Have we been right to speak of one single universe or is it more correct to refer to many, indeed an infinite number? If in fact it is to be made in accordance with the model, there will be one. For that which encompasses all living creatures discernible by Nous could not ever be one of a pair. If it were so an additional living being would be needed to embrace both of these and the two would be parts of this living thing. It would then be more correct to say that the cosmos resembles not the two creatures but the creature which contains them both. Therefore, so that it would resemble the all-perfect creature in respect of its uniqueness, 31B the maker, accordingly, did not make two or infinitely many cosmoi, rather this only begotten heaven has come into existence and it is one, and one it shall be hereafter.
Now whatever has come to be must have bodily form and be visible and tangible, but nothing could ever have become visible without fire or tangible without something solid or solid without earth: hence, as he began to construct the body of the universe, god made it from fire and earth. Now it is not possible for two things to be combined well on their own without a third, 31C for some bond is required between the two to draw them together. The very best bond is that which, as much as possible, makes itself and the conjoined entities, one; and it is proportion that by nature best accomplishes this. So whenever the middle item of three numbers or volumes or powers[2] is such that the first is to the middle 32A as the middle is to the last, and again, that the last is to the middle as the middle is to the first, then the middle becomes first and last, and the last and first for their part both become middles. Accordingly it follows, of necessity, that they all turn out to be the same, and since they have all become the same as one another, they will all be one.[3]
So then, if the body of the universe had to come into being having surface but no depth, a single mean would have sufficed to bind its constituents 32B together with itself. But now, since it has a solid structure, and solids are never conjoined by one middle term but by two, god therefore placed water and air between fire and earth, and insofar as it was possible he arranged that they have the same proportion to one another, so that as fire is to air, air is to water, and as air is to water, water is to earth.[4] These he bound together and constructed a visible and tangible heaven. And for these reasons and from such constituents 32C as these, four in number, the body of the cosmos was generated, having been harmonised by proportion and endowed from these with affection so that having come to sameness with itself, it was rendered indissoluble by anyone except he who conjoined it.
Now the construction of the cosmos actually consumed each one of these four elements entirely. For the artificer constructed it from all of the fire and water and also the air and earth, not one part or power of any being left outside of it. He decided this for the following reasons: firstly, 32D so that it would be as whole and perfect a living being as possible, made from perfect parts. 33A In addition to this, it was to be one, since there would be nothing left over from which something else of this kind could be generated. It was also to be free from old age and disease as he realised that if a composite body is surrounded by heat or cold or any powerful forces outside it, they attack it and bring it to an untimely end, and by inducing disease and old age they make it waste away.
So for this reason