מי יורש קנייני אלוה כ״זWho is the Heir of Divine Things 27
א׳
1[133] The subject of division into equal parts and of opposites is a wide one, and discussion of it essential. We will neither omit nor protract it, but abridge it as far as possible and content ourselves with the vital points only. Just as the great Artificer divided our soul and limbs in the middle, so too, when He wrought the world, did He deal with the being of all that is.
ב׳
2[134] This He took and began to divide as follows. First He made two sections, heavy and light, thus distinguishing the element of dense from that of rare particles. Then again He divided each of these two, the rare into air and fire, the dense into water and land, and these four He laid down as first foundations, to be the sensible elements of the sensible world.
ג׳
3[135] Again He made a second division of heavy and light on different principles. He divided the light into cold and hot, giving to the cold the name of air and to the naturally hot the name of fire. The heavy He divided into wet and dry, and He called the dry “land” and the wet “water.”
ד׳
4[136] Each of these was subjected to further dissections. Land was divided into continents and islands, water into sea and rivers and into drinkable and undrinkable, air into the changes which mark summer and winter, and fire into the merely useful variety, which is also voracious and destructive, and on the other hand the preservative variety which was set apart to form the heaven.
ה׳
5[137] Just as He divided the main constituents of the universe, so did He also with their subdivisions. These are partly living and partly lifeless. Among the lifeless some remain in the same place, held together by the tie of “cohesion”; others move by expansion, without changing their position, vitalized by a natural and unconscious growth, and among them, those which are of wild stuff produce wild fruits, which serve for food to the beasts of the field. Others are of a stuff which admits of cultivation, the management of which is a charge allotted to husbandry, and these produce fruits for the enjoyment of the animal most removed from the wild, that is man.
ו׳
6[138] Further, as He had divided the lifeless, so did He with those which participate in life, distinguishing one species as rational, the other as irrational. Then again He split up each of these. The irrational He divided into the domesticated and undomesticated, and the rational into immortal and mortal.
ז׳
7[139] Of the mortal He made two portions, one of which He named men, the other women. And while following one principle He split up the animal kingdom as a whole into male and female, it was also subjected to other necessary partitions, which distinguished the winged from land animals, these from the aquatic, the last named being intermediate to the other two.
ח׳
8[140] Thus God sharpened the edge of his all-cutting Word, and divided universal being, which before was without form or quality, and the four elements of the world which were formed by segregation from it, and the animals and plants which were framed with them as materials.
