“And what is this?” I asked the earth, and it answered me, “I am not He”; and whatsoever are in it confessed the same.

I asked the sea and the deeps, and the living creeping things, and they answered, “We are not thy God, seek above us.”

I asked the moving air; and the whole air with his inhabitants answered, “Anaximenes was deceived, I am not God.”

I asked the heavens, sun, moon, stars, “Nor (say they) are we the God whom thou seekest.”

And I replied unto all the things which encompass the door of my flesh: “Ye have told me of my God, that ye are not He; tell me something of Him.”

And they cried out with a loud voice, “He made us.” My questioning them, was my thoughts on them: and their form of beauty gave the answer.

And I turned myself unto myself, and said to myself, “Who art thou?” And I answered, “A man.” And behold, in me there present themselves to me soul, and body, one without, the other within. By which of these ought I to seek my God?

I had sought Him in the body from earth to heaven, so far as I could send messengers, the beams of mine eyes. But the better is the inner, for to it as presiding and judging, all the bodily messengers reported the answers of heaven and earth, and all things therein, who said, “We are not God, but He made us.”

These things did my inner man know by the ministry of the outer: I the inner knew them; I, the mind, through the senses of my body. I asked the whole frame of the world about my God; and it answered me, “I am not He, but He made me.”