329. After the Chief Teacher and the rest had left me, some boys who also had been in the gymnastic sport followed me home and there, for a time, stood by me while I was writing. And lo, they saw a cockroach running over my paper and asked in surprise, "What is that little creature which runs so fast?" I said, "It is called a cockroach, and I will tell you marvels about it." I then said: "In that living creature, small as it is, there are as many members and viscera as in a camel. It has brains, hearts, pulmonary tubes, organs of sense, of motion, and of generation, a stomach, intestines, and many other things; and each of them is a contexture of fiber, nerves, blood-vessels, muscles, tendons, membranes; and each of these a contexture of things still purer which lie deeply hidden beyond the reach of any eye."
[2] The boys then said that to them this little living thing seemed nothing more than a simple substance. To this I said: "Nevertheless, there are innumerable things within it. I tell you this, that you may know that it is the same in every object which appears before you as a one, a simple, a mite. It is the same also in your actions, affections, and thoughts. I can assure you that every grain of your thought, and every drop of your affection is divisible to infinity, and that so far as your ideas are divisible you are wise. Know then, that everything divided is more and more multiple, and not more and more simple; for when divided again and again, it approaches nearer and nearer to the infinite in which are all things infinitely. This that I tell you is something new and never before heard of."
[3] After I had said this, the boys went from me to the Chief Teacher and asked him if, in the gymnasium, he would at some time propose as a problem something new and unheard of. He asked, "What?" They said: "That everything divided is more and more multiple and not more and more simple, because it approaches nearer and nearer to the Infinite in which are all things infinitely."
He promised to propose it, and said: "I see this because I have perceived that a single natural idea is the containant of innumerable spiritual ideas; yea, that a single spiritual idea is the containant of innumerable celestial ideas. Hence the distinction between celestial wisdom, in which are the angels of the third heaven, and spiritual wisdom in which are the angels of the second heaven; and also between [the latter and] natural wisdom in which are the angels of the ultimate heaven and also men."
