PROCLUS ON THE TIMAEUS IV [Tim. 37 CD]

in a simple, unhindered, and total embrace, which encompasses the whole intelligible [realm] and regards it with favor through its standing toward it and perfect union. He rejoices, if it is permitted to say, also secondarily because of the fitness of the things that receive the supply of goods proceeding from him. And you see how he hands down three causes of the participation in goods proceeding into this world from the Father: one, and the foremost, is that from the power of the productive cause (for he is also now the one who begets time, desiring to fill all things—first, middle, and last goods—because of his own abundance and fertile excess); the second is that from the fitness of the thing receiving them (for the one bestowing goods rejoices when the participant is fitness-disposed toward receiving them); and the third is that from the symmetry and, as it were, the breathing-together and harmony of both. Because of this, even though the gods always offer to all things the goods that correspond to their essences, we do not always receive them, because we are neither fitly disposed nor are we in any way commensurate with the power of the bestowers. But if we desire the divine to rejoice in us—as it is its nature to rejoice and feel glad even for our sake, although it is always disposed in the same way—we must make ourselves fit for the reception of the goods offered to us by it, so that the gift of the god may not be idle toward us, although it is of a nature to be hindered by nothing. These matters are for another intention to examine at greater length. Now, let us see how the whole becomes more similar to the paradigm by the generation of time. That the sensible would be less similar to the intelligible if the paradigm were eternal primarily, and it had not taken on a second eternity, is evident to all. And that which has its generation in change could not be eternal without time; it could not even remain for an instant, which is not difficult to see.