על בריאת העולם מ״דOn the Account of the World's Creation 44
א׳
1[129] In his concluding summary of the story of creation he says: “This is the book of the genesis of heaven and earth, when they came into being, in the day in which God made the heaven and the earth and every herb of the field before it appeared upon the earth, and all grass of the field before it sprang up” (Gen. 2:4, 5). Is he not manifestly describing the incorporeal ideas present only to the mind, by which, as by seals, the finished objects that meet our senses were moulded? For before the earth put forth its young green shoots, young verdure was present, he tells us, in the nature of things without material shape, and before grass sprang up in the field, there was in existence an invisible grass.
ב׳
2[130] We must suppose that in the case of all other objects also, on which the senses pronounce judgement, the original forms and measures, to which all things that come into being owe shape and size, subsisted before them; for even if he has not dealt with everything in detail but in the mass, aiming as he does at brevity in a high degree, nevertheless what he does say gives us a few indications of universal Nature, which brings forth no finished product in the world of sense without using an incorporeal pattern.