pon a full black, become dark blue; dark blue mingling with
white becomes a light blue; the union of flame-colour and black makes
leek-green. There is no difficulty in seeing how other colours are
probably composed. But he who should attempt to test the truth of this
by experiment, would forget the difference of the human and divine
nature. God only is able to compound and resolve substances; such
experiments are impossible to man.

These are the elements of necessity which the Creator received in
the world of generation when he made the all-sufficient and perfect
creature, using the secondary causes as his ministers, but himself
fashioning the good in all things. For there are two sorts of causes,
the one divine, the other necessary; and we should seek to discover the
divine above all, and, for their sake, the necessary, because without
them the higher cannot be attained by us.

Having now before us the causes out of which the rest of our discourse
is to be framed, let us go back to the point at which we began, and
add a fair ending to our tale. As I said at first, all things were
originally a chaos in which there was no order or proportion. The
elements of this chaos were arranged by the Creator, and out of them
he made the world. Of the divine he himself was the author, but he
committed to his offspring the creation of the mortal. From him they
received the immortal soul, but themselves made the body to be its
vehicle, and constructed within another soul which was mortal, and
subject to terrible affections--pleasure, the inciter of evil; pain,
which deters from good; rashness and fear, foolish counsellors; anger
hard to be appeased; hope easily led astray. These they mingled with
irrational sense and all-daring love according to necessary laws and so
framed man. And, fearing to pollute the divine element, they gave the
mortal soul a separate habitation in the breast, parted off from the
head by a narrow isthmus. And as in a house the women's apartments are
divided from the men's, the cavity of the thorax was divided into two
parts, a higher and a lower. The higher of the two, which is the seat of
courage and anger, lies nearer to the head, between the midriff and the
neck, and assists reason in restraining the desires. The heart is the
house of guard in which all the veins meet, and through them reason
sends her commands to the extremity of her kingdom. When the passions
are in revolt, or danger approaches from with