us are the thoughts
and revolutions of the universe. These each man should follow, and
correct the courses of the head which were corrupted at our birth,
and by learning the harmonies and revolutions of the universe, should
assimilate the thinking being to the thought, renewing his original
nature, and having assimilated them should attain to that perfect life
which the gods have set before mankind, both for the present and the
future.

Thus our original design of discoursing about the universe down to the
creation of man is nearly completed. A brief mention may be made of the
generation of other animals, so far as the subject admits of brevity;
in this manner our argument will best attain a due proportion. On the
subject of animals, then, the following remarks may be offered. Of the
men who came into the world, those who were cowards or led unrighteous
lives may with reason be supposed to have changed into the nature of
women in the second generation. And this was the reason why at that time
the gods created in us the desire of sexual intercourse, contriving
in man one animated substance, and in woman another, which they formed
respectively in the following manner. The outlet for drink by which
liquids pass through the lung under the kidneys and into the bladder,
which receives and then by the pressure of the air emits them, was so
fashioned by them as to penetrate also into the body of the marrow,
which passes from the head along the neck and through the back, and
which in the preceding discourse we have named the seed. And the seed
having life, and becoming endowed with respiration, produces in that
part in which it respires a lively desire of emission, and thus creates
in us the love of procreation. Wherefore also in men the organ of
generation becoming rebellious and masterful, like an animal disobedient
to reason, and maddened with the sting of lust, seeks to gain absolute
sway; and the same is the case with the so-called womb or matrix of
women; the animal within them is desirous of procreating children, and
when remaining unfruitful long beyond its proper time, gets discontented
and angry, and wandering in every direction through the body, closes up
the passages of the breath, and, by obstructing respiration, drives
them to extremity, causing all varieties of disease, until at length the
desire and love of the man and the woman, bringing them together and
as it were plucking the fruit from the tree, sow in the w