On the Mysteries (Thomas Taylor trans.)

its subsistence as the object of desire to all beings. For all things desire good. At the same time, however, it asserts that these appellations Names or titles. are in reality nothing more than the parturitions Literally "birth-pains"; here referring to the labor-intensive efforts of the soul to conceptualize the divine. of the soul, which, standing as it were in the vestibules of the adytum The innermost, most sacred chamber of a temple, usually off-limits to all but the highest priests. of deity, announce nothing pertaining to the ineffable That which is too great or sacred to be expressed in words., 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 it, though ineffable, but also to assert something of its relation to other things, it considers this as preeminently 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 From the Greek 'monas,' meaning a single, indivisible unit or source. as a summit, and which is the principle of all principles.

The scientific reasoning from which this dogma is deduced is the following. As the principle of all things is the one, it is