PROCLUS ON THE TIMAEUS IV [Tim. 37CD]

The Creator here also shows himself to be one; and while he bestows the assimilative power upon the young gods after him—when he commands them to imitate his own power regarding their own generation—he simultaneously bestows the generative power when he moves them to fashion and generate living beings, and simultaneously the restorative power whenever he orders them to receive the parts borrowed from the total elements, as those the borrowed parts that were composed from them are waning, and to recall them back into the whole, and, above all, the protective power; for he himself directly establishes the rulers of the cosmos the kosmokratores or planetary gods as guardians of the numbers of time, and the Earth as guardian of night and day.

The Creator, then—which I was moved to say from the beginning—from whom all things have been established together, assimilated, perfected, and restored to him, does not allow their order to be confused by this, as it were, total manifestation of all things. Instead, it is much more guarded and held together, inasmuch as the lesser things do not lack the protection of the superior, nor do the more perfect lack the dominion that they exert over the less perfect. For neither did the one take precedence in time while the second remained unprovided for, nor did the elder ones remain idle and barren, as those that were to receive their providential energies had not yet come into being.

We, however, being unable to understand or, much less, to interpret the goodness of the Father of all things regarding the world from eternity, rejoice now when we see him generating, now adorning, now perfecting, and at other times assimilating, as we behold and hand this down. This is what the philosopher's discourse, having been affected beforehand, now prepares to do for us; for since the universe has already partaken of motion and life according to the teaching—for soul dwelled with it, preserving within itself its own peculiar knowledges, by which it knows both the intelligible and the cosmic things—