Problems & Solutions Concerning the First Principles — Damascius
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ΑΠΟΡΙΑΙ ΚΑΙ ΛΥΣΕΙΣ ΠΕΡΙ ΤΩΝ ΠΡΩΤΩΝ ΑΡΧΩΝ
Translation/edition: Claude Fable 5 (Anthropic), from the Kopp edition of 1826
Language: English
Read in Plato Scroll: https://plato-scroll.com/s/dam-principles/
This file: https://plato-scroll.com/text/dam-principles.txt
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Numbers in [brackets] are the edition's reference loci (Stephanus, Bekker, book.line, page...). Superscript numerals refer to the Notes at the end.


## Chapter 1 — Whether the One Principle of All Things Is beyond All Things · pp. 1–5

[1] 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?¹
[1] 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;² 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, together with their limits. Again, the principle is coordinated with what comes from the principle: it both is called and is their principle; and so too the cause with its effects, and the first with what comes after the first. But things of which there is a single coordination, they being many — these we call "all things"; so that the principle too is among all things. And in general we say "all things," without qualification, of whatever we conceive in any way at all — and we conceive the principle as well. Thus we are accustomed to call a whole city the ruler together with the ruled, and a whole clan the begetter together with the begotten. But if all things include the principle, the principle would no longer be a principle of all things, since the principle is itself comprised among all things. The single coordination of all things, then — which is what we mean by "all things" — is without principle and without cause, lest we ascend to infinity.
[1] And yet surely everything must be either a principle or from a principle; so all things, too, are either a principle or from a principle. But if the latter, the principle would not be together with all things but outside all things, as the principle of what comes from it. And if the former — what could that be which proceeds from all things as from a principle, standing outside all things in the downward direction, as the finished product of all things? For this too is among all things, since the conception of "all things" without qualification lets nothing escape. All things, therefore, are neither a principle nor from a principle.
[1] Further, how are all things seen at once in multiplicity, and by what differentiation? — for we do not conceive the all apart from these. How then did differentiation and multiplicity straightway make their appearance? Or are all things not in every respect in differentiation and multiplicity: is the One rather the summit of the many, and the Unified — the monad — the summit of the differentiated, the One being simpler still than the monad? But, first, the monad too is the whole of number, even if number still folded together; on that showing the monad too is all things. And next, the One is not some one of the many — otherwise it would help fill up the many, like each of the others. Rather, however many the many are on any division whatever, just so many is that One before the division, in virtue of being altogether without parts. For it is not one as a minimum, as Speusippus was thought to say,³ but one as having swallowed all things. By its own simplicity it has dissolved all things together into itself and made all things one. Hence all things come from it because it is all things, itself before all things: as the Unified is before the differentiated, so the One, prior to the many, is all things.
[1] But when we unfold our whole conception toward all things, we shall not predicate "all" in a single manner, but in at least three ways: unitarily, unifiedly, and in pluralized fashion4 — "from one and toward one," as we are accustomed to say.⁴ If, then, by "all things" we mean, in the more usual sense, the things that subsist in multiplicity and differentiation, we shall posit as their principles the Unified and, in still greater degree, the One. But if we conceive even these as all things, and gather them in with all the rest according to their relation and coordination with them, as was said before, then the argument will demand of us another principle prior to all things — one which it is no longer right to conceive as all things, nor to coordinate with what comes from it. For suppose someone says: even if the One is also, in whatever fashion, all things, still it is one before all things so taken, and it is one rather than all things — one in its own right, but all things as the cause of all and in virtue of its coordination with all; in a word, all things in a secondary way, but one primarily. Whoever says this will, first, be positing a doubleness within it — though in truth it is we who divide, we who are doubled and further multiplied about its simplicity; for that One, by being one, is all things in the simplest manner. And even should someone grant the point, nonetheless the principle of all things must be exempt and transcendent — exempt from all things themselves, from the simplest allness, and from the very simplicity that swallows all things, such as the simplicity of the One.
[1] Note 4. A marginal scheme in the Hamburg copy (attributed to Holstenius) glosses the triple mode: "All things under one undifferentiated idea — unitarily; all things by their mutual relation and coordination — unifiedly; all things severally, by differentiation — pluralized."

## Chapter 2 — The Soul's Divination: the Principle beyond Even the One · pp. 5–8

[2] Our soul, then, divines that of all things, however conceived, there is a principle beyond all things, uncoordinated with all things. It must therefore not be called principle, nor cause, nor first, nor indeed prior to all things, nor beyond all things; least of all may it be hymned as being all things. In a word: it must not be hymned at all, nor conceived, nor surmised.⁵ For whatever we think or devise is either some one of all things — and this is the truer account — or, taken in its purified sense, it is all things. Even if we ascend to the simplest — dissolving everything, and ourselves dissolved — we reach only what is most comprehensive of all, like the outermost circumference, embracing not beings only but non-beings too. For among beings the ultimate is the Unified, altogether undifferentiated, since every being is a mixture of elements; and of the many taken simply, the ultimate is the One. Simpler than the One we can conceive nothing — than what is in every way one, and only one.⁶ And even if we call it principle and cause and first and simplest, these — and everything else — are There only according to the One; while we, unable to take it in one grasp, are divided about it, and predicate of it the divided things that are in ourselves. Except that we then dishonor even these, as being many and so failing to fit the One. Hence it is neither knowable nor nameable, since in that way too it would be many. Or are even these in it, according to the One? For the nature of the One is all-receiving — or rather, all-engendering. There is nothing that the One is not; and for this reason all things are wound off from it as from a single clew.⁷ And being the cause in the strict sense, and the first, it is also itself the end, itself the last: it is, quite simply, the coping-stone of all things,⁸ and the single nature of the many — not the nature within them that derives from it, but the nature before them that begets the one within them — the most partless summit of all things in whatever sense, and the greatest circumference of whatever is in any way called whole.
[2] But if the One is cause of all things and comprehensive of all things, what is this ascent of ours beyond even it? Are we perhaps treading on emptiness, straining toward sheer nothing? For what is not even one is, in all justice, nothing. Whence indeed could there be anything beyond the One? The many need nothing whatever except the One; therefore the One alone is cause of the many — and the One is cause altogether, precisely because the cause of the many can only be the One. For the nothing is not their cause, since nothing is cause of nothing; nor are the many themselves, for insofar as they are many they are uncoordinated, and the many would not be one cause. And if there were many causes, they could not be causes of one another — because of the lack of coordination, and because of the circle; so each would be cause of itself, and of the many as many there would be no cause at all. Necessarily, then, the One is the cause of the many — the cause also of the coordination among them; for coordination is a kind of breathing-together, a unification of things with one another.⁹

## Chapter 3 — Against Resting in the One: Training the Soul's Birth-Pangs · pp. 8–9

[3] Now suppose someone, caught in these perplexities, says that we should rest content with the principle of the One, and adds as capstone that we possess no conception, nor even surmise, simpler than the One: how then are we to surmise something beyond the very last surmise and conception? If anyone urges this, we shall pardon him his perplexity, for such thinking is, it seems, a trackless country where every device fails. Yet all the same, beginning from what is more familiar to us, we must train up the ineffable birth-pangs within us toward the ineffable — I do not know how to name it — co-awareness of this proud truth.¹⁰ For since, among things here, the wholly relationless is more honorable than what stands in relation, and the uncoordinated than the coordinated — as the contemplative man is more honorable than the statesman; as Kronos, so to speak, than the Demiurge;¹¹ as Being than the Forms; and as the One than the many whose principle the One is — so too, among causes and effects without qualification, among all principles and all that principles govern, the most honorable is that which has stepped out beyond everything of the kind and is posited in no coordination and no relation whatever, so far as discourse can put it. For the One, after all, presides by nature over the many, the simplest over the however-composite, the most comprehensive over what is contained within it; but that — if one wishes to speak so — is beyond all this, beyond even the antithesis itself: not only the antithesis between things of the same rank, but even that of the first and what comes after the first.

## Chapter 4 — The Twofold Nothing; All Things Proceed as from a Sanctuary · pp. 9–10

[4] Further, then: the One and the Unified, and the many and differentiated things that come from them, are all things. For however many the things being differentiated are, just so many is the Unified from which they are differentiated; and however many the many are, just so many is the One from which they unroll. Yet it is one nonetheless — if anything, all the more — because the many come after it and are not in it; and the Unified likewise, because it is the concentration of the things being differentiated, before their differentiation. Whether by their coordination, then, or by their own nature, each of the two is all things. But all things cannot be first, nor a principle: if "all things" by coordination, because the last things are then included with them; and if the One among them alone, because it is at once one and all things together according to the One — and what is in every way beyond all things we have not yet found — and because the One is the summit of the many, as cause of what comes from it. Besides, we conceive the One according to a surmise progressively purified toward what is simplest and most comprehensive; whereas the most venerable must be ungraspable by all conceptions and surmises alike. For even among things here, what ever flees upward away from our conceptions is more honorable than what is more ready to hand; so that the most honorable of all would be what has escaped all our surmises altogether.
[4] But if this is nothing — then let the nothing be twofold: the one better than the One, the other on this side of it.¹² And if in saying these things we are treading on emptiness, then treading on emptiness is twofold as well: the one kind falls out into the ineffable, the other into what in no way and nowhere exists. For this latter too is ineffable, as Plato says, but according to the worse; the former according to the better.¹³ And if we go on to ask what need there is of it, this is the most necessary need of all: that from There, as from an inner sanctuary, all things proceed — out of the ineffable and in the ineffable manner.¹⁴ For it does not bring forth the many as being one, nor the differentiated as being unified, but ineffably brings forth all things alike, as the ineffable. And if, in saying even these things about it — that it is ineffable, that it is none of all things, that it is beyond conception — we are overturned by our own discourse, we must understand that these are names and words of our own birth-pangs, which dare to meddle overmuch with That: birth-pangs standing in the forecourt of the sanctuary, reporting nothing of what is within, but announcing only their own affections concerning it, their perplexities and their failures to attain — and not even this clearly, but by way of intimations, and to those capable of hearkening even to such things.

## Chapter 5 — Plato's Silence: through the One to What Is beyond It · pp. 11–13

[5] What is more, we see that our birth-pangs suffer these same things about the One as well, and in like manner are somehow distressed and overturned. For the One, says Plato, if it is, is not even one; and if it is not, no statement will fit it — so neither will negation, nor even a name (for a name is not simple either), nor any opinion or knowledge, since these are not simple, nor is intellect itself simple. Hence the One is altogether unknowable and ineffable.¹⁵ What then — are we seeking something else beyond the ineffable? Or perhaps Plato led us up ineffably, through the One as intermediary, to the ineffable now before us, beyond the One? For by the very removal of the One — just as, by the removal of everything else, he led us round to the One. That the One admits of being posited and known by a kind of purification, he made clear in the Sophist, demonstrating it as subsisting in itself prior to Being.¹⁶ And if, having ascended as far as the One, he fell silent, this too befits Plato: about things wholly unutterable to keep silence wholly, in the ancient manner. For the discourse here is in very truth a most hazardous one, should it fall upon untrained ears. There is no question that when he stirred up the account of that which in no way and nowhere is, the argument was overturned and ran the risk of falling into the sea of unlikeness3 — or rather of insubstantial emptiness.
[5] And if demonstrations do not fit the One, that is no wonder: they are human things, divided, and more composite than is needful. They do not even fit Being, concerned as they are with forms — or rather they do not fit the Forms themselves, being discursive. It is Plato himself who declares in the Epistles that nothing among us is significative of the Form: no figure, no name, no statement, no opinion, no knowledge; intellect alone could light upon the Forms — intellect, which we who delight in dialectic do not yet possess.¹⁷ If, then, we put forward an intellection, but a form-directed one, we shall not fit it to the Unified and to Being; if at some point we put forward the concentrated intellection, even this, in relation to the One, is unspun with it and incommensurable; and if we put forward even the unitary intellection, the one that closes its eyes into the One itself, still this is simplified-together only as far as the One — if indeed there is any knowledge of the One at all; let that question wait for us.¹⁸ The result is that the ineffable and unknowable meets us everywhere — so that even the One is of this character. Nevertheless, even now, situated as we are, we go on measuring ourselves against the differentiation of these tremendous matters by means of intimations and surmises, purifying ourselves toward unaccustomed conceptions, led upward through analogy and through negations, dishonoring what is ours beside those things, guided by this road from what is less honorable in us toward what is more honorable; for this is exactly what we have continued doing even now.
[5] And perhaps the wholly ineffable should be posited in this way: as so ineffable that we may not even posit of it that it is ineffable; whereas the One is to be posited as escaping every composition of statement and of name, and every differentiation — even that of known from knower — conceived after the manner of an encompassing ring,¹⁹ simplest and most comprehensive; and not only one, as the One's peculiar property, but one as all things and one before all things — yet not one as some one of all things. For these are the birth-pangs, and it is in this way that they are purified toward the simply One and the truly single principle of all things. In any case the one in us, surmised in this fashion — being nearer to us and more akin to us, even while falling short of That by, one might almost say, the whole of everything — is the readier instrument for such a surmise; for from the "some one," however posited, the passage to the "simply one" is easiest; and even if we can in no way make contact with That, still, riding upon the "simply one" that is ours, we form our surmise about what is before all things. The One, then, is in this way sayable and in this way unsayable; but let That be honored with complete silence — and, before silence, with the complete ignorance that dishonors all knowledge.
[5] Note 3. "The sea of unlikeness": Statesman 273d, the boundless ocean of dissimilitude into which the cosmos risks sinking; here transferred to the discourse on absolute non-being.

