must necessarily be destitute of form, as is the case of other receptacles. And that the cause of these things was a necessary cause, which, receiving the ideas, produced the substances, and was moved by the dissimilarity of its own power, and again by its motion compelled those things which were moved by it to move other things in their turn.
But all these things were formerly moved without any reason or order; but after they began to form the world by their combination, they then received symmetry and regularity from God, according to the principles applicable to them; for the efficient causes, even before the creation of the heaven, were two in number. There was also a third, namely production; but these were not very evident, but rather traces than actual things, and quite devoid of regularity. But after the world was made, then they too assumed a regular form and arrangement; but the heaven was made of all existing bodies. And Plato considers that God is incorporeal just as the soul is, and that it is owing to that that he is not affected by any destruction or external circumstances. And ideas, as we have said before, he defines as certain causes and principles, owing to which it is that such and such things are by nature what they are.