Commentary on Plato's Symposium

whose property is to counsel, is for this reason given to the mind; because, turned to God, it shines with His splendor, and in the same way, the mind directs itself to God, as the eye to the ray of the sun. The eye first looks, then sees the light of the sun, and lastly knows through the brightness of the sun the colors and figures of all things. Because the eye in the beginning is dark, like chaos without form, while it looks, it loves the light; looking, it takes the light; taking the light with the colors of things, it also forms the figures. And as that mind, immediately born and without form, is moved by love and turns and forms itself in God, so the soul of the world turns itself in the mind and in God; which, being in the beginning without form and confused, is directed by innate love toward the mind, and having received the forms from it, it becomes a world, that is, an ornament. Similarly, the matter of this machine, lying in the beginning without the ornament of forms—a confusion without form—having been directed by love toward the soul, shows itself obedient to it, and from this love made friendly to the soul, it takes the ornament of all the forms that are seen, whence from chaos it becomes a world, that is, an ornament. There are, therefore, three worlds, and three will be the chaos-states. In all the chaos-states, finally, love accompanies them, which goes before the world; it wakes the sleeping, illuminates the dark, resurrects the dead, gives form to the unformed, and finishes the imperfect, to which no greater praise can be said or thought.

On the utility of love, Chapter IIII.