## Chapter 6 — In What Sense It Is Called Unknowable: Our Negations Confess Our Own State · pp. 14–17

[6] Come then, let us examine this second point itself: in what sense it is said to be wholly unknowable. For if this is true, how do we write all these things about it, setting them in order? Surely we are not just spinning tales, babbling at length about what we do not know. But if it is in truth uncoordinated with all things and unrelated to all things, and is none of all things, not even the One itself — perhaps just these are its "nature," which we know when we are disposed toward it as we are, and labor to dispose others.²⁰ Further: its very unknowability — either we know that it is unknowable, or we do not. But if the latter, how do we say it is wholly unknowable? And if we know it, then in this respect it is knowable — in the respect in which the unknowable is known to be unknowable. Moreover, one cannot deny one thing of another without knowing that of which one denies; nor can one say "this is not that" while in no way at all touching that. For of what one does not know, says Socrates in the Theaetetus, one could not say that it is — nor that it is not.²¹ How then do we deny of That, of which we are wholly ignorant, the things which we in some way know? It is like a man blind from birth declaring that warmth does not belong to color.
[6] Or perhaps even he will speak justly in saying that color is not warm: for the warm is tangible, and this he knows through touch; while color he does not know at all — except that it is not tangible. For he knows that he does not know it; and such knowledge, quite simply, is not of the thing, but of his own ignorance. So we too, when we call That unknowable, are not reporting anything of it, but confessing our own affection concerning it. For the blind man's insensibility is not in the color — nor is his blindness — but in himself; and likewise the ignorance of what we are ignorant of is in us. For the knowledge of the known is in the knower, not in the known. And if someone should say that, just as knowledge might be in the thing known — being, as it were, its luminousness — so ignorance is in the thing unknown, as being its darkness or invisibility, in virtue of which it is unknown and invisible to all, then whoever says this fails to see that ignorance is a privation, exactly like blindness; every ignorance is so; and as the invisible stands to sight, so stand the unthought and the unknown to thought.
[6] Now in other cases the privation of this or that leaves something else standing: the incorporeal, though invisible, is yet intelligible; and the non-intelligized is yet something — as whatever happens to be incomprehensible to some particular act of thinking. But when we remove every conception and every surmise, and say that this is our ignorance of it altogether — the thing toward which we close every eye, close it wholly — then we call it "unknowable" not because we are thereby saying something of it: not as "what is not of a nature to be seen by sight," which we say of the intelligible, nor as "what is not of a nature to be thought by the substantial and manifold intellection," which we say of the One — but as that which affords no purchase whatever on itself, not even the shadow of a suspicion. For we do not say merely that it is unknowable, as though it were some other thing which had, in addition, the nature of being unknowable; rather, we do not think fit to predicate of it "being," or "one," or "all things," or "principle of all things," or "beyond all things," or anything whatsoever. So not even these are its nature — the "nothing" itself, the "beyond all things," the "supra-causal," the "uncoordinated with all things": none of these is a nature of it, but they are only removals of what comes after it.²²
[6] How then do we say anything about it at all? Surely thus: knowing the things that come after it, we dishonor this very knowing-in-any-way beside the positing — if I may so put it — of the wholly ineffable. For as what is beyond a given knowledge is better than what that knowledge grasps, so what is beyond every surmise must be most venerable — not as something known to be more venerable, but as holding the place of highest honor in us; this word too is our own affection, spoken of what is wholly ungraspable by our conceptions. The argument is by analogy: if what is in some respect unknowable according to the better is superior to what is wholly knowable, then what is wholly unknowable according to the better must of necessity be confessed supreme — even though That has neither the "supreme," nor the "mightiest," nor the "most venerable"; for these are our confessions about That which wholly escapes our conceptions and surmises alike. By the very fact that we surmise nothing of it, we confess it to be most wondrous of all; for if we surmised anything of it, we would seek something else again prior to that surmise — and either this goes on without limit, or we must come to a stand in the absolutely ineffable.

## Chapter 7 — Is the Ineffable Demonstrable? The Discourse Overturns Itself into Silence · pp. 17–23

[7] Do we then demonstrate something about That, and is That demonstrable — the very thing we judge not even fit to be surmised? Or is it rather that in saying these things we do produce demonstrations, even concerning That, yet not of That, nor is the demonstrable in That? For neither is anything else in it, nor is the demonstrable; what we demonstrate concerning it is our own ignorance and speechlessness regarding it, and this is the thing demonstrated.²³ [Here most of Kopp's page 18 is lost in the source's text layer. The argument, by Kopp's own paraphrase printed with the page, continues: even our negations and privative names are improper here, for a privation rests on the positive nature it negates — as shadow presupposes light — whereas to what belongs in no way to Being, nothing of beings can even be absent; and the very phrase "that which in no way and nowhere is" is an improper, borrowed name, which Plato pronounces ineffable and unopinable]2 according to the worse, just as we say it of That according to the better.
[7] But then we are opining what cannot be opined — or else, as the saying goes, the argument is overturned, and in truth we are not even opining. What then? Do we not think, and are we not persuaded, that this is how it stands? Or is what we hold only our own affections about That, as has been said many times? Yet we do have this opinion in us. Then it is an empty one — like our opinions of the void and of the infinite. For just as, though these are not, we take up opinions of them as though they were — imaginary, fabricated opinions; just as we also opine the sun to be a foot wide, which is hardly its size — so, whether we are opining about that which in no way and nowhere is, or about that of which we are writing these things, the opinion is our own, treading on emptiness within us; and grasping it, we suppose we are grasping That — but That is nothing to us: so far has it stepped beyond our conception. How then is even this demonstrable — the ignorance concerning That, just so much of it as forms itself within us?
[7] For how do we call That unknowable? By one argument, already stated: we always find what is above knowledge to be the more honorable; so that what is above all knowledge, were it discoverable, would itself be found most honorable of all — and for the demonstration it suffices that it is not even discoverable. By a second argument: that it is above all things. For if it were knowable in any way, it too would be among all things — since whatever we know, all of that we call "all things" — and it would have something in common with all things, namely being knowable; but things that have something in common belong to one coordination, so that in this way too That would be ranked with all things. In this way too, then, it must be unknowable. Third: the unknowable is present in beings just as the knowable is; even if relatively, still it is present. As we call the same thing great and small relative to different things, so also knowable and unknowable relative to this and to that; and as the same thing, partaking of the two forms of small and great, is at once great and small, so what partakes at once of the knowable and the unknowable is each of the two. And as the knowable pre-exists, so the unknowable must pre-exist — above all if it be better than the knowable, as the intelligible is unknowable to perception but knowable to intellect. For the better cannot be a privation of form while the worse is a being — least of all a privation belonging to the intelligible; for absence and privation of that kind reside in matter, or in soul. In intellect how could they? — in which all things are present. And in the intelligible how, still more? Unless we should speak of one privation only, the privation according to the better: as the non-form, which is supra-formal; and the non-being, which is supra-essential; and the nothing, which is the truly unknowable, by transcendence over absolutely everything.²⁴
[7] If, then, the One is the last knowable of all things in any way known or surmised, what is beyond the One is the primarily and wholly unknowable — so genuinely unknowable that it does not even have unknowability as a nature; nor do we apprehend it as unknowable; we are ignorant even whether it is unknowable. The ignorance concerning it is complete: we know That neither as knowable nor as unknowable. Hence we are overturned at every point, touching it at no point — as though it were nothing; or rather, since not even this belongs to it, the nothing. Is "that which in no way and nowhere is," then, the same as it — or is it beyond even this? — seeing that the one is the negation of Being, while the other is the negation even of the One: the sheer nothing. But the nothing is empty, a falling-away from everything; and that is not how we conceive the ineffable. Rather, the nothing is twofold: the one beyond, the other on this side. For the One too is twofold: the one last — that of matter; the other first — that which is elder than Being.²⁵ So the nothing likewise: in one sense as not even the last one; in the other, as not even the first. And in the same way the unknowable and the ineffable are twofold: the one as falling beneath even the last surmisable thing, the other as rising above even the first.
[7] Do we then posit it as unknowable merely to us? That indeed would be nothing strange. But it would be unknowable — if it is lawful to say so — even to the much-honored intellect; for all intellect looks toward the intelligible, and the intelligible is either form or being. But perhaps the divine knowledge knows it, and to that knowledge — the unitary and supra-essential — it is knowable? Yet this knowledge lights upon the One; and That, as we found, is beyond even the One. Speaking generally: if it were known, That too would be together with the others and itself one of all things; for it would have in common with the others the being-knowable, and to that extent it would be coordinated with the others. Further: if it is knowable, then knowledge — divine knowledge, no less — will encompass it; it will therefore bound it; but every bound ascends at last to the One, and That is above the One: it is therefore unencompassable and altogether unbounded — hence wholly unknowable even to knowledge, even, therefore, to the divine knowledge. Besides all this: knowledge is of things known as beings, or as existents, or as participants in the One; but That is beyond these. And the known stands in relation to knowledge and the knower; so That would have, after all, some coordination and relation to such things.
[7] Indeed even the One runs the risk of being unknowable, if knower and known must be other than each other — even where both are in the same thing. The really One, at any rate, could not know even itself; for the One has no doubleness; there will not be within it a knower and a known. Nor will god, insofar as he stands according to the One alone and is conjoined with the One in its simplicity, be conjoined by way of doubleness; for how could the double be conjoined with the simple? And if it should know the One by the One, the knower will be one and the known will be one, and the nature of the One will admit each; so it will not be conjoined as one thing to another, as knower to known, since it is precisely this — one only; hence not even by way of knowledge. But how this stands with the One — another time.²⁶ By so much the more, then, is what is not even one unknowable. For Plato says well that it is impossible to claim to know while knowing nothing;²⁷ but insofar as the One is the last knowable, we know nothing whatever of what is beyond the One — so that we are merely rhapsodizing when we say these things.
[7] Or rather: these things that we know — in knowing them we know this too about them, that they are unworthy, if it is lawful to say so, of the first hypothesis.²⁸ Just as, not yet knowing the intelligible Forms, we nonetheless dishonor the images of them that form within us — their nature being partless and eternal, while these images become divided in us and change in many ways; and as, still more, though ignorant of the concentration of the Forms and kinds, yet holding its image — which is a concentration of the kinds and forms differentiated within us — we surmise Being to be of that sort: not this, but something better, and the most unified of all. And by now we conceive the One as well, not by concentrating but by unfolding all things into simplicity toward That; and this simplicity forms itself in us relative to all the things in us, falling far short of touching that all-complete simplicity. For the one and the simple in us is least of all what it is called — except that it is a token of that nature. Just so, then, taking up in intellect everything in any way knowable and surmisable, up to and including the One, we judge it right — if one must utter the unutterable and conceive the inconceivable — we judge it right nonetheless to posit that which is incommensurable with all things, uncoordinated, and transcendent in such wise that it does not in truth even possess transcendence. For the transcendent is always transcendent over something, and is not transcendent in every way, since it keeps a relation to that which it transcends, and in general a coordination within some opposition. If, then, the really transcendent is to be laid down, let it be laid down as not even transcendent; for its own name does not hold strictly true of the transcendent — by that very name it is already coordinated as well — so that this too must be denied of it. But the negation, too, is a statement, and the thing negated is a thing; and That is nothing. So it is not even negatable, nor sayable at all, nor knowable in any way whatever; so that it is not even possible to declare the negation of it. The complete self-overturning of our statements and of our thoughts — this is the demonstration, conjured before us, of the things we are saying. And what limit will there be to the discourse, except helpless silence, and the confession that we know nothing of things which it is not lawful — since it is not possible — to bring into knowledge?
[7] Note 2. The optical text of Kopp p. 18 preserved only the page's first line; the bracketed bridge follows the Latin paraphrase Kopp prints in his notes to that page (on privations resting on a positive substrate, with the example of light and shadow, and on the impropriety of the name "that which in no way and nowhere is"), with Aristotle, Metaphysics and De anima cited there for the doctrine of privation. The passage will be restored from the page image in a later revision.
[7] Note 3. The sun "a foot wide": the stock example, from Heraclitus (DK 22 B3), of an appearance-opinion that misses the thing's true magnitude.

