Commentary on Plato's Symposium

their creator: so that through their own center, which we have frequently proven, they may be joined to the center of all things; in whose summit and head is the angelic mind, born before it ascends into God. The soul similarly, in the same way, is of these invisible circles—that is, of the mind, soul, and nature; the example is the circle of this world, which is seen: because bodies are the shadow and footprints of the souls and of the minds. The shadow and the footprint represent the figure of whom it is the shadow and the footprint; for which reason these four things are not without reason called four circles. But the mind is an immobile circle, as we said in the beginning: because both its operation and its substance always stay in one being, and it operates the same, always understands itself in the same way, and wills the same; and if it is mobile at any time, it happens because, as all other things proceed from God, it also revolves in God. The soul of the world, and any other, is a mobile circle: because it, by its nature, discoursing, knows and operates with the courses of time. The discoursing of this into that, and operating with time, is without doubt called movement. But if there is any firmness in the soul, it is for the benefit of the mind. Nature similarly is a mobile circle; and this is because when we say "soul," according to the custom of the ancient theologians, we understand a force placed in reason and in sense; saying "nature," we understand the force of the soul placed in generating; that first force in us is properly called man; this one of generating, the image and likeness of man. The power of generating can for this be called mobile: because it finishes its work with an intermission of time, and in the