18. As the helpless man is enabled to achieve his purposes, by means of his patient perseverance; so the inane sky has risen above all, by means of its universal diffusion. (The gloss says that, extension of knowledge, is the cause of elevation).
19. The sun that persists in his wonted course, rises to the vertical point in time; but the unmoving straws and trees, and the dormant hills and places, and stagnant pools and ponds, are ever lying low on the ground.
20. The night invests the sky with a sable garb, and sprinkles over it the fair moonlight like the cooling dust of camphor; with the decoration of stars like clusters of flowers upon it. The day mantles the firmament with bright sun beams, and the seasons serve to cover it in clouds and snows, and in the gaudy attire of vernal flowers. Thus is time ever busy, to decorate the heavenly paths of his lords the sun and moon, the two time keepers by day and night.
21. The firmament like the magnanimous mind, never changes the firmness of its nature; although it is ever assailed by the disturbances of smokes and clouds of dust and darkness, of the rising and setting sun and moon and their dawns and dusks: and of the confluence of stars and combat of gods and demons.
22. The world is an old and decayed mansion, of which the four sides are its walls, the sky its covering roof above and the earth its ground floor below; the hills and mountains are its pillars and columns, and the cities and towns are its rooms and apartments; and all the various classes of animal beings, are as the ants of this abode.
23. Time and action are the occupants of this mansion from age to age, and all its ample space presents the aspect of a smiling garden; it is feared every day to be blown and blasted away, and yet it is a wonder how this frail flower should last so long and for ever more.
24. It is the air methinks, that puts a stop to the greater height or rising of trees and hills; for though it does not actually restrain their growth, yet its influence (pressure from above), like the authority of noble men, puts a check to the rise of aspiring underlings.
25. O fie for that learning, which calls the air as void and vacuity; seeing it to contain millions of worlds in its bosom, and producing and reducing also unnumbered beings in its boundless bosom.
26. We see all things to be born in and to return into the air; and yet we see the madness of men, that reckon the all containing and all pervading air, as something different from God.
27. We see the works of creation, to be continually producing, existing and extinguishing in air, like sparks of fire; I ween this pure and sole air, which is without beginning, middle and end, as the universal source and terminus of all, and no other distinct cause as God.