Commentary on Plato's Symposium

A center is a point in the midst of a circle, indivisible and stable, from which many divisible and mobile lines extend to the circle similar to them; which divisible circle turns around the center, like a wooden object inside a ring, and such is the nature of the center that, although it is alone, indivisible, and stable, nevertheless it is found in many, nay, in all mobile lines everywhere; I say the point is throughout the line. And because no thing can be touched by its dissimilar, all the lines extended from the circle to the center all strive with a certain simple and mobile point of theirs to touch the point placed in the midst. Who would deny that God, deservedly, has to be called the center? Since he alone is simple, immobile, in the midst of the whole, and all things produced by him, many of them are composed and mobile; and as they have emerged from him, so, in the manner of lines and a circle, they return into him. Thus also the mind, the soul, nature, and matter, being born from God, strive to return into him, and revolve around him with all their forces. And as the point is found in the whole line and in the whole circle, and each line touches the point which is in the midst of the circle through its own point, so the center of all things, which is a most simple union and most pure act, transmits itself into all things; not only because it is present to all, but because it carves and imprints into created things some part, or intimate, most simple, and beautiful power; which is properly called the union of things, from which and to which, as if from the center and to its center, the parts and other powers of whatever thing depend. It is necessary that created things bind themselves to this their center and to this union before approaching