## Chapter 8 — Whether Anything Comes from the Ineffable to Things Here · pp. 24–29

[8] But would one not, measuring himself against these arguments, raise this further question? If we say anything about That on the basis of things here — since among these the monad everywhere leads a number proper to itself, for there is one soul and many souls, one intellect and many intellects, one Being and many beings, one henad and many henads1 — then presumably the argument will likewise demand both one ineffable and many ineffables; and the ineffable would have to be fertile — to speak ineffably — so that it will beget a multitude of its own. Or are these and all such puzzles raised in forgetfulness of what was said before? For there is nothing whatever that That has in common with things here; it would not even be a cause of the things we say and think and surmise; so it is neither the one nor the many, neither the fertile nor the productive nor in any way whatever a cause; nor is there any analogy with it, nor any likeness. That — or Those — is not, then, as things here are; or rather one must not even say "That," nor "Those," nor that it is one, nor that it is many. Best of all is to keep still, remaining in the ineffable sanctuary of the soul and not coming forth. But if one must after all give some indication, it is the negations of these things that we must use: that it is neither one nor many, neither fertile nor barren, neither cause nor causeless — negations which, I know not how, are simply overturned without end.
[8] Are we then merely producing the "in no way and nowhere," babbling as we say all this? For everything we have said will fit that as well, and this overturning besets both alike — as the Eleatic philosopher also teaches us.²⁹ Or is the first point not hard to resolve? It has been said before that the one is so called according to the worse, while That is posited according to the better; and the things denied are not denied of each in the same manner: above, the worse are denied of the better — if it is lawful to say so — below, the better of the worse, if it is possible to say so; for of matter too we deny even the one, but in this twofold manner of speaking. This difficulty, then, as I said, dissolves easily; the next is already tougher. If the "in no way and nowhere existent" is a falling-away from Being — the complete falling-away — while the One is beyond Being, and the ineffable more so still, then the in-no-way-existent will be encompassed by the One, which stretches out under it on this side; it will then be one, and even ineffable, since the ineffable, being beyond, reaches also to this side of the One. Or thus: if this so-called in-no-way-existent is a privation of Being, it may well undergo all this, and no wonder; for matter is altogether non-being when it stands viewed according to its one — the one above Being exists here below as well, after Being — and there is nothing absurd in its participating even in the ineffable. But if "in no way and nowhere existent" is meant thus: as posited neither as being nor as one nor as ineffable, neither affirmatively nor negatively, neither by overturning nor by contradiction, nor in any other fashion whatsoever, in no way, nowhere — for it was about such a thing that the Eleatic Stranger discoursed — then this is the falling-out of everything surmisable, in every fashion: the sheer not-anything-at-all.
[8] The ineffable, then, most truly — like a citadel3 — is thrown about the whole of the sayable as its coping, towering over it from above and underlying everything from below as its seat. Or will not even this saying befit That? For with it there is no above and no below, nothing first of it and nothing last — for there is no procession; so it is neither the coping-stone of all things, nor does it contain all things; the sayable is not inside it, nor even the One itself.
[8] Does nothing, then, come from it to things here? For upon all this, that must be the next question. And how could anything fail to come, if all things are from it? For each thing participates in that from which it proceeds — if in nothing else, then in this: that it is what it is, having and breathing from There its own principle, and turning back toward it according to its power. What indeed will prevent That from giving something of itself to what comes from it — for what else stands between? And must not the second always be nearer than the third to the single principle, and the third than the fourth? And if so, it departs less from it; and if so, it remains more within the horizon of that nature; and if so, it is more assimilated to it — hence more fitted to participate in it, hence participating. And how could we ourselves form these surmises about it, in whatever fashion, if there were not in us some faint trace of it, straining, as it were, toward it? Perhaps, then, it must even be said that, being ineffable, it gives to all things an ineffable participation, in virtue of which there is something ineffable in each — just as we agree that some things are by nature more ineffable than others: the One than Being, Being than Life, Life than Intellect, and so on always in the same proportion — or rather in the converse proportion, from matter up to the rational substance: these according to the worse, those according to the better, if it is lawful to say so.
[8] But whoever posits this will make of That, too, a procession, and a certain ineffable order of things proceeded; and we shall carry everything sayable up into the ineffable as well, as being everywhere co-divided with the sayable; and we shall then make three monads and three numbers, no longer two — the substantial, the unitary, and the ineffable — and shall posit, what we earlier forbade, one and many within the ineffable, and a rank of firsts and middles and lasts in it, and further remaining, procession, reversion;³⁰ in short, we shall mix much of the sayable into the ineffable. If instead, as we were saying, neither "That" nor "Those" may be brought to bear on the ineffable — since what we want is that which is above the One and the many — then neither may we posit one term before the many and another term, co-divided, in participation by the many. It is not, then, participated, nor does it impart anything of itself to what comes from it; nor is every god ineffable before he is one, in the way that he is one before he is substance. So perhaps here too the argument, overturning itself, declares That ineffable in every way — conceived in contraries from the side of the things after it. And what wonder, when about the One too we shall raise other perplexities of the same kind — and surely about the perfectly Unified and Being as well? But let these wait for us. Now, about what has been posited first, this must still be asked: what is the ascent toward That, and in what manner is it accomplished, starting from the last things? And let the account hold in common for the other principles too, and for what proceeds from them down to the very last. For as Parmenides, in his search for the One, went forth to everything that in any way depends on the One,³¹ so let us go forward together with him toward what has been posited first — or rather, beginning from things wholly sayable and familiar to perception, we shall ascend to those others, and shall bring the birth-pangs of truth to harbor in the silence that surrounds That. How then, setting out from things evident, should one make this whole ascent from the beginning? We must put forward an axiom, riding upon which we shall cross from here to there as far as our power permits, with what safety there may be.
[8] Note 1. Henads: the divine unities of the school's theology, each god being primarily a "one." Damascius's point is that everywhere among the sayable, a monad heads a series of its own kind — soul, intellect, being, henad — so analogy threatens to demand a series even of "ineffables."
[8] Note 3. A few words at the page-turn (Kopp pp. 26–27) are uncertain in the source's text layer; Kopp's Latin paraphrase gives "like a citadel" (tanquam arx), towering above and underlying all. The coping-stone (θριγκός) resumes the image of Chapter 2.

## Chapter 9 — The Axiom of the Ascent: Neither Body nor Quality nor Their Compound Is the Principle · pp. 29–31

[9] Let it be laid down, then, that the needless is by nature altogether prior to the needy.³² For what needs another is born to serve, of necessity, that which it needs; and if two things need each other, each lacking the other in a different respect, neither would be the principle. For to the principle that really is one, needlessness is most proper: if it needed anything, in that respect it would not be a principle; and the principle must be just this alone — principle. To it, then, the needless belongs, and we must confess that there is nothing whatever before it; whereas it will confess the needy if it has need in any respect at all. And if something needs one of the things before it — that is, a more sovereign principle — it is no wonder if it is still a principle relative to what comes after it, of which at least it has no need; but if it should in any way need even these, it will not preserve the dignity of principle even toward them. So let qualified body be laid down first; for this is the first sayable for us, namely the perceptible.
[9] Is this, then, the first? But these are two things: body, and the qualification, which is in the body as in a substrate. Which nature, then, is prior? The compound of the two is needy of its own parts; but equally, what is in a substrate needs the substrate. Is body itself, then, the principle and the first substance? Impossible. First, the principle could not take on anything from what is after it and from it; but body, we say, has been qualified; so the qualification — the quality — is not from it, belonging to it as it does as something other. Second, body is divisible through and through: each of its parts needs the others, and the whole needs them all; being needy, then, and filled up out of needy parts, it could not be the wholly needless. Further, if it is not one but unified, it needs the one that holds it together, as Plato says.³³ Again, it is something common and quite simply formless, like a kind of matter; it therefore needs ordering and form-giving, so as to be not merely body but such-and-such a body, fiery, say, or earthy — in a word, ordered and qualified. So what accrues to it perfects and arranges it, body being now the second substrate — what they call a second matter.³⁴
[9] Is then that which accrues the principle? That too is impossible: it does not remain upon itself nor subsist alone, but is in a substrate and needs the substrate. And if someone should rank it not as in a substrate but as one of the elements within each thing — as "animal" is in horse and in man — even so each is needy of the other, this substrate and what is in the substrate; or rather the common element, like "animal," and the proper ones, like "rational" and "irrational." For the elements always need one another, and what is made of elements needs its own elements. And in general, this perceptible and vivid thing thus projected before us is neither the body — for body of itself does not move perception — nor the quality — for quality has no extension commensurate with perception, the organ of perception being itself a body. What acts on sight to dilate or contract it is neither the body nor the color, but the colored body, or color embodied: this is what moves sight; and universally, the perceptible of perception is body of a certain kind. From this two things are plain: first, that this "such-and-such" which is laid upon body is incorporeal — for if it were body, it would not yet be perceptible; so the body needs the incorporeal, and the incorporeal in turn the body, since neither is perceptible by itself. Second, that each in turn gains the advantage over the other, and neither pre-exists the other: being elements of the one perceptible, they exist together, the one furnishing extension to the unextended, the other bringing in besides, for the shapeless, the fully formed perceptible variety. And third, upon these: not even the compound of the two is the principle, for neither is it needless: it requires its own elements, and it requires whatever gathers them into the generation of the one perceptible form. For the body will not do the gathering — it is precisely what holds apart — nor will the quality, which does not even subsist without the body in which, or with which, it happens to be. Moreover, a form that is composite either produces itself — which is impossible, for it does not converge upon itself, but its whole is flung apart in many directions — or it is not produced by itself, and there will be another principle before it.

## Chapter 10 — Nature Is Not the Principle · pp. 32–33

[10] Then let there be laid down what we call Nature: a principle of motion and of rest, residing in the very thing that is moved and brought to rest, essentially and not by accident.³⁵ For Nature is something simpler than the composite forms, and crafts them. But if it is in the very things it crafts, and subsists neither apart from them nor before them, but needs them in order to be what it is — let it keep, by all means, its prerogative over them, that it moulds them together and crafts them, as we say — still it is not needless, seeing that it has its being together with them and is inseparable within them: existing when they exist, and not existing when they do not, because it has sunk wholly down into them and cannot recover what is its own. For what nourishes and increases and begets like things — and the one prior to these three, which is Nature — will not be incorporeal in its entirety; it is very nearly a quality of body, differing only by this much, that it furnishes the composite with what seems to move and to rest from within. For the quality of the perceptible contributes the surface appearance that strikes perception; the body contributes extension in every direction; and Nature contributes the natural activity proceeding from within — whether in respect of place alone, or in respect of nourishing and increasing and begetting the like. This latter is already a more considerable nature, such as the nature at work through plants; yet not even it works through itself in such a way as to be able to pull itself up out of the things it administers: it has given the whole of itself over to them, in its very substance. There is indeed also a certain life other than the natural body, plainer than the nature sent down into body and acting from within in its own fashion;³⁶ but this too is inseparable from its substrate, and needy. So Nature could not, without qualification, be a principle, having as it does neediness toward the worse.
[10] For the wonder is not if something that is a principle is needy of the principle above itself, but if it is needy of the things after itself — the very things of which it is supposed to be the principle.

## Chapter 11 — Nor Is the Irrational Soul · pp. 33–34

[11] By the same argument we shall also refute anyone who posits as principle the irrational soul, whether the perceptive or the appetitive. For even if this soul seems to have something more separable about it, in its impulsive and its cognitive activities, nevertheless it too is bound into the body and has something inseparable from it — seeing that it cannot turn back toward itself, but its activity is kneaded together with the substrate; and it is clear that its substance too is of the same sort. For if its substance were absolute and free, resting upon itself, it would have displayed some activity of that same character: not directed always toward the body, but turning at some time toward itself — or, if always toward the body, at least critically, and with examination of itself. Thus the activities of the generality of men, even when they busy and spend themselves upon external things, nonetheless display about those very things something separable,³⁷ in deliberating how to attain them, and in recognizing that there is need of counsel before doing or undergoing any of the apparent goods, or before avoiding any of their contraries. But the impulses of the irrational animals are uniform and self-grown: they move along with the organs, darting only toward the pleasant sensations that come from perceptible things and turning away from the painful ones. If, then, the body shares in the pain and the pleasure and is somehow disposed by them, it is clear that the soul-activities too come forth kneaded together with bodies, and are not purely of the soul but body-like — just as the power that dilates or contracts sight belongs not to the color alone but to the colored body; and just as cutting, Aristotle says, would belong neither to the iron nor yet to the shape, but to the two together, which is the axe, or the chisel, or the sword.³⁸ So too perceiving and desiring belong to the ensouled body, or to the body-like soul — even if in these the soul-element shows through more than the corporeal, as in the former cases the corporeal prevails in extension and subsistence. But insofar as a thing has its being in another, in whatever way, to that extent it is needy of the worse; and such a thing could not be a principle.

## Chapter 12 — Nor the Rational Soul, nor Even the Much-Honored Intellect · pp. 34–37

[12] And surely, prior to this substance, we see a form that is also separate, resting upon itself and turning back into itself — such as the form of the rational subsistence. Our soul, at any rate, presides over its own activities and corrects itself; it could not do this if it did not turn back toward itself, and it could not turn back toward itself if it did not have a separate substance — as Aristotle also holds.³⁹ This soul, then, does not need the worse: is it therefore the most complete principle? Or rather: it does not project all its activities at once, but is always in need of most of them; and the principle wants to have nothing needy about it, while this is a substance deficient in respect of its own activities. But the substance, someone might say, is eternal and needless, holding its essential activities without deficiency and ever running abreast of the substance, in virtue of its self-motion and everlasting life — and on that ground it would be a principle. Yet the soul as a whole is one form and a single nature: is it then to be needless in one respect and needy in another? The principle is needless in every way. So the soul — the soul, that is, which also projects changing activities — would not be the principle; not, at least, the most sovereign one. There must therefore be before it another, unchangeable in every way: in substance, in life, and in knowledge, in all its powers and all its activities — such as we declare the unmoved and eternal to be, the much-honored Intellect itself, to which Aristotle too ascended, and thought that he had found the first principle.⁴⁰ For what could it still lack — that which has gathered into itself, completely, its own plenitudes; in which neither addition nor subtraction ever changes anything of what belongs to it, in any respect, at any time?
[12] Or is this too both one and many, both whole and parts, with firsts in it and middles and lasts? The worse plenitudes need the better, and the better the worse, and the whole its parts; for things correlative to one another need one another, and the firsts need the lasts for the same reason — nothing, indeed, is "first" in its own right. Moreover, the one of the many is itself in need of the many, because it has its being among many: insofar as this one is what gathers the many together, it exists not by itself but with them. Much, then, is the neediness even in this principle. Indeed, even as begetting within itself its own plenitudes, out of which the entire intellect is filled up together, Intellect would be needy of its own self: not only the begotten needing the begetter, but the begetter needing the begotten, toward the entire filling-up of that whole which begets itself. Again, it is thinking and being thought — an intelligible and an intellective, its own and for itself — and the compound of the two is Intellect.⁴¹ The intellective, then, needs the intelligible, as its own proper object of desire; and the intelligible has need of the intellective, because it wills itself to be intelligible; and the compound of both is needy of each — even if the attainment always accompanies the need, as the cosmos accompanies matter. Still, by nature a certain neediness is of the very substance of Intellect — enough, at all events, to keep it from being the most sovereign principle.

