A

and their flows satisfy the needs of others, and they themselves remain in that same abundance eternally, how much more so the One who ordained the abundance of their flows? He is the fountain of goodness. He made everything He created beautiful: that is, He created those endowed with reason and those without, the intellectual and the non-intellectual, the speaking and the mute, the rational and the irrational. And for those endowed with reason and intellect, He ordained that they receive goodness through their respective virtues, but not beauty itself. For He is the giver of beauty, and He made the exercise of free will the cause of goodness.

B. THEN, if any of the things that are beautiful in creation are thought by some—such as the pagan Greeks, the Magi, and the heretics who posit an evil essence opposing the good, which they call hyle matter—to come from the good Creator, our primary and introductory answer is this: