Proclus: Commentary on Plato's Timaeus, Vol. I

The Demiurge here shows himself to be one, while simultaneously imbuing the younger creators the lesser deities charged with creating mortal beings beneath him with the assimilative power whenever he commands them to imitate his own power regarding their own generation; simultaneously with the generative power, whenever he moves them to produce and generate living beings; and simultaneously with the calling-back power, whenever he commands them to receive back the portions borrowed from the total elements, as those that were constituted from them perish, calling them back into the wholes. And above all these, he includes the protective power, he who establishes the rulers of the world kosmokratores world-rulers as guardians of the numbers of time, and the Earth as guardian of night and day.

The Demiurge, therefore, to say what I was initially moved to say, from whom all things were constituted, he assimilated them to himself, perfected them, and turned them back toward himself. Their order is not confounded by the seemingly total manifestation of all things, but is much more guarded and held together, insofar as the lesser things do not lack the protection of the better ones, nor do the more perfect ones lack the dominance that befalls them over the less perfect. For neither did the one set of things get ahead of the other in time, with the seconds remaining unprovided for, or the elders remaining idle and sterile, as those which would receive their providential energies had not yet come into being. We, however, being unable to understand, and much less to interpret, the goodness from eternity of the Father of all things regarding the world, are content now to see him creating, now adorning, now perfecting, and at another time assimilating, observing and handing this down. This is what the philosopher’s discourse, having previously experienced, prepares to do for us. For once the All has participated in movement and life according to the teaching (for a soul resided with it, saving in itself its own proper knowledge, by which it knows both the intelligible the realm of pure Forms and the things within the world)...

Q D (ς)

1 ss compare Tim. 42 D ss 2 "assimilative" Q 3 "his" D 5 "to them" suggested by s; "to them" manuscripts 6 ss I did not want "them" and "calling back"; compare infra 312 C 10 s compare Tim. 38 C 40 BC 14 "himself" manuscripts 19 "the one" QD 21 "sterile" ? 24 you might have "we would be content"