First Book

Is it not then true that if the soul primarily participates in the Intellect original: nous; the highest form of divine intelligence in Neoplatonism and the intellectual essence original: noera ousia; the realm of pure, non-material being, and is filled with knowledge from that source, and indeed with total life, that it receives a dimmer birth-pang The "birth-pang" (odin) refers to the soul's labor in bringing forth knowledge into the world of reason. from there—being the lowest rank among the intellectual orders,
Proclus: and having been marked off to bring all things into being? Yet, toward those causes that come from the Intellect, the soul has by its nature often given many people cause for varying opinions. But if mathematical forms do not exist by the abstraction Proclus is arguing against the "abstractionist" view that we create a "circle" in our minds by looking at round physical objects and stripping away their imperfections. of material things, nor by a collection of the common features found in particulars, nor are they at all "born later" or derived from sensible objects, then it is surely necessary that the soul receives them either from itself, or from the Intellect, or from both itself and that source.

But if it received them from itself alone, how could these be among the intellectual forms? And how would they occupy the middle ground between the indivisible nature Pure spirit/Intellect and the divisible nature Physical matter without having received any completion for their being from the primary sources? And how could they have emerged as the paradigms original: paradeigmata; the perfect blueprints or models of reality of the whole, those which stood foremost in the Intellect?

If, however, the soul received them from the Intellect alone, how can the soul's quality of being self-energizing and self-moving remain, if the "reasons" original: logoi; the organizing principles or rational structures of reality within it flow into it from elsewhere, just as they do into matter?
artificial of the
And how would the soul differ from matter, which is all things only in potential, yet knows none of the material forms? It remains then, surely, that the soul produces these forms both from itself and from the Intellect, and that the soul itself is a fullness of forms, an outflowing of the intellectual paradigms which has taken on substantial form, but which attains its progression into being through its own self-generation.

Thus, the soul was not, after all, an empty writing tablet original: grammateion; Proclus is directly refuting Aristotle's famous "tabula rasa" (blank slate) theory of the mind. of the reasons, but one that is always written upon and is always writing itself,