nature is the image: hence all that Nature produces is weak; the weaker act of intuition produces the weaker object.

In the same way, human beings, when weak on the side of contemplation, find in action their trace of vision and of reason: their spiritual feebleness unfits them for contemplation; they are left with a void, because they cannot adequately seize the vision; yet they long for it; they are hurried into action as their way to the vision which they cannot attain by intellection. They act from the desire of seeing their action, and of making it visible and sensible to others when the result shall prove fairly well equal to the plan. Everywhere, doing and making will be found to be either an attenuation or a complement of vision-attenuation if the doer was aiming only at the thing done; complement if he is to possess something nobler to gaze upon than the mere work produced.

Given the power to contemplate the Authentic, who would run, of choice, after its image?

The relation of action to contemplation is indicated in the way duller children, inapt to study and speculation, take to crafts and manual labour.

(40) For in the Beginning of the Creation, at the Time when the Earth became material, all was generated out of one only Substance, and there was no more done but a Separation made of one from another: Therefore in every Separation there must needs be always a vehement Hunger of one 1 after another. An Example whereof you have in Propagation; for the Sake whereof the Separation was so made: For you see that there is a Male and a Female; and that the one continually desires Copulation with the other, that they may generate. This is a great hidden Secret. Observe, when the Creator by the Fiat separated the Matrix from the Aquaster [or watery Mother;] for the first Form is heavenly and incorruptible, as long as the Kingdom of this World stands, and the Root of the first Form holds Paradise. vill set it down more intelligibly [or plainly] for the simplest Reader's Sake.

(10) Straightway from out the downward elements God's Reason (Logos) leaped up to Nature's pure formation, and was at-oned with the Formative Mind; for it was co-essential with it. And Nature's downward elements were thus left reason-less, so as to be pure matter.

(14) Of the corporeal thus brought into being by Nature the elemental materials of things are its very produce, but how do animal and vegetable forms stand to it?

Are we to think of them as containers of Nature present within them?

Light goes away and the air contains no trace of it, for light and air remain each itself, never coalescing: is this the relation of Nature to the formed object?

It is rather that existing between fire and the object it has warmed: the fire withdrawn, there remains a certain warmth, distinct from that in the fire, a property, so to speak, of the object warmed. For the shape which Nature imparts to what it has moulded must be recognized as a form quite distinct from Nature itself, though it remains a question to be examined whether besides this form there is also an intermediary, a link connecting it with Nature, the general principle.

The difference between Nature and the Wisdom described as dwelling in the All has been sufficiently dealt with.

(46) Hereupon now the Spirit of the Stars and Elements would continually [get] again into the Element; for in the Element there is Meekness and Rest; and in the Kindling thereof there is mere Enmity and contrary Will, and the Devil rules also therein; and they would fain be released from that abominable and evil Guest, and they seek with great Anxiety after Deliverance, as Paul says; All Creatures groan together with us, to be freed from Vanity.

(26) Thus it is plain to our Sight, how the starry Heaven, (or as I may better render it to the enlightened Reader) the Quintessence, (or the fifth Form in the Birth,) is severed from the watery Matrix; or else there would have been no ceasing from the generating of Stones and Earth, if the fiery P Nature had not been severed: But because the eternal Essence (viz. God) would manifest himself in the dark Matrix, and [has desired] to make the Nothing Something, therefore he has severed the kindled Virtue, and made the Matrix clear or pure.

(54) But now when the young Man could not obtain this of the Virgin, then he reached back after the Worm in his own Center. For the Form of this World pressed very powerfully upon him, which also was in the Soul, and [this Form] would fain have had the Virgin to be its own, that he might make her his Wife (as was done in the Fall; yet the Wife was not from the Pearl, but out of the Spirit of this World;) for it (viz. the Nature of this World) continually groans [or longs] after the Virgin, that it might be delivered from Vanity; and it means to qualify [or mingle] with the Virgin; but that cannot be, for the Virgin is of a higher Birth.

(10) Seeing then that the eternal Wisdom of God (viz. in the chaste Virgin of the divine Virtue) had discovered itself in the Principle of this World, in which Place the great Prince Lucifer stood in the Heaven, in the second Principle, therefore the same Discovering was eternal, and God desired to shed forth the Similitude out of the Essences, which the Fiat created according to the Kind of every Essence, that they should (after the Breaking [or Dissolution] of the outward Substance) be a Figure and Image in Paradise, and a Shadow of this Substance. 1 1. And that there should go nothing in Vain out of the Substance of God, therefore God created Beasts, Fowls, Fishes, Worms, Trees and Herbs out of all Essences; and besides [created] also figured Spirits out of the Quinta Essentia, in the Elements, that so, after the completing of the Time (when the Out-Birth [shall] go into the Ether) they should appear before him, and that his eternal Wisdom in his Works of Wonder might he known.