I A M B L I C H V S

for there is otherness, but a certain essential and simple contact. For we cannot reach unity itself unless by a certain most unified [faculty], and by the unity of the mind, which stands above the property of soul and mind. The very unity of the gods unites souls to itself from eternity through their unities, according to a contiguity so proper and efficacious that it seems to be a continuity. Divine intellect gives being to the soul through its essential understanding. Therefore, the being of the soul is a certain understanding, namely, of the God from whom it depends. Our being is to know God, because the principal being of the soul is its intellect, in which to be and to understand divine things in perpetual act are the same. But from that principal being are derived the discursive powers of the soul. After the gods, we place demons, heroes, and pure souls; these three orders are the attendants of the gods. We cannot reach the attendants of the gods—demons, heroes, and pure souls—by the customary discourses of human reason. But it is necessary to rise to an essential and eternal intelligence. Just as the gods are always reached by an innate notion, so the divine attendants are then first reached when the soul has laid aside the mobile mode of cognition, which looks to the rational power, which is formed by intellect and