On the Mysteries (Thomas Taylor trans.)

being: all intellects emanate from one first intellect; all souls from one first soul; all natures blossom from one first nature; and all bodies proceed from the vital and luminous body of the world. And, lastly, all these great monads monads: from the Greek "monas," meaning unity; these are the primary, indivisible sources that govern a specific level of reality, such as the "First Soul" governing all individual souls. are comprehended in the first one, from which both they and all their depending series are unfolded into light. Hence this first one is truly the unity of unities, the monad of monads, the principle of principles, the God of Gods, one and all things, and yet one prior to all. This "One" is the ultimate source in Neoplatonism, existing both as the source of everything and as something completely distinct and "above" the world.

No objections of any weight, no arguments but such as are sophistical sophistical: referring to arguments that are clever but false, often used to deceive or sound more persuasive than they actually are., can be urged against this most sublime theory, which is so congenial to the unperverted conceptions of the human mind, that it can only be treated with ridicule and contempt in degraded, barren, and barbarous ages. Ignorance and impious fraud, however, have hitherto conspired to defame those inestimable works * * Namely original: "Viz.". The Philosophical Works of Proclus, together with those of Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Syrianus, Ammonius, Damascius, Olympiodorus, and Simplicius. These authors are the primary thinkers of Neoplatonism, a school of mystical philosophy that thrived from the 3rd to the 6th century CE. in which this and many other grand and important dogmas can