[1] “Is it not true, Asclepius, that everything moved is moved in something and by something?”

“Certainly.”

“But isn't it necessary for that in which something is moved to be larger than the moved?”

“It is necessary.”

“So then the mover is stronger than the moved?”

“Stronger indeed.”

“And that in which something is moved must necessarily have a nature contrary to that of the moved?”

“Yes, entirely so.”

[2] “This cosmos is large, then, and no body is larger?”

“Agreed.”

“And is it densely packed? For it has been filled with many other large bodies or, rather, with all the bodies that exist.”

“So it is.”

“But is the cosmos a body?”

“A body, yes.”

“And a moved body?”

[3] “Certainly.”

“The place in which it moves, then, how large must it be, and what is its nature? Is it not larger by far so as to sustain continuity of motion and not hold back its movement lest the moved be crowded and confined?”

“It must be something truly enormous, Trismegistus.”

[4] “What is its nature? It will be of a contrary nature, Asclepius, no? But the nature contrary to body is the incorporeal.”

“Agreed.”

“Place is incorporeal, then, but the incorporeal is either divine or else it is god. (By ‘divine’ I mean here the unbegotten, not the begotten.) [5] If it is divine, it is something essential; but if it is god, it comes to be even without essence.

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