## Chapter 13 — The One-Being and the One: the Topmost Trace of Neediness · pp. 37–41

[13] Should we then gather Intellect together into the simplest of beings — that which we call One-Being?⁴² For where nothing whatever is differentiated, where there is no multitude within, no order, no doubleness, no turning back upon itself, what neediness could show itself in the wholly Unified — least of all the neediness of the worse, from which the present argument took its start? This is why the great Parmenides ascended to this as the safest principle, as being the most needless.⁴³ Yet one must by all means keep Plato's point in mind: that the Unified is not the One itself, but that which has undergone the One — that which, evidently, participates in it.⁴⁴ And indeed, even along the present line of argument, the Unified shows itself as holding within itself both the unified element — even if what is being unified lies swallowed down to the last degree by what unifies it, still it stands there as unified — and the One itself. For if Being is of elements, as Plato seems to say in calling it the Mixed,⁴⁵ it needs its own elements. Or suppose the simplicity of the One, slackening, came to a stand at the measure of the one — projecting itself, so to speak, thick and double-handed together with itself,⁴⁶ its elements, I do not say differentiated, but bound by its own one and still as it were confounded, projected just so far that That is no longer one but unified: substance now, instead of henad. In this way one might defend the Mixed with precision, taking care not to make the better out of the worse, but to set the worse with the better, from it and in it. Yet even so, the one in it is needy of the One from which it is, and the compound of the two is altogether needy of each.
[13] And if the conception of being is one thing and that of being-unified another, while the whole is at once unified and being, then these need each other, and the whole — which is called One-Being — needs the two. If the one is the better, it will need being for the subsistence of the one-being; if being is better than the one, as supervening upon it — a form, as it were, for the Mixed and Unified, as the property "man" supervenes upon "at-once-animal-rational-mortal" — then in this way too the one will be needy of being. And if — what it is more correct to say — the one is twofold, the one being the cause of the mixture, which will pre-exist being, the other that which stands upright together with being (about these, if need be, we shall say more hereafter), nevertheless neediness will not completely desert even this nature — though not, I grant, the neediness of the worse, along which the manner of our ascent proceeds.
[13] But over and above all these, would not the One be needless in every way? It does not need what comes after it in order to be — for the really One is by itself, separated from all things; nor anything worse or better within itself — for there is nothing in it beside itself; nor even its own self. For that is one which does not have even a doubleness toward itself: not even the "toward itself" may be said of the really One, for it is simple through and through. This, then, is the most needless of all things; this, then, is the principle of all things, and this the cause, and this the first of absolutely everything at once. But if these three belong to it, it would not be one. Or rather: to the One all things will belong according to the One — these, and whatever else we shall predicate of it: the simplest, the mightiest, the savior of all things,⁴⁷ the Good itself; and "all things," if one says it of it according to the simplicity of the One — that simplicity being all-bearing and, prior even to that, all-substance, and for just this reason all-nourishing. But if these things too are truly said of the One, then even so it would be needy of what comes after it, precisely in respect of these things which we attach to it in whatever way. For the principle both is and is called principle of what is from the principle, and the cause of its effects, and the first of what is ranked after it; the simple, again, is simple by superiority over others, and the mightiest by its power over what it masters, and the good, the desired, the saving, exist for the things that are saved and that desire.
[13] Indeed, if it should be called all things, it will be so called according to the anticipation of all things within it — an anticipation in respect of the One alone; yet for all that, one cause of all things before all things, no other cause than this, and this too according to the One. Insofar, then, as it is one only, in that respect it is most needless; insofar as it is most needless, it is the first principle and the most unswerving root of all principles; but insofar as it is in any way principle, and the first cause of all things, enthroned before all as what all desire — in this respect it presents the appearance of being somehow needy of the very things to which it stands related. It has, then — if it is lawful to say so — even a topmost trace of neediness, just as, conversely, matter has the last echo of the needless, in respect of that in it which is one, faintest of all.⁴⁸
[13] And the argument seems to carry a certain self-overturning. For insofar as it is one, it is needless — if indeed it showed itself as principle precisely in virtue of being most needless and one; and yet, insofar as it is one, it is also principle; and insofar as it is one, needless, while insofar as it is principle, needy — yet not in the same respect: with respect to being what it is, it is needless; as also bringing forth the other things and having anticipated them, needy; and this too is peculiar to the One. So that each of the two holds according to the One; and therefore neither holds in the way that speech divides them when it says "each," but there is one only — and according to this one, both all the rest and the needy itself. For why should not this too be according to the One, like everything else that proceeds from it? Neediness, after all, is one of those things. Something else must therefore be sought, which will in no manner whatsoever have neediness, not in any way at all. And such would be that of which it is not even true to say that it is a principle — not even that very thing which it seemed most august to say, "the most needless"; for this too signifies a superiority, an exemption from the needy. Indeed we did not think fit to call it even the wholly transcendent, but rather the wholly inconceivable and the wholly kept-in-silence. This would most justly be the axiom of conception now sought — of a conception that no longer utters anything, but is content not to utter, and in this way reveres that unmanageable unknowing.⁴⁹

## Chapter 14 — A Second Way of Ascent: Potency before Act, Matter before Form · pp. 41–44

[14] This, then, is one way of ascent to what is called in this manner the first — or rather, to what is beyond everything posited in whatsoever way. But there is also another way, which does not prefer the needless to what is needy of the worse, but ranks what is needy of the better second to the better itself.⁵⁰ Thus what is in potency is everywhere second to what is in act: in order to come into act and not remain idly in potency, it stands in need besides of what is in act; for never does the better sprout up from the worse. Let this too be set down for us as determined in advance, meeting the common conceptions without distortion. Matter, then, has before itself the enmattered form, because all matter is form in potency — whether the first matter, found in respect of complete formlessness, or the second, which stands as qualityless body: the matter to which, plausibly enough, those who inquired after the perceptibles looked first, and which alone seemed to them to be the first substance; for the community of the differing elements persuaded them that there is some qualityless body, graspable by reason.⁵¹ And it is plain that the qualities, by which the differentiae are constituted, rise above the qualityless body itself, which already pre-exists them as a kind of matter. What then — would someone say that accidents are better than substance? There is nothing strange in things that exist together gaining each in turn the advantage over the other, and in the joint fillers-up of the one-out-of-all participating reciprocally in one another.
[14] Next, the qualified is twofold. There is the substantial: fire itself — I mean the very form — and man, and each of the others, insofar as each is a qualified body; and the elements of each, as of fire the heat and the brightness, and of man the mortal and the rational, and the shape, as the upright animal has its uprightness and its articulation; and in each case the plenitudes of each thing's substance, with which, all at once, the whole form qualified the second substrate by form-making quality — "quality" being so called simply with reference to the qualityless body. And there is the adventitious and accidental qualified, which, having its substance in one thing, accrues to another by accident — and in every case it accrues to a body already qualified in its substance; so that this must of necessity be worse than the receiving substance, which is already form-endowed and antecedent. That the qualityless body is qualified first by the substantial quality is plain: when the accidents supervene, the forms severally remain, holding the underlying seat of the body; and it is around them, while they remain, that the change of accidents is observed. Reasonably, then, we rank the qualified before the qualityless body; and on this account it is something already perceptible — this visible cosmos itself. But since, among such bodies, some have their governing principle within and others without, as artifacts do, one must conceive Nature besides, as something better than the qualities, set before them in the rank of cause, as art is set before artifacts. And again, of the things governed from within, some seem merely to be, while others are nourished and grow and beget their like: there is therefore yet another cause before the nature just named — this vegetative power itself. And it is evident that all the things which supervene upon body as upon a pre-existing substrate are incorporeal in themselves, even if they become body-like by participation in that in which they are — as such things are both called and are "material," in virtue of the affection that comes from matter. The qualities, then, and the natures still more, and the vegetative life more eminently yet, preserve the incorporeal in their own right.

## Chapter 15 — The Self-Moved Animal and the Twofold Soul: Does the Irrational Soul Move Itself? · pp. 44–46

[15] But since perception exhibits yet another, plainer life — that of the things that move now by impulse and from place to place — this must be ranked before the former, as a more sovereign principle and as supplier of a better form, the self-moved animal taking natural precedence over the plant rooted in the earth. And yet the animal is not strictly self-moved: it is not such whole through whole; rather, one part of it moves and another part is moved. This, then, is an apparent self-mover; so there must be before it the truly self-moved, which as a whole moves and is moved, in order that the apparent may be its image. And indeed the soul that moves the body must be posited as the more sovereign self-moved substance. This soul is twofold, the one rational, the other irrational. That perception vouches for the rational one too is evident — or does not each man have a co-awareness of himself, more plainly or more dimly, as turning back toward himself in his self-concernments and self-searchings and in his vital and cognitive attendings upon himself? The substance capable of these things, gathering the universals too by reasoning, would justly be called rational. But the irrational soul as well, even if it does not appear to traverse these things and reason them out with itself, nevertheless moves bodies from place to place, being itself moved first in its own right; for at different times it projects different impulses. Does it then move itself from one impulse to another, or is it moved by something else — say, as some assert, by the whole rational soul in the cosmos? But this at least is absurd to maintain: that the activities of each irrational soul belong not to that soul but to the diviner one — activities unbounded and indeterminate as they are, and mingled with much that is ugly and imperfect. To say the irrational activities belong to the rational soul is the same as positing that very substance as irrational — the substance that projects the irrational activities — not to say the whole soul itself.⁵²
[15] It is absurd, moreover, to posit a substance that is not generative of its own activities. For if there is some irrational substance, it would have activities proper to itself, not supplied from elsewhere but proceeding from it. The irrational soul also, then, moves itself toward its now one, now another desire and impulse. But if it moves itself, it turns back toward itself; and since that is so, the irrational soul is separable and not in a substrate; it is therefore rational — if indeed it looks into itself; for it will see itself if it turns back toward itself. Yet in fact, stretched toward externals, it looks to externals — rather, to some colored body; itself it does not see, seeing that vision, at any rate, is neither a body nor colored. It does not, then, turn back toward itself; it sees nothing of itself, the irrational soul.⁵³ For neither does imagination project an image of itself, but of the perceptible — of a colored body, say; nor does irrational appetite desire itself, but some object of desire — honor, say, or retaliation, or pleasure, or possessions. It does not, then, move itself. But perhaps it moves thus: not as moving itself, but as moving externals from itself, without taking hold of itself — and in this sense it is self-moved, in that the motion is from itself; it is not, however, moved by itself. For this is how the circle of the great Syrianus think one should hear the term "self-moved" in its looser use in the Laws and in the Timaeus;⁵⁴ for this, says the Timaeus, is why plants do not move, because they have no share in the self-moved soul, as the beasts do share in it, moving from place to place. But none the less it remains necessary that everything moved be moved either by itself or by another; and the latter in two ways — either by the better, as we say of the individual and genuinely irrational activities, or by anything whatever; for it is certainly not moved by that in which it is, this being a body, and a body which, on the contrary, is moved by it.

## Chapter 16 — The Solution: Apparent Self-Motion Belongs to the Composite · pp. 46–48

[16] Perhaps, then, the activities are moved by the substance, and the irrational soul is self-moved in this sense, as being generative of its own activities? But, first, this will be common to every substance, including the one called other-moved; for fire too is self-moved in this way, as a substance generative of its own individual activities, and the clod likewise, and the adze, and anything whatever that is capable of acting; for the proper activity always proceeds from the substance. This, then, so stated, would carry no weight. But perhaps, since a form of this kind is presupposed to be in a substrate, it must not be taken by itself as the agent, but together with the substrate in which it is; for as it is, so also it acts. Just as, then, what dilates sight is neither the whiteness nor the qualityless body, but the two together, so also the perceptive activity belongs neither to the incorporeal perception nor to the sense-organ, which is a body, but to what is made of both, as to one composite substance — like the substance compounded of matter and form. For the sense-organ is not the instrument of perception but its substrate: perception is in it, not using it. If it used it, it would have moved itself before the organ, in order to move the organ as well; but as it is, it subsists together with the substrate, and has no separate activity at all.⁵⁵ Let the compound, then, be the agent — yet let the activity proceed according to the form, as the chisel's proceeds according to its shape, and as the white body's power of dilating sight proceeds according to the whiteness. What, then, in the composite is the mover, and what the moved? Does the soul move, and the body get moved? But on those terms, once again, the soul will move on its own and the body will be moved on its own; and there will be a mover prior to the moved, possessing a separate moving activity prior to the activity moved. We must not, then, posit here a mover and there a moved, but the animal as one thing — body become perceptive, or perception embodied — and it is this that performs the activity which seems self-moved.
[16] For if the composite animal has a substance of its own, it assuredly has also a composite activity, befitting the animal as a whole — itself a kind of whole, in which something incorporeal is discerned and something body-like, blended together at once, just as in the dilating of sight the two-together is present. That is why we are affected by the white body in both ways at once: corporeally, in that the sense-organ is dilated; incorporeally, in that we apprehend the affection, taking cognizance, as it were, of it. As the agent is composite, so also the patient: sight itself is a composite, of an incorporeal optical power and an underlying body. Such, then, is the kind of self-motion we must posit as residing in the optical power, and, to speak generally, in perception: of itself it does not act — for of itself it does not even subsist — but, coming to be in the body and qualifying it, in virtue of a certain more considerable quality and illumination, it completes the whole apparent self-mover. And why "apparent"? Because it is not a partless same that moves and is moved; rather, the case is like substances separated from one another yet coming together in another manner — as the rational soul and the animal, or the shell-like body and the pneumatic, or this and the luminous;⁵⁶ for in these interweavings too the one moves and the other is moved, precisely because the one is not a substrate with the other in the substrate. But when the composite form stands as we have described, neither does each act on its own — for neither even subsists on its own — nor, within the composition, is the one the mover and the other the moved; for then they will stand apart again in their activities, and so in their subsistences as well.

