Platonic Theology (Thomas Taylor trans.)

x INTRODUCTION.

adytum of deity, announce nothing pertaining to the ineffable, but only indicate her spontaneous
tendencies towards it, and belong rather to the immediate offspring of the first God, than to the first
itself.

Hence, as the result of this most venerable conception of the supreme, when it ventures not
only to denominate the ineffable, but also to assert something of its relation to other things, it con-
siders this as pre-eminently its peculiarity, that it is the principle of principles ; it being necessary
that the characteristic property of principle, after the same manner as other things, should not begin
from multitude, but should be collected into one monad as a summit, and which is the principle of
all principles. Conformably to this, Proclus, in the second book of this work¹ says, with match-
less magnificence of diction : “ Let us as it were celebrate the first God, not as establishing the
earth and the heavens, nor as giving subsistence to souls, and the generation of all animals ; for he
produced these indeed, but among the last of things ; but prior to these, let us celebrate him as
unfolding into light the whole intelligible and intellectual genus of Gods, together with all the
supermundane and mundane divinities —— as the God of all Gods, the unity of all unities,
and beyond the first adyta,²—as more ineffable than all silence, and more unknown than all
essence,—as holy among the holies, and concealed in the intelligible Gods.”

The scientific reasoning from which this dogma is deduced is the following : As the principle of
all things is the one, it is necessary that the progression of beings should be continued, and that no
vacuum should intervene either in incorporeal or corporeal natures. It is also necessary that every
thing which has a natural progression should proceed through similitude. In consequence of this,
it is likewise necessary that every producing principle should generate a number of the same order
with itself, viz. nature, a natural number ; soul, one that is psychical (i. e. belonging to soul) ; and
intellect, an intellectual number. For if whatever possesses a power of generating, generates simi-
lars prior to dissimilars, every cause must deliver its own form and characteristic peculiarity to its
progeny ; and before it generates that which gives subsistence to progressions far distant and
separate from its nature, it must constitute things proximate to itself according to essence, and con-
joined with it through similitude. It is therefore necessary from these premises, since there is one
unity the principle of the universe, that this unity should produce from itself, prior to every thing
else, a multitude of natures characterized by unity, and a number the most of all things allied to
its cause ; and these natures are no other than the Gods.

According to this theology therefore, from the immense principle of principles, in which all

¹ P. 139. ² i. e. The highest order of intelligibles.

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