[30] Special distinction is accorded by Moses to life-breath and to light. The one he entitles the “breath” of God, because breath is most life-giving, and of life God is the author, while of light he says that it is beautiful pre-eminently (Gen. 1:4): for the intelligible as far surpasses the visible in the brilliancy of its radiance, as sunlight assuredly surpasses darkness and day night, and mind, the ruler of the entire soul, the bodily eyes.
[31] Now that invisible light perceptible only by mind has come into being as an image of the Divine Word Who brought it within our ken: it is a supercelestial constellation, fount of the constellations obvious to sense. It would not be amiss to term it “all-brightness,” to signify that from which sun and moon, as well as fixed stars and planets draw, in proportion to their several capacity, the light befitting each of them: for that pure and undiluted radiance is bedimmed so soon as it begins to undergo the change that is entailed by the passage from the intelligible to the sensibly discerned, for no object of sense is free from dimness.