## Chapter 17 — By Which and According to Which: the Two Senses of Motion · pp. 48–49

[17] But this is another mode of self-motion, in which the compound is moved according to the one element — the form — whence this also seems to be the mover: not that the other element is moved by it, but that the compound is moved according to it; or else by something else. And if the latter, then either by the better or by the worse, and the same arguments will return; while if by itself, the same thing will be mover and moved — which befits only the partless and incomposite. Or rather: just as the self-mover here is not genuine, so neither is it true that the same thing is moved by itself and moves itself; it is apparent, because that according to which it moves the composite is one and simple, and this, as moving, is one. There is, however, both a "whereby it is moved" and a "whereby it moves": the whole form is the two-together, in which lies the "whereby it is moved"; and it is two-together in respect of each, because of the reciprocal interchange of the quasi-elements of the whole form — so that the whole both moves and is moved, yet not so as to move and be moved, itself, according to the whole: it moves according to the soul and is moved according to the body, and yet by neither soul nor body. And what distinguishes the "by which" from the "according to which" would readily be plain. For motion is twofold: the one comes to be within the moved, becoming an affection of it; the other is outside it, and imparts the former. The thing is moved, then, by the latter, but according to the former. For if it were moved by the former as well, this too would impart some motion from itself to what is moved by it; that motion, in turn, will be the affection — the one according to which the moved is moved — and we shall go on to infinity.⁵⁷

## Chapter 18 — Life Twofold; the Scale of Separability · pp. 49–51

[18] The same account proves true when examined in the case of life as well: the one life makes alive, imparting life to what is vivified by it; the other is that according to which the thing vivified by the former lives. For if this latter also made alive, it too would give a further life — and so to infinity.⁵⁸ Just so, then, with the form of self-motion: the one is that by which the apparent self-mover is made self-moving; the other, that according to which it seems to be such — an affection of self-motion, inseparable from the participant. For the self-moved nature too is a life of this sort, being soul; and soul is twofold: the one begetting, the other that according to which the ensouled is given its being — which is also why the ensouled seems to be moved from within, out of itself, although what is present within it is not the "by which" it is moved, but the "according to which," which we call ensoulment. Perhaps, however, someone who has granted all this will suppose these features to be common also to plants and to soulless things; for the clod too is moved toward the earth from within, and plants likewise — the vegetative soul being in them, according to which they are nourished and grow and beget their like; and further, the irrational animals are in the same case, and the rational animals in the same — so that there will be nothing that is not self-moved. To him we shall reply that every natural and vegetative form, and every animal besides, is indeed moved from within — but not with every motion: only when it makes its motion in place; for this is the conspicuously self-moved motion, and it is by reference to this that we call the rest other-moved — all that is not moved from within with this motion. Indeed, if we discriminated the self-moved by that strict criterion by which the rational soul is self-moved, not even the irrational animals will appear self-moved; for they are not of a nature to turn back into themselves:
[18] vision does not see itself, nor does imagination imagine that it is imagining; and spirit and appetite have, for their matter and for their every activity, an object of desire that lies outside. This is why we said that a self-mover of this kind acts from within upon the outside — not in a circle back upon itself, but, quite simply, along a straight line; for that was the form of this life, inseparable as it is from the straight-stretched body that underlies it. As fire moves upward and earth downward according to the nature present in them, and as plants are nourished and grow and beget their like according to the vegetative soul present in them, so the beasts too act according to the appetitive life present in their natural and vegetative body and consubstantiated with the form of the animal: it is according to this that they perform their — quite simply irrational — self-motion.
[18] And if someone, observing that the beasts are reason-like and emit reason-like activities, supposes that they too participate in what is primarily self-moved, and therefore have a soul that turns back toward itself, perhaps we might indulge him even in making them rational — except that it is not by existence but by participation, and that of the faintest; just as one might call the rational soul itself intellectual by participation, inasmuch as it ever projects the common conceptions without distortion. In any case we shall take "the separable" as admitting of breadth, and shall say that here the one predominates and there the other. The extremes are the wholly separable, such as the rational form, and the wholly inseparable, such as quality. In between lie nature, next to the inseparable, having a small reflection of the separable; and the irrational soul, next to the separable — for it seems somehow to subsist even by itself, apart from the substrate, whence it is even disputable whether it is self-moved or other-moved: large indeed is the trace of self-motion in it, but not the genuine thing, which turns back into itself and for that very reason is altogether separated from the substrate. The vegetative soul stands somehow in the middle — which is why to some it seems to be a soul, to others a nature.⁵⁹ But these matters must be examined more fully elsewhere; for the present let so much be said.

## Chapter 19 — The Mover before the Moved: the Unmoved before the Self-Moved · pp. 51–52

[19] We must pass back, then, to what lay before us. The self-mover of this kind, which is kneaded together with the other-moved — how could it be first? It neither gives itself subsistence nor perfects itself in truth, but needs, for each of these, something else; and there is before it the genuinely self-moved.⁶⁰ Such a thing perception — or rather the evidence of the appearances — gives us in the human; and clearly every rational form is such: from this let us now take our start, for our present task is to grasp the properties of things in the broader strokes. Is then the strictly self-moved the principle, in need of no better form? Or is the mover by nature always prior to the moved — and, quite generally, does not every form that is pure of its opposite subsist by itself before what is mixed with that opposite, the pure being cause of the mixed? For what is consubstantiated with another has its activity, too, kneaded together with that other's; so that what is so conditioned will make itself self-moved, at once moving and moved; but mover only it could not make itself, for neither is it "only." Yet every form must also be capable of being alone; hence there must be also the mover that is not moved. Indeed, it is absurd that the moved-only should exist — body, for instance — and yet that the mover-only should not exist before the compound of the two; for it is plain that the advantage must lie on the side of the better, since even within the self-moved, that respect in which it moves is better than that in which it is moved. First, then, must come the unmoved mover; third, the moved that does not move; and between them the self-moved — which, we shall say, needs the mover in order that the mover make it motive; though let what is motive-of-itself have that from itself, if one insists. In general: if it is moved, it does not remain, to just the extent that it is moved; and if it moves, it must move while remaining, insofar as it moves. Whence, then, will it have its remaining? From itself it has either being-moved only, or remaining-and-being-moved at once, as one same whole; but the remaining taken simply — whence? From what remains simply; and that was the unmoved cause. Before the self-moved, then, we must posit the unmoved.

## Chapter 20 — The Unmoved as Intellect; before the Form-like, the Unified · pp. 52–53

[20] Let us consider, then, whether the unmoved is the most sovereign principle, and how this can be. The unmoved is, unmovedly, just as many things as the self-moved is self-movedly. For nothing self-moved can be first, for the reasons given; but each of the elements in the self-moved is a self-moved something; before each of them, therefore, pre-exists the corresponding unmoved each. To say plainly what I mean, passing over the rest, I shall make the argument bear on three. In the self-moved soul at least three things are seen — the substantial, the vital, the cognitive — and each of these is evidently self-moved; for as the whole is self-moved as a whole, so before each there is, by the same reasonings, the unmoved each. The unmoved, then, is also a plenitude of these three forms — and that neither of forms torn apart (for even in the self-moved they are unified with one another), nor of forms so wholly fused that nothing in them is differentiated; for on those terms each would stand as each only in the self-moved, and not also as unmoved — yet each must be unmoved too, each on its own, precisely because the self-moved each was not first.⁶¹ And besides: the unmoved differentiation must of necessity exist before the self-moved one. The unmoved, then, is at once one and many, at once unified and differentiated — the very thing we have named Intellect. And it is plain that the unified in it is by nature prior to the differentiated, and more honorable; for differentiation is always in need of union, but not, conversely, union of differentiation. Now Intellect does not possess the unified pure of its opposite; for the whole intellectual form is consubstantiated throughout with the differentiated. The somehow-unified, then, needs the simply Unified, and the with-another needs the by-itself, and the by-participation the by-existence. And indeed Intellect, being self-subsistent, produces itself as at once unified and differentiated — according to the compound, therefore; therefore, in respect of the unified taken simply, it will be produced from what is simply, and only, Unified. Before the form-like, then, is the uncircumscribed, undifferentiated into forms — what we call the Unified, which the wise have called Being: that which holds the many in one concentration pre-existing the many.⁶²

## Chapter 21 — Is Being the Principle? The One before Being · pp. 53–54

[21] Here, then, let us halt, take breath, and reckon up whether Being is the sought-for principle of all things.⁶³ What indeed could be without share in Being, seeing that whatever in any way "is" is something lesser than Being itself? Or rather: if Being is this Unified, it would be second to the One, since it has become unified by participating in it. And in general, we conceive the one as one thing and being as another. If Being were prior to the One, it will not participate in the One: there will then be many only — and these infinitely infinite. And if the One is together with Being, and Being with the One, and they are of the same rank, then either they stand apart from each other — and there will be two principles, and the absurdity just named will follow — or they will participate reciprocally in each other, and the two will be elements, or parts, of a third made of both. And what, then, is it that gathered them to each other? If it is the One that unified Being to itself, as being one (for one might say this too), then the One will be active before Being, in order to summon Being and turn it toward itself: the One, therefore, subsists self-complete, upon itself, before Being. Further, the simpler is always before the more composite. If, then, they are alike simple, the principles are two; or out of the two comes one — and that one will be composite; before it, therefore, is the simple and wholly incomposite, which is either one or not one; and if not one, either many or nothing. But "nothing," if it signifies the wholly empty, would point to something idle; and if it signifies the ineffable, that is not even simple. And if many, then not simple; for the simple means to be without multiplicity, by the very privation of the many. In sum, it is impossible to conceive a principle simpler than the One: in every way, then, the One is before Being. But to be quit of these arguments too, let us simply take hold of the reasoning of the ascent itself: having ascended to the Unified — whatever it is to be called, but unified through and through — from this we ascend to the One: from the participant to the participated.

## Chapter 22 — The One in Plato's Negations; the Way through the Properties Completed · pp. 54–55

[22] That, then, is the principle of all things; and Plato, having run up to it, needed no further principle in his discourses. For that ineffable other is not a principle of discourses, nor of knowledges, nor indeed of lives nor of beings nor of henads, but of all things simply, ranked above every device of thought. Hence he displayed nothing about That, but made his negations from the One — negations of everything else except the One itself. Being he denied of it last of all, but not the one; he denied of it even the negation itself, but not the one; he denied the name and the thought and all knowledge — and what more could one mention? — Being itself, whole and entire; and, let it be granted, the Unified too and the unitary; and, if you like, the unlimited and limit, the two principles: but in no way what is beyond all these. The one he nowhere denied, in any fashion.⁶⁴ This is why in the Sophist he posits it as one before Being, and in the Republic as the Good beyond all substance.⁶⁵ So there remains, for all that, only "one"; and this is either knowable and sayable, or unknowable and unsayable, or in one way the former and in one way not: for through negations one might say something about it, while by affirmation it is unsayable; and again, by the simplicity of our knowledge it would be knowable, or surmisable, while by knowledge's compositeness it is wholly unknowable — and hence not even to be captured by negation. And in general: insofar as it is posited as one, to that extent it is somehow coordinated with the things posited in other ways; for it is the summit of the things that subsist by positing. Yet there is much in it, even so, of the unsayable and unknowable and uncoordinated and unpositable — but together with the appearance of their contraries; and the former are better than these. Everywhere, however, the things pure of their contraries pre-exist, unmixed, before the mixed. Either, then, the better terms are in the One by existence — and then how shall the contraries also be there together with them? — or by participation; and then they come from elsewhere, from what is primarily of that character. Before the One, therefore, is what is simply and wholly unsayable, unpositable, uncoordinated, inconceivable in every manner: the very thing toward which this ascent of the argument through the most evident things was hastening, leaving aside none of the intermediates, from those first things down to the last of all. Thus far, then, we have proceeded by the way through the properties; but the greatness and all-perfection and all-comprehensiveness of the first principles — the Unified, the One, the Ineffable — we have not yet displayed.⁶⁶

## Chapter 23 — The Method through the All-Perfect: the Cosmos and Its Unmoved Cause · pp. 56–58

[23] We must go on, as far as we are able, to this method also. Let us lay hold, then, of the First in its all-perfection — the very thing which the gods themselves have stretched out even to perception, as an indication of the invisible and intelligible and unitary and ineffable all-perfection.⁶⁷ This cosmos, then, is perfect, made of perfect parts, as we see; and what we see of it is the perceptible. But it is clear that the things in us pre-subsist in it as well; for it surely does not possess the worse of the things in us — the body-like, and whatever underlies the body-like, this latter not being from itself but having its being in a substrate — while lacking the better, and that though it is the more perfect. It will have, then, a nature befitting it: not the nature that moves things downward and upward, but the one that wheels them in a circle; for that is its motion according to nature. It will have, then, also the life better than this, the vegetative — not, to be sure, the life that nourishes or feeds or begets like things which come to be and perish in a kind of inflow and outflow (unless these too belong to it in another manner, which there is no need to wheel into the argument here), but the life that holds it together and keeps it active as the same in form and in number: the connate filling and growth — not the growth that is still growing, but that which has already wholly grown — and, further, the generation of its own illuminations — the generation that has already begotten them — the cosmos doing and holding together these things, in their analogous mode, there above.⁶⁸
[23] Shall we not grant it also the irrational soul — not the perceptive only, as they say, but also the soul that masters the perceptibles within, ever ranked in a celestial and god-befitting imagination; and the appetitive as well, which is there in another manner, both spirited and desiderative: the desiderative faring well amid the divine ease and the ever-gladsome condition of the animal, the spirited rejoicing in the perfect and august pre-eminence, according to nature, that belongs to the cosmic animal? But surely, if the human is a rational animal, dependent upon a reasoning soul, then assuredly the cosmos too is of this kind; it possesses, then, in far greater measure, the presiding cause that is genuinely self-moved. It makes its circular motion, accordingly, not only by nature but also by choice; and clearly a motion ever ordered, and never missing its proper end; for this is what the star-watching record of the cosmic circuit dictates.⁶⁹ Now the self-moved soul, by its own proper changes, makes the again-the-same-and-again of the circulation, its activity coming to be now one and now another. But the selfsame, always, in the same and about the same and toward the same — utterly unvarying in the varying, unchanged in the changing, standing in the moving — what is it that furnishes this to the All? For the self-moved soul makes changing activities: in moving, it is at once moved. The unmoved, then — whence has the cosmos that? If it is everlasting, it has the wholly and always unmoved; and if it is but the longest-lived of animals — let even this be granted for the present, taken from the record4 — yet, remaining through all this time, ever in the same manner unvarying according to the same, circling back from the same to the same with one order and one circulatory manner, in so vast a stretch of time it has endured no change and no variation — unless it were conjoined with some cause that is itself altogether unmoved. It needed, then, that in the All too the self-moved depend from the unmoved, which furnishes to the cosmos its own proper order and its unmoved life.
[23] Note 4. The clause is corrupt in both manuscripts (Kopp despairs of it); the drift, secured by his Latin, is: even granting only an immensely long-lived cosmos, observation shows an unvarying circulation that no self-moved cause alone could supply.

