Commentary on Plato's Symposium

meantime, nature is different from the property of the soul, in that the soul performs its movement by itself and in itself: in itself, because in this substance of the soul remains the operation both of reason and of sense, from which no necessary operation comes to the body. But that force of generating, which is called nature, is certainly moved by itself, being a certain force of the soul, which (as we have said) is moved by itself. They say this nature moves itself in others, because all its operation finishes in this magnitude of the body: the body (as is known) nourishes, grows, and creates; the matter and magnitude of the body is a circle mobile from that into that: because it is necessarily struck and agitated by the soul; it moves in that, because it is led with the space of time to the movement of the body. It seems to me that it can already clearly be known why the philosophers have placed goodness in the center—that is, in God—and beauty in four circles—that is, in the mind, in the soul, in nature, and in matter. Goodness is certainly God himself, for the cause of whom all things are good. Beauty is a ray of God placed in the midst of these four circles, revolved in a certain way around God; from whose ray all the species and figures of all things are painted in these four circles. These species in the mind are called ideas, that is, images; in the soul, reason; in the mind [nature], seeds; in matter, forms. Whence in these four circles one perceives four splendors: in the first, the splendor of ideas; in the second, of reason; in the third, of seeds; of forms in the last.

The divine beauty shines everywhere, and in all it is loved. Chapter IV.