Surely, all the things in the body have been formed into organs to carry
out what love wants and what the intellect thinks. Aren’t the organs of
the body derived from nature? Aren’t love and thought derived from life?
Aren’t they completely different from each other?
“Lift the focus of your genius just a little higher and you’ll see that
being moved and thinking come from life. Being moved has to do with
love, and thinking has to do with wisdom. Both have to do with life,
because love and wisdom are life, as we stated before.
“If you raise your intellectual faculty even a little higher, you will see
that love and wisdom do not exist unless they have a source somewhere.
Their source is love itself and wisdom itself, and therefore life itself.
These are the God from whom nature comes.”
[ 7 ] Next we spoke with him about point two: whether the center comes
from the expanse or the expanse from the center.The angel and I asked him
why he was discussing this. He replied that his purpose was to arrive at a
conclusion about the center and the expanse of nature and of life—about
the origin, then, of one and the other.
When we asked what his position was, his answer was similar to the
one he had given before: he could argue it either way, but because he
feared losing his reputation he argued that the expanse comes from or
originates in the center. “I know, though,” he added, “that before the
sun existed there was something. That something was throughout the
expanse. Of its own accord it flowed together into some order, namely,
the center.”
[ 8 ] Again indignant because of our passion for the truth, we spoke to
him and said, “Friend, you are insane!”
When he heard this he pushed his chair away from the table and
looked at us nervously. Then he gave us his attention again, but with a
smile on his face.
“What is more insane,” we continued, “than saying that the center
comes from the expanse? When you say ‘center,’ we take you to mean the
sun. When you say ‘expanse,’ we take you to mean the universe. You
seem to be saying that the universe came into existence without the sun.
Doesn’t the sun make nature? Doesn’t it make all the features of nature
that depend solely on heat and light emanating from the sun through the
atmospheres? Where were those things before [there was a sun]? (But
we’ll say where they came from in a moment.) Surely the atmospheres,
and everything else on the earth, are like outer surfaces that have the sun
§35 god the creator & creation 51