## Chapter 24 — From the World-Soul to the Hidden Cosmos: the All-Great One and the Ineffable Comprehension · pp. 58–59

[24] And if the soul of the All, being first among the encosmic things, is ever perfect and ever happy, this assuredly it could not have had from itself; for what it gives subsistence to from itself is the changing; rather, it has come to participate in the unmoved cause that presides over it. For if it possessed the ever-ordered and measured1 in virtue of its self-motion, then perhaps the human soul too would be ever perfect; for it too is self-moved — and, no doubt, deathless and ever-moving; yet it does not keep its transitive activities forever unvarying, because it stands far removed from the unmoved. And if it has been shown in general that before the self-moved is the unmoved, then before the cosmic self-moved there must preside the cosmic unmoved, proper to the unchanging administration that presides over the cosmos — just as each divine animal has its own, ranked together with its peculiarity. But — not to dwell now upon these things, which carry many grounds of suspicion — before the whole self-moved we shall set the whole unmoved; for it cannot be that the lower is complete-and-whole while the higher is partial. There will be, then, an unmoved cosmos before the self-moved; and by the same argument, before the differentiated, the concentrated and unified cosmos — being all things by way of union that the multiplied cosmos is by way of differentiation, including the one just now described as self-moved; and more still than can be said.
[24] And from this hidden ordering the discourse has ascended to the One itself.⁷⁰ Do not suppose it some least one, nor some single property — as it were one form, or one intellect, or one god, or many gods, or even all the gods together and no more — but some all-great One: the simply One itself, comprehensive of all the things that come from itself; or rather, being all those things, and being the One itself before all things — the One of the world that is called hidden. This is a more ineffable cosmos — one that no longer endures even to be called a cosmos, but is all-things-one, undifferentiated; nor even, in strict truth, "all things," but the One before all things, containing all things in its own all-perfect simplicity. And the One being of such greatness, the Ineffable too must be surmised after the same manner: as being at once one ineffable comprehension of all things — and so ineffable that it is neither one, nor a comprehension, nor is, nor is even ineffable. And here let the rashness of our discourse find its limit, begging pardon of the gods for this venturesome eagerness.⁷¹
[24] Note 1. Reading "measured" (ἔμμετρον) with the Munich manuscript, which Kopp prefers, for the printed "ensouled."

## Chapter 25 — Whether the One Is Knowable: the Arguments for Knowledge · pp. 59–64

[25] Again, then, from another beginning, we must inquire concerning the One. And first: is the One to be ranked after the wholly ineffable, in the way that, with other intervals, something intermediate must be posited between the ineffable and the sayable? Or is "the ineffable" in a certain manner negative?⁷² I say "in a certain manner," not because it is somehow affirmative or positive, but because it is neither negation nor position — neither the name nor the thing — but a complete removal, not being anything at all; for it is nothing of the things that are — nay, it is not even itself, in any way whatever. If, then, we define the ineffable name so — as not even a name — then everything that is "before the One" would be of this nature; for beyond the One we can surmise nothing. And if the One is the first surmisable, in whatever fashion, why do we seek anything more before it — there where there is neither the "more" nor the "one"? Concerning That, then, let us be released from the meddlesome perplexity and helplessness; and let us inquire once more about the One itself: whether it is simply sayable, or whether what we seek is something between the unsayable and the sayable. Much, indeed, has of necessity been said already about the nature of the One, on account of the principle beyond even this; for holding fast to the One, we kept trying to speak about That which cannot be held. But now let the leading account of the One itself be given; and this must be asked before all: whether it is in some way knowable, or wholly unknowable.⁷³
[25] Well then: if we too are able to analyze to the very last, up to the simplest of all and the most comprehensive of all — which can only be posited as the One — then assuredly we do in some way cognize this very thing; and in still greater measure the better knowledge attains it. Second: if in conceiving the One we conceive one thing, and in conceiving the many something else opposed to it, then we have a conception of the One; and if we conceive this form-like one, then also the uncircumscribed one before the forms — the one that is one in every way, in respect of what is in every way simplest. And besides these: since each thing whatever is also some one — and to be one and to be form are not the same thing, just as neither are to be being and to be one — then, gathering each set together: as forms, we gather them into the one uncircumscribed substance of Intellect; as beings, into the one undifferentiated union of Being; and as ones, into the one incomposite unity of the One. For as, in gathering infinite points, you make one point, so, in concentrating infinite ones together, you make one — the most comprehensive one of all.
[25] Further: everything whatever that is proposed to conception must either be many alone, with no share of the one — but in that way it will not even stand still, being infinitized, and in that way we shall conceive nothing whatever of it — or be many participating in the one; and then, together with the cognizing of the many, the one too will somehow be known — the very thing that halted the outpouring of the many toward the infinite; or else the one itself, remaining one, is proposed by itself, separated from the conception of the many so far as may be; for even if it is not easy to stand altogether away from multitude, still we are led up rather toward the One, and we purify our conception, for all that, in its direction.
[25] Again: knowing comes about either by direct intuition, or by syllogism — which is either a certain soft and dim knowledge, seeing as it were from afar, yet leaning upon the necessity of consecution, or a kind of bastard reasoning, which does not even have the support from afar, but conceives some things from others — the reasoning by which we are accustomed to cognize matter, and privation, and in general non-being.⁷⁴ If, then, this too is some mode of knowledge, perhaps it is in this way that we know even the One beyond all things — as Plato hands down, at one time leading us up by analogy to what is exempt from substance, at another stripping that nature bare by the negations: the nature which, at the end, he says does not even "be," but is only one, without share of being; for from it comes being; and since the name and the definition and opinion and knowledge are of being, he takes these away as well. And if intellection is of the intelligible, and the intelligible is of being, this too must be removed, as being composite and not fitting what is simplest. But if there is a unitary knowledge, such as is the knowledge of the gods, standing according to the one and above the unified, this will touch the One by direct intuition; whereas the coarser knowledge, such as ours, will barely apprehend the One by bastard reasoning. Yet someday we also shall cast our intuition upon it — when, as he says, we incline the radiance of the soul, putting forth the flower of our unitary knowledge.⁷⁵ And that Plato posits it as knowable he showed plainly, calling it the greatest study; and in the Sophist, indeed, declaring it to be before Being, he rested the demonstration upon the conception of the one alone.⁷⁶
[25] Apart from these things: if there is a unitary knowledge — as the divine possessions make plain6 — then, just as the divided knowledge of the many beings is gathered into the one conception of the one being, so also the knowledge of the many unitary knowables; for clearly to the unitary knowledge we shall oppose a unitary knowable. For surely the participated god will not know the other things and be ignorant of himself; nor will he know himself only according to being, and not also according to the one — above all with the unitary knowledge in which he rejoices, the unitary intellection which he himself possesses; for as Intellect possesses it by dependence, so also does the very one that rules before it. He will know himself, then; and he himself is the one; he will know, therefore, the one as well. And to speak generally: as the intellective is twofold, so we say the intelligible too is twofold — the one unified, the other unitary; the one substantial, that other supersubstantial; and we call "intelligible" what is knowable by intellection. There is, then, a unitary knowable also; and the knowable is some one; many, then, are the unitary knowables — including those I was just now going through. So let the division of these many knowledges be gathered up into one whole-complete knowledge of the whole-complete One — which is the simple concentration of the many henads.
[25] We say further: if some one is knowable, does the nature of the One refuse knowledge altogether? As the simple form is knowable, because this particular form is too, and the simple being, because this being is, so also the simple one would be knowable, because this one is; for what is everywhere of a kind is such precisely as such: a certain form, but as form; a certain being, but as being; a certain one, then, but as one. And if the concentration overleaps us — dragged down as we are by the Titanic war — what wonder?⁷⁷ For we do not know in that mode, as Plato himself says in the Letters;⁷⁸ and yet, for all that, we seem to determine many things about those matters too, touching them somehow not immediately, but as through certain transparent bodies — the forms awakened within us.
[25] Further still: the knowable too must begin from the One — and so the philosophers say; for all things, they say, begin from the gods; and this will be shown by us in what follows, when we come to it. So the first knowable is among gods, since the first knower is also; and where the one correlative is, there by nature is the other; for these are relatives. If, then, the first knower is one, the first one must be knowable — since among beings the first knowable is precisely the first intelligible and being itself. But above all: the One taken simply is all things; for it is not some one thing, but all things one, as Linus said, and Pythagoras;⁷⁹ so that it is knowable as well; for the knowable is some one of all things; in the One, then, this too is pre-contained. From these arguments and the like, one might suppose that the very One before all things is knowable.
[25] Note 6. οἱ ἐνθουσιασμοί: states of divine possession, taken as empirical evidence that a unitary, non-discursive mode of knowing exists.

## Chapter 26 — The Counter-Arguments: the One beyond Knowledge · pp. 64–66

[26] But again one might raise perplexities, looking back at those arguments — and first against what was mentioned last.⁸⁰ If the One is all things, why is it knowable rather than unknowable? For the unknowable too is there first; this also is some one of the things that come after the One — the very thing that is counter-divided against the knowable, and is one of the many. And what is beyond even the One is neither knowable nor unknowable. The One, then, is unknowable — at least by an argument of this kind. And on other grounds: if it sprang up first from the unsayable, clearly it stands least of all apart from it, and is still overshadowed by that one's unknowability.⁸¹ Besides this: if all things are in it according to the One, nothing in it is differentiated; so it is neither knowable nor unknowable, but only one — and all things one. Further: if it is knowable because it is all things, it will also be knowing; for this too is one of all things. And yet what would it know? Not what is before it; for that is in no way knowable. Not itself; for it would then have a doubleness, turning back upon itself, and would no longer be one; and it would be active — it, the thing before all activity and power; for these are seen in some differentiation from substance, whereas it is above all differentiation, and is just this: one only. Nor will it know the things after itself; for then it will be active, and its activity will be directed toward the worse — and that, an activity which is the first of all activities. And consider: even among the things that come after, the first knowledge is that of the better, the second that of oneself, and the third that of what comes after oneself.
[26] Apart from these things: even if the "what-is-one" is knowable, and the "one-something," still not, on that account, the simply one. Let the unitary be known as intellective, if you like, or as vital, or as the supersubstantial one that shines down upon being; but the simply One is beyond even these; so that both the arguments from the concentrations and those from the analogy of being carry us only to this one — the one seated above being. For as the one-being among beings is the first intelligible, so the One among the supersubstantials is the first supersubstantial; what is beyond, therefore, would be unknowable.⁸² And as for the bastard reasoning — the one through negations, and the one through analogy, and further the syllogism that compels by consecution, which does not know that it knows all these things4 — perhaps it belongs to a reasoning that treads on emptiness, knowing some things from others; and in general, if it does not know the simple, it would not know the whole premise, and so not the whole syllogism either. The analogy, moreover, could be framed even about things that in no way are: as the sun is to the seen and the seeing, so this one to the knowing and the known — but the sun we know; the one we do not know; and the negation removes what we know, while what it leaves behind, we do not know. And Plato, too, does not think the One knowable without remainder: first, in the Parmenides he says "therefore it is not even known," removing knowledge universally; and in the Republic, though he seems to make it familiar, he says nonetheless that the knower and the known stand in need of the light, in order that the apprehending power be flooded by the light, the knowable becoming, as it were, more distinct — for the knowable also looks toward the knower, awakening it, as it were, to its proper activity. If, then, the One is knowable, it must be flooded by the light; and yet how could the One be flooded by its own light? For the light of truth, among those beings, flows off from the One itself.⁸³
[26] But perhaps our conception of the One, in apprehending what is determined over against the others, apprehends it together with them — which is why it co-manifests the apprehension of the many; so that even if we perform the gathering, we are still riding upon the same conception, the one opposed to the many. But the conception of the One ought to be without opposite, and one, and complete; even the concentration falls short of the unitary. And "all things according to the one" belongs to a one of that derivative kind — since Being, too, is all things according to the unified; and the simplest in that mode is what stands proximately before the many; for the simple means to be free of multitude. But That is beyond the many henads themselves, since differentiation comes only after it; for as, among unified things, the simplest is the wholly unified and undifferentiated, so, among the ones, the simplest is the supersubstantial unified — a "unitary unified," if one must speak so; while what is called the simply One is above even this unfolding; so that even the last term of that unfolding would be the one which indeed we call unitary.⁸⁴
[26] Note 4. I.e. discursive inference holds its conclusions without the direct acquaintance that would make them knowledge; the text is compressed. κενεμβατεῖν, "to tread on emptiness," repeats the treatise's signature word for thought stepping where there is no footing (cf. Chapters 5 and 7).

