Guthrie: 4. The Universe.

4. The Universe.—The Sense-world is the most beautiful world possible, being framed according to the most perfect of patterns, by the best care. “He was good; and in a good being no envy in relation to anything ever resides, but being without this he wished everything to become as like himself as possible.” We saw that the Sense-world was an “intelligible organism,” “Zôon ennoun.” It is consequently able to think: and this is the characteristic of mind, and mind exists in a soul, and a soul in a body. As the younger should not rule the elder, and mind rules the body, the mind of the world was older than the body of the world. The Universe is therefore a living being, with a rational soul interpenetrating its body. It regulates and harmonizes the world; for as human bodies partake of the physical Universe, so do human souls proceed from the souls of the Universe.

The Universe thus created is formed in two circles with a common centre, in different planes; the inner circle is subdivided into seven circles moving in directions opposite to that of the outer one. Here we have the fixed stars and the seven planets with their orbits.