PROCLUS ON THE TIMAEUS BOOK III [Tim. 31 B]

...and nothing can be visible without fire, nor solid without earth. Therefore, beginning to compose the body of the universe from fire and earth, God made it [31 B].

In providing the definition of the "generated" Greek: genēton; referring to anything that has a beginning or is subject to change a little earlier [28 A], he defined it as that which is "becoming and perishing," calling it "perceptible by opinion combined with sensation." But in showing that the world is generated, he reversed the definition; for he says [28 C] that "sensible things, by the fact of becoming, appeared to be generated."
5

But now, taking "that which is becoming" itself and placing it in the rank of a subject, he predicated of it "visibility" and "tangibility." For these are the extremes of sensible things, just as sight and touch are the extremes of the senses. In that earlier passage, as I said, in the arguments concerning the world being generated, he reversed the definition, but here he has provided it according to its nature. For "that which is becoming" held the place of the thing being defined, while "that which is graspable by opinion with sensation" held the place of the definition,
15

just as he stated in the initial propositions. Therefore, he says, the generated must be sensible—not every generated thing, but this specific one which we previously called generated: the composite which is always "becoming" throughout all time. For even the soul is "generated" Proclus distinguishes between the "generated" nature of the soul (which has a cause) and the "generated" nature of bodies (which are material and changing).; but the argument is not about the soul here.

And if someone should say that even the material forms and the qualities themselves are graspable by sensation, yet are incorporeal, and nevertheless possess a "becoming," let him know—says the divine Iamblichus Iamblichus (c. 245–325 AD) was a hugely influential Neoplatonist philosopher whom Proclus frequently cites as an authority.—that these also contribute to the subsistence of bodies and are contemplated along with them. Since, therefore, the world possesses a certain corporeal portion within itself, but also possesses an incorporeal portion—and this latter is twofold: one part inseparable from the body, the other separable; and this separable part is again double: one part being of the soul, the other of the intellect—and since it possesses within itself that which is ungenerated Greek: agenēton; eternal and changeless as well as that which is generated, and since everything composed of the ungenerated and the generated is, as a whole, "generated," he rightly called the entire world "becoming" and "corporeal-form." For it possesses a body and for this reason is "corporeal-form," and it is something "generated" in...
25 D

M P Q

These are manuscript sigla referring to the primary codices: Marcianus 196 (M), Parisinus 1960 (P), and Venetus 197 (Q).

1 "without earth nothing" [variant reading from vulgate/Plato] 2 "beginning" [variant in Q and Plato] 7 "demonstrating" [variant in P] "reversed" [variant in Q] 9 "subject" [feminine form in Q] 11 "of the extremes" [variant in M] 14 ff. compare I 240 f. and 283 f. 277, 14 ff. 28 "in itself" [variant in P] 29 "everything — 30 generated" omitted in P 32 "something" omitted in Q