Asclepius

Nothing, however, in the nature of the world and the spirit of the kind seems to be without a beginning. Yet they possess from themselves the force of being born and creating, and they carry what is born within them. Likewise, the world is born in quality, which totally and equally possesses in itself the force and the matter. This, therefore, without the receipt of others, is alone generable, so that things which are born from others should be distinguished from those which have only the force of receiving. Thus this place of the world, with these things that are in it, seems not to be born, because it has in itself the force for all of nature. I say the place, however, in which all things are. For all things could not have existed if the place were lacking, because they could have sustained all things. For all things that have existed must be provided with a place, nor could the qualities, nor the quantities, nor the positions, nor the effects of those things which are nowhere be distinguished. So, therefore, the world was not born of its kind, yet it has in itself the nature of all things, as it provides a most fruitful bosom for all of them for conceiving. This, therefore, is the whole of quality and matter, which is creatable, even if it is not created; for as in the nature of matter, quality is fruitful, so also of malignity it is equally to be borne. These things, therefore, I say, O Asclepius and Ammon, which is said by many: could not God have taken away from the nature of things the malignity of the world, of which nothing at all is to be avoided? Whence it will be the cause to pursue that which I will return in truth and reason. For they say that God himself has freed the world from malignity in every way. So, indeed, it is in the world, that it seems to be as a limb of it. In those things in which, ruling before, they stand in living beings, they can only avoid malignities, frauds, and deceits.