The original of this sentence is found at the close of the Emperor Justinian’s epistle to Menas, patriarch of Constantinople, and, literally translated, is as follows: “The world being so very varied, and containing so many different rational beings, what else ought we to say was the cause of its existence than the diversity of the falling away of those who decline from unity (τῆς ἑνάδος) in different ways?”—Ruæus. Lommatzsch adds a clause not contained in the note of the Benedictine editor: “and sometimes the soul selects the life that is in water” (ἔνυδρον).