## Chapter 27 — Neither Procession nor Reversion: Union beyond Knowledge · pp. 66–69

[27] It must be examined, too, whether even the Unified is, as yet, knowable; for the knowable is gathered up in it and, as it were, confounded undifferentiatedly with the rest, so that all is one together — a single concentration of all things — and the knowable is not yet some one thing showing itself by itself. Such, then, are the perplexities one might raise against what was said. But apart from these, considering the problem itself by itself, we ask whether the One, at least, can simply be familiar to knowledge. If, then, the One is itself only the one, and nothing else of all things — neither by participation, since nothing is before it; nor by existence, since it is one; nor by cause, since it does not even have in itself a cause of anything that comes from it, for nothing is there beside the one — how shall we say that it is both one and knowable? For neither is it itself both knowable and one — these are not the same — nor, if the knowable is something other, is it still one. And again: if it is knowable, it is so either by participation — and then the knowable-by-existence will be before it; or by cause — and then it is not yet knowable, but the knowable comes after it and from another; or by existence — and then That is not by existence [one only]; rather, the compound will be the one knowable, so that it is one by participation — if indeed the by-existence resides in the compound.
[27] Further: if that One is all things and the all, as both Linus and Pythagoras said, while to be all things is not to be some "what" — and to be knowable is to be some what — then the consequence is plain: what is all things is not knowable. Further: the knowable is the desired of the knower; knowledge, then, is a reversion of the knower upon the knowable; and every reversion is a conjoining; and the effect conjoins with its cause either by knowledge, or by life, or by being itself. Before the cognitive reversion, then, is the vital; and before this, the substantial; and before the ones thus divided is the simple reversion-and-conjoining — either identical with simple knowledge or, what is truer, the union even before this; since the one is prior to intellect and to life and to substance, and prior, I say, to each of their unitary counterparts. Union, then, is beyond knowledge. What reverts to the One, therefore, is borne toward it neither as a knower nor as toward a knowable, but as one to one — through union, not through knowledge; for each thing must revert to the first through the first reversion, and knowledge is not first, but at the least third; whereas this union is the common root of the three — or rather, what is truer, the union sought is even before the common.⁸⁵
[27] But perhaps this very thing deserves inquiry: whether it is possible at all to be conjoined to That through reversion. For nothing can proceed from it — so that something might also revert after the procession. How could anything proceed without being differentiated? And how could anything be differentiated from the One, and not fall out into the nothing? For whatever has in any way stepped outside the One is nothing. And if each thing comes to be one-and-not-one, so that the not-one may remain and not be scattered into the nothing — as being bound fast by the one — still, precisely insofar as it is one, it exists together with the One; or rather, it did not even proceed from the One in respect of the one; no, nor yet in respect of the not-one; rather, the one always anticipates the differentiation, however it arises, of the not-one; so that neither does anything revert toward the One — from which it never proceeded. Further: the differentiated is differentiated from a differentiated, as other is other than an other. If, then, something reverts, it has been differentiated just so far as it reverts; then the One too has been differentiated from it; the One, then, has undergone differentiation, and is not only one but differentiated as well — therefore not one. Next: what would be the cause of the differentiation in it? Either the One itself — and how the One should be a cause of differentiation is hard even to feign; for the One is cause of union; of differentiation, the many — or whatever else it may be; but of this hereafter. Or, if not itself, something else will differentiate it: either what is before it — which is absurd, for then the differentiating power will stand before the unifying, the worse before the better; or what is after it — and how is the cause to be affected by its own effect? Besides, what is this "after it" that has proceeded? The argument is in danger of being overturned into the same place, every procession differentiating, and the cause of the differentiation being sought, always, in between — and this to infinity. Nothing, then, proceeds from the One, nor does procession begin from there; rather it begins from that first thing which can differentiate both itself from what comes after it, and those things from itself; whereas the One, contrariwise, is itself united with what comes after it, and does not allow those things to be differentiated from itself.⁸⁶ If, then, nothing proceeds from it, neither does anything revert upon it; much less, then, through knowledge — much less as a knower toward a knowable; for these stand in the greatest differentiation toward one another. And even if some faintest differentiation from it should be devised — belonging to the first thing proceeded — certainly the differentiation from That will not become so great as to require a cognitive reversion. Such things one might say in denying the stretching-up of cognition toward the One.
[27] Who, then, shall be appointed arbiter between such arguments, disputing with one another about matters so great? The truest concerning these things the gods themselves know; but we too must dare to bring our aporetic birth-pangs to term, so far as divine providence grants of the truth that is sought — and so far as our own power allows.⁸⁷

## Chapter 28 — The Not-One Rooted in the One: Differentiation without Reciprocity · pp. 69–75

[28] What, then, the procession of the things that come from the One is, and in what manner it is accomplished, and how one might escape the perplexities raised against it, we shall pursue hereafter — very soon indeed; for now, only so much must be taken: that after the One there are all things; for That is not alone, but the things after it are many and various. And that these are not That is evident; so they are differentiated from it — and if not insofar as each is one, then insofar as it is not-one. Now this "not-one" is not a negation, but a position of what is beside the one; and this too, nevertheless, is one — yet not insofar as it is not-one and beside the one, but because not even this has stood apart from the One altogether: it is, as it were, rooted in the One, and the not-one exists through the one.⁸⁸ So, to one who looks closely, the not-one is differentiated from the One by its own nature, being differentiated by the nature of the not-one; but its one still holds to the One and does not stand away from it — not even by so much; since the not-one too (or whatever it may be, beside the one) is nevertheless still one by participation, through having become not-one. Does it not, then, make itself not-one, while the One makes it, and makes it as one, anticipating its differentiation by its own union? The not-one, accordingly, is differentiated from the One, in that it becomes not-one; but the One is not differentiated from the not-one — the One which makes one even the not-one, even what has stood apart: so far is it from being differentiated that it is not let go even when the other lets go, but forestalls, by its unifying participation, the differentiating existence of that other; for there could not even be an existence of anything without the one — so that the participation constitutes the very existence; that is to say, the union constitutes the differentiation. And at this we shall not greatly wonder, nor so much as distrust what has been said, if we consider the nature of the One: that it is of a nature neither to effect nor to undergo differentiation.
[28] Let us examine the matter also in the case of the visible corrector of all truth, the sun.⁸⁹ To the opened eye that does not see, because of a glaucoma, the sun is present, just as to the seeing eye; but the eye is not present to the sun, because of its own standing-away. And let us not fear the demands of logic; for these have their place among things of one kind, where the relative terms are of roughly equal worth, or kindred. Why, even the form is other than matter; is then matter, too, other than the form? But otherness is a form! Matter, then, is not "other" in the form's own manner: the form is differentiated from matter without matter's being differentiated in its turn; the differentiation has remained in the form, unable to pass over into matter.⁹⁰ If, then, something was differentiated in this fashion from what is not differentiated, what prevents the differentiated itself from healing its differentiation by reversion — so that not only is the One present to it, but it also to the One? And clearly according to the measure of its differentiation, from near or from far; for as each thing is of a nature to be differentiated from it, so far also can it revert toward it. And as the One remains undifferentiated relative to each thing differentiated, so also relative to each thing reverting it remains the same, and is one end of all things, undifferentiated. But as, being the same, it is present with each thing that proceeds, it is called by that thing's peculiar property — substantial one, vital one, intellective one — being itself everywhere one, surnamed from the participants, not itself divided, I say, by the many properties of the gods; rather, I contemplate the simply one in each thing before the particular one, though I name it, all the same, from the things to which it is present, undifferenced though it is. Thus, surely, each thing too, meeting it as an end proper to itself according to its own differentiation, names it from its own perfecting that comes from There, positing it to be of the same kind as that which it met — and as that which fell to its lot. For That also, being all things according to the existence of the one, is present with each thing as its own proper root, and appears to each as its own proper end.⁹¹ For all the things that exist dividedly — those things That is, according to the one: not in potency, as one might suppose, nor by way of cause, as of things not yet; but, if it is lawful to say so, by an existence that both is and is of things that are — yet one existence, and one of an all-bearing nature.
[28] As, then, with each of the others, so too with the knower the one is present, as a knowing one; and it stands forth as knowable — not by being either of the two, but by the compound above each; or, to speak more exactly, above the compound. For it is all things not from differentiation, but before differentiation; thus it will be, in truth, all things before all things: not loosely, as in potency, nor by way of cause, as being not yet all things, but all things by the undifferentiated existence — not the unified existence before all things, but the existence super-simplified above all things by its own simplicity, being all the things, in kind and in number, that have proceeded by differentiation. And That is what is all things in the strict sense; for the differentiation has dimmed the things differentiated from it, by its own nature. Moreover, each of these is more sovereignly its own self within the one coordination of all things, and, falling away even from this, becomes ever more partial and inferior; except that, among the properties, some stand more akin to the lesser differentiation, others to the greater — which is why different ones are uttered in different regions. But about these matters this is not the moment to pursue the precise examination. The One, then, all things before all things, is both knowable and knowing — and each of the others; though not, as I now speak these words, and as each is each (for those are in differentiation, and counter-divided against one another), but as the one co-existing, in its own peculiar way, with each of the differentiated things with which it co-exists: the one of man is the truer man; the one of soul, the truer soul; the one of body, the truer body; so too the one of sun and of moon — the truer moon, the truer sun; and yet it is none of these differentiated things whose truer reality it is, but only the one, seated above its own self.⁹² And gather for me also the one present-with-each, which seems to have been divided, into the remaining and undivided and really one; for perhaps it was never divided at all, but, remaining the same, is present to all and to each as its own — not divided, because, being all things according to the one, it has no need of division. Does it then know? Or is knowing proper to differentiation? Then neither is it known; for this too belongs to differentiation. Or is this also true, that knowing is set in opposition to being-known — and nothing of that kind fits That? For neither does "one" fit it, nor "all things"; these too are opposed, and divide our conception. If we look toward the simple, we lose the all-great all-perfection of it; if we conceive all things together, we obliterate its one and simple. The cause is that we are ourselves divided, and look to divided properties; yet, yearning all the same for whatever knowledge of That may be had, we weave together all things at once, in the hope of being able even so to lay hold of the great nature — guarding, for all that, against the multitude of all things that creeps in with them, or against a straitened isolation of the one.⁹³ Thus it is that we bring forward the "one" itself, for the account of the eldest principle, as a kind of symbol of its simplicity — as the "all things" is a kind of symbol of its comprehension of all; while what stands upon both, or before both, we can neither conceive nor name. And what wonder if we are so affected about That, when even its differentiated knowledge is unitary — a knowledge we do not perceive? About Being, too, we have undergone other things of the same kind: attempting to see Being, we let it go and run round its elements, limit and unlimited, as they say; and if we conceive the truer thought — that this too is a unified plenitude of all things — the "of all things" carries us down into multitude, while the "unified" obliterates the "all things." But not even this is yet to be wondered at; for when we wish to see each of the forms, we run round its elements; and when we long for its one, we lose the elements; each form is at once one and many — not one in one respect and many in another, but through and through, as a whole, such; and being unable to seize it all at once, we are content to cast ourselves upon it with the dividedness of our own conceptions.

## Chapter 29 — The Sudden Light; the One between the Knowable and the Unsayable; the Birth-Pang of Knowledge · pp. 75–80

