Holy Fathers
You must remember, dear reader, that God first created the invisible world and then the visible, "in order to reveal a greater wisdom and the manifold purpose of nature," as St. Gregory the Theologian noted. God also created last of all man with an invisible soul and a visible body. He, therefore, has created man to be a cosmos, a world unto himself, but not a microcosmos within the greater one, as the philosopher Democritos declared and as other philosophers have upheld. Such philosophers considered man to be a microcosmos, minimizing and restricting his value and perfection within this visible world. God, on the contrary, has placed man to be a sort of macrocosmos - a "greater world" within the small one. He is indeed a greater world by virtue of the multitude of powers that he possesses, especially the powers of reason, of spirit, and of will, which this great and visible world does not have. This is why St. Gregory the Theologian again stated that "God has placed this second cosmos (i.e. man) to be upon the earth as a great world within the small one. Even when man is compared with the invisible world of the angels, again he is and is called a "great world," while the invisible world is by comparison small. Man includes in his world both the visible and the invisible, while the angelic world does not include the elements of the visible world. St. Gregory Palamas has noted that this cosmos (i.e., man) adorns both of these worlds, the visible and the invisible. Nemesios has also concluded that man as cosmos draws the two ends of the upper and the lower world together and thus reveals that the Creator of both is one.

+ St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain +