Opening Problems & Solutions Concerning the First Principles — Damascius in Plato Scroll…
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Damascius · Claude Fable 5 (Anthropic), from the Kopp edition of 1826
Is the so-called single principle of all things beyond all things, or is it some one of all things — say, the summit of those that proceed from it? And do we say that all things exist together with it, or after it and from it? For if one were to assert the latter, how could anything be outside the all? For things from which nothing whatever is absent — these are all things without qualification. But the principle is absent. Then what comes after the principle is not all things without qualification, but all things short of the principle. Further, "all things" means many things that are bounded; for the unbounded could not be all things in complete tally. Nothing, then, will show itself outside the all; for allness is a kind of boundary, an embrace already drawn, within which the principle is the upper limit and what lies farthest from the principle is the lower limit. All things, then, …
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