[29] Climbing ever up the steep toward what is more undivided, we somehow have a co-perception, even within division, of the uniform; at any rate we hold division cheap beside the gathered apprehension of That — and we could not so much as think this together, were there not some trace of the gathered intellection quivering within us. And this is the light of truth that is kindled of a sudden, as from fire-sticks rubbed together;⁹⁴ for the divided conceptions, mustered together and exercised against one another along the summit that converges upon the uniform and simple, end as it were in a meeting-point — like the meeting at the center, in a circle, of the ends of the many straight lines pressing from the circumference toward the center; and though they remain divided in their condition, yet, as they are thrown against the undivided, some trace of knowledge of that form is shaken loose in us beforehand — just as, the center being invisible, the single coincidence of the circle toward its middle, conceived as equal from every side, furnishes a certain dim presentation of it.⁹⁵
[29] In the same manner we ascend also to Being: first conceiving each form — which strikes us as divided — to be not only undivided but unified, confounding (if one must speak so) the many in each; then, taking all of them together in their distinctness and removing their circumscriptions — as one might make of many waters one uncircumscribed water — except that we conceive the unified itself out of all of them into the one water before all, as the form of water is before the waters that have been marked off. In just this way, then, we are unfolded into the One as well: first gathering together, and then letting go of the things gathered, into that One's pre-eminence, super-simplified above them. Have we then, in our ascent, met it as the knowable? Or, wishing to meet it as such, have we been dissolved into the unknowing? Or is each true? For from afar we meet it as knowable; and when we are unified with it close at hand, having passed beyond the knowing-of-the-one within us, we are brought round into being one — that is, into being unknowing instead of knowing. This conjunction, then, is of one with one, above knowledge; the other was of a knower with a knowable. And how should it be knowable, if it is only one? Not, certainly, in such a way that knowledge could press against it; nor yet knowable by the bastard reasoning in the manner described, by which we cognize even matter — though matter does not possess the knowable; for the knowable too is a kind of form, or some one of the things that are, whereas matter is the non-being and formless. As, then, they say the crooked is known by the straight, so by the knowable we surmise, beneath it, the unknowable; and even this, nevertheless, is a mode of knowledge: That also, then, is knowable just so far — namely, that it does not abide the approach of knowledge. From afar it presents itself as knowable, and gives forth its own token; but the nearer knowledge approaches, the less — not, as with other things, the more — it knows that which it approaches; for the knowledge is unstrung by the One into unknowing. And reasonably: since knowledge stands in need of differentiation, as was said before; but as it draws near the One, the differentiation folds itself up into union, so that the knowledge too dissolves into unknowing. So, surely, Plato's analogy itself demands: the sun is the first thing we attempt to see, and from afar we do see it; but the nearer we come to it, the less we see it; and at the last we see neither other things nor it, becoming, instead of an illumined eye, the very light.⁹⁶
[29] Is then the One unknowable by its own nature — even though the unknowable is something other than the one, while the One wills to be by itself, and with nothing else? Rather: what is counter-divided against the knowable is the unknowable; but what is beyond the One is ineffable in every way — that of which we confess neither to know it nor to be ignorant of it, but to have toward it our very ignorance surpassed; by whose neighborhood the One too is overshadowed: for, lying nearest the unmanageable principle — if it is lawful to speak so — it remains, as it were, within the inner sanctuary of that silence.⁹⁷ This is why, in Plato, the discourses about it overturn themselves; for it lies near the every-way self-overturning of the First. Yet it differs from That in this: that it is one simply, and is, according to the one, also all things together; and this is above the one and the all, simpler than both; while That is not even this. Insofar, then, as it has stepped forth from the ineffable — yet not the determinate one (for that is completely knowable), but the all-things-one; nor again "all things" so far as they are marked off (for these are still more knowable, being many forms), but the together-all-one, which from the "one" has its simplicity, purified clean of the many, and from the "all" has its refusal of the one's determinateness and narrowing: each of these is knowable, and the compound of the two, as knowable-in-two. But what is before both — the very thing we indicate by means of that compound — does not, of itself, abide knowledge; it is known through the image of the compound, as being, before the compound, of such a kind as the compound is together with it. And if one must speak by division: the really knowable is what is contemplated within some determination — which is also, by now, in a way a form; for this, by its own circumscription, abides the knowledge that circumscribes; and that is why knowledge begins from things of this kind. What runs clean contrary to this is the wholly unsayable, which suffers no handle at all. And of what lies in between, one part is before the knowable — namely the Unified, escaping even this determining or circumscribing knowledge; the other is before the unsayable — namely the one simply, and all-things-according-to-the-one, affording about itself a slightest and dimmest surmise. And if there is something in between even these, we shall attend to it when we come to distinguish each of them.
[29] For now we say this, setting it as a seal upon such a one: that what we say, it is not; nor do we know it as one and as all-things-together; but what from this we labor with — I mean a cognitive birth-pang — that it is; for the knowledge of it has advanced as far as the birth-pang; but when it tries to issue into utterance and articulation, it falls away from That, into offspring of its own. And this is what the philosopher Proclus, in the Monobiblos, has called the ineffable axiom — the axiom answering to the knowledge that labors toward That — as the sayable axiom is the one answering to the knowledge already articulated.⁹⁸ This too is the cause of the ever-equivocating assay and judgment concerning it, now as knowable, now as unknowable — for in one way it is the former, in another the latter. And for this reason Plato, in the Letters, takes away from it the "of what sort" and the "what," and accuses this of being the cause of all evils — the division proper to ourselves, into the what and the what-sort;⁹⁹ for in very truth this is the Titanic affection we suffer; and yet even this affection we attempt to carry up to what is holiest of all and most undivided of every whole. If, then, the what and the what-sort must be removed from the knowledge of it, the "one" too must be removed; for this is a "what" among all things; and "all things" likewise, for the all are certain "whats" — each of the all is a what, so that together also they are certain whats. If, then, it is known neither as one nor as all, what would it be? Away, man! Do not bring in the "what": this very thing blocks you from the knowledge of That — that you expect to hear some "what"; whereas, if you take away the what and the what-sort, it will appear to you, so far as may be, what it is; for it is precisely the not-what and not-of-what-sort, but before these — the very thing that can neither be said (for every name is a what, and indicative of some what) nor easily thought (for every thought is of a what and of some what-sort; and even if you gather all things together, they are of-what-sorts and whats, being of certain qualified things). And so intellect itself, as intellect, being a contemplator of qualified whats, labors indeed with a conception of that nature, but cannot bring it forth — not even intellect; rather, on the contrary, it gathers the birth-pang in upon itself, and leads it up toward what is simplest, wholly uncircumscribed, and altogether unqualified by the circumscribing quality, whether common to all together or proper to each — the very thing that Plato, in accord with the Oracles, exhorts us to do: if somehow we might be able, forgetting our own conceptions, to run back up to that birth-pang.¹⁰⁰ Or rather: that pang is of a nature to recognize That, but to report it to no one — except that it removes the obstacle that stands in the way of such a projection, namely the thinking of it as a what-sort and as a what. And if someone compels it to teach concerning That, it will put forward in place of itself a second or third conception, which, uttering the together-things in their distinctness, seems to utter That: as, that the simplest is the principle, and the first, and the all-containing, and the generative of all, and the desired of all, and the mightiest of all — and whatever else one will enumerate in order, of which That is the cause, or rather the mightiest and most honorable of all such terms, as those just named, and above all "the one," and "all things," on the grounds already given. But when these have been said, a conception better than this one will take hold, declining the determinate and multiform in an account of the principle, and concentrating all into one uniform nature, and judging this — the unified — worthy to be set before the determinate. Yet the first birth-pang of the cognitive power, the one that remains within and does not go forth, will not accept even this concentration, as being pregnant with the multitude and not yet having brought it forth; itself laboring with the one that is simple through and through and seated above all multitude — which, unknowable as it is, nevertheless labors-forth the knowable, if it is lawful to say so: not as something added to that One; rather its nature, not being wholly ineffable, hands over to surmise an unarticulated knowable, answering to the birth-pang — the surmise not going forth into knowledge, the knowable not going forth into being known.

## Chapter 30 — How the One Is All Things, and How the Unified: the Mixture in the Third God · pp. 80–81

[30] Come then: since all things are — there being nothing that the One is not, as we say — let us inquire into this very thing. First, in what way it is true that the One is all things; second, whether it is all things equally; and third, what the difference is between the One's being all things and the Unified's being all things.¹⁰¹ For each of the two is all things undifferentiatedly — I mean the supersubstantial being; or rather the unitary one; for this too is all things according to the one, the one seated above being, which would also be said, before that being, to be unified, having pre-grasped the everlastingness of the mixed. Or rather, this latter already shows forth the supreme union out of many, and the first birth-pang of the mixture of multitude; or rather of multitude's mixture; for before it the multitude shone forth, as did the one; and from both, coming together into it, it projects the one unified and mixed existence upon them — which has become its existence, the existence of Being: not the one, nor the many, but the mixture of these, shining forth in the third god.¹⁰² This is the very thing which the mixture and the mixed are — which indeed we call the Unified, what is twofold. If, then, this too is all things, still it is all things unifiedly; since before it, too, the multitude is all things — and is all things more sovereignly than the one; for the multitude is all things in that the all are many, whereas the one is all things in that the all are one, and all according to the one.
[30] But perhaps someone might raise a difficulty: if the One too is all things, will there not be, before it, the only-one as well — since "the one" has a simpler conception than "the one that is all things"; for "all things" is an addition to "the one"? And if one wishes, one may go to meet the objector:
[30] calling the multitude "one-all" — one by existence, all by participation — while the one is one only, and not yet all. Yet, for all that, it is truer to say this: that the multitude too is in the One; for this also is from it, of another sort, by way of cause — a cause not marked off from that in which it is; for there is as yet no determination there. Rather, because the One is such, before all things, as the all things after the One are, the One is even more all things than the all things are; for this is the cause of the all things' being all things: the One is. In another way, then, the One is all things before the multitude; but in its own respect it is the only-one, and the simplest of all; for it is simplest precisely because it is most comprehensive — and therefore all things.

## Chapter 31 — All Things Equally — More than Equally: Order without Order · pp. 81–84

[31] Is it then equally? How not? For all things are according to the one, and there is nothing that is not according to the one; and the according-to-the-one is even more than equal — "more equal than equally," if one may really speak so.¹⁰³ But the things from it are according to an order, one before another; whereas in it they are without order, because order belongs to differentiation. Nay, the order is not even by way of cause; for then differentiation too would be by way of cause, and the causes would be differentiated — unless indeed the order there, and the differentiation, be not by way of cause but in a greater manner than by the cause; for it is according to the one, and the wholly-one; and on this account all things are equally.
[31] Why, then, are some of them more proper to it, others less proper — as we say: the One itself, the all-together, the simplest, the first, the beyond-all, the Good, and whatever wishes to exhibit the single principle? For these a man of sense would say about it; but as to what man is, or any of the more dishonored things — the very last, or the effect, or matter, or any such — no one, unless he were mad, would dare to say. The cause of this is that none of those determinate terms holds true of it — not the first, not the last, not any of the means; but, seeing the order of these very things, which they have toward one another (how some produce and some are produced, some order and some are ordered), and wishing to indicate, from the things we know, something about that which we do not know, we dedicate to it the terms elder by nature: the causes to the pre-cause, and the things that first proceeded from it to what never proceeded — inasmuch as these too proceeded least of all.¹⁰⁴ What then? Did That also produce the first things first, the second second? For so the order would appear in it too. Or does That produce all things together, while they do not come forth together, but the one produces itself earlier, the other later? And how are the better separated from the One earlier than the worse? Or, even if they are prior because more strongly braced toward self-subsistence, still they are not on that account separated in a greater degree, but least of all, by that same power; for what proceeds through weakness — perhaps the prior things would be left behind as second to the One — which is just what the weaker souls undergo, standing away from intellect before the stronger, which are second perhaps and only with difficulty. As it is, the procession from the causes comes about according to power; and some things are more self-sufficient toward subsistence, while others are by nature not able to produce themselves at all, but the whole of them is given subsistence from elsewhere. And if That produces them, it furnishes the things more like itself before the more unlike, and the things more like it — not because it has pre-grasped the order, but because from it is the order too, as also all the other things. This, then, is so. And we name it from the things more like it. The things produced, then, are unequal; but the producer is equal toward all, and still more than equal; for it is one only —3 both as itself, and as being all things, and as producing all things; for it is according to the one, whatever you might say about it.
[31] Note 3. ἓν γάρ ἐστι μόνον, "for it is one only": the producer's equality toward all rests on its being one — the same one as itself, as all things, and as the cause of all. The argument closes the second question (whether equally) and opens the third.

## Chapter 32 — More than the All: in What Sense the One Is, and Is Not, All Things · pp. 84–85

[32] But the first of all the things inquired must now be resolved: in what way is it all things? For perhaps it is not even possible for the One to be all things. And what need is there for it to be all things? For the only-one suffices for being the cause of all; and if it is the cause of all, it would not be all; and if the all are many, the one at least would not be many. It seems, then, that those who said "the One is all things" said it in defense of the conception — against the more facile one, which ranks That as some one among all things; for it is not some "what," but all things, and more indeed than all things. "For the principle," they say, "is half of the whole" — or rather the whole — but, more truly, more than the whole; and these things the children of the Pythagoreans philosophize.¹⁰⁵ For in truth, if we mean the whole — both the principle and what is from the principle — and the principle is the counterweight to the things from it, then the principle is half of the whole. But if the whole is more sovereign than the principle, while the things from it are, as it were, an imitation of it and, as it were, a thing hung in suspense from it — and this too is true to say — then the principle is the prior grasp of the things from it; for not even the causes in the producer are the producer itself; rather, what is productive even of the causes in itself would be the principle, more than the whole.¹⁰⁶ But if it follows that we say these things, then the One would not, in truth, be the all things, but the all things would be after the One; for we do not even deposit in it the causes of all, that in this way at least it might be all things, by way of the totality of the causes. In no way, then, is the One all things, strictly to speak. But — that we may conceive not the least thing, but the most comprehensive of all and the greatest; and not this as the cosmos, but as the simplest of all; and not even this as one of the things in the cosmos, like the last rim of the fixed sphere,¹⁰⁷ but as all things poured back into its simplicity and no longer willing to be all things.
[32] Or, the names being rightly given, is it right to hymn That also as all things? For of each multitude the unified is an undifferentiated concentration — the multitude being, as it were, the differentiated; and before the unified, everywhere, is the one of each; and the one is just as many as the unified, since it proceeded into just so many; for it is so many because it proceeded into so many. For the One did not step down into a one, but into a unified; nor did the unified step into a unified, but into an all-differentiated — there, precisely, where we clearly think "all things." But as in the center the circle is folded up, and all the lines from the center, so also in the Unified is the whole multitude of differentiation; and by the same proportion, in the One, both the center itself and the things folded up in the center are all alike simplified.¹⁰⁸ And thus we say that all things are one, and that the One is all things — and still more, because all things are according to the one; and the all things are not altogether one, whereas that One is altogether all things.

## Chapter 33 — The Fore-Appearing Conception and the Determinate One: the One as Principle and as Good · pp. 85–89

[33] Upon these things it is worth inquiring how the fore-appearing conception differs from the determinate one.¹⁰⁹ And concerning this — of which we speak, the one incommensurate with our conceptions — does the ready conception ring true of the ready one, or the determinate conception of the other things? Clearly it will not fit that undetermined one. But if this conception is removed from it, we have no other knowledge of it; so that in vain do we even call it "one." And again: of this one, once it is cognized, we conceive nothing simpler; so that this would be the first principle of all things; for the Good, too, seemed to be most first — wherefore nothing can be mightier than it; so that this too is a principle of all things; and on this account our conceptions bring us to the same point, the One and the Good. And how is the first thing in determination and counter-division? And how is the first a form? For "the one" and "the Good" are some one among the many forms.¹¹⁰ Besides this: as motion and rest are a single opposition, and otherness and sameness, and many others of the kind, so too "one" and "many" are a certain single opposition; and in each opposition there is the better and the worse, as one pair, though the better and the worse stand in a coordinate account; and indeed the opposites mutually participate in one another, as is shown in the Parmenides, so that the one and the many too are in one another.¹¹¹ Is it then not a principle, because the many are unified with this one? Yet insofar as the many are unified, this is one; and the one in them is participated, whereas the one by existence and upon itself is before the many — before all things, therefore; therefore this one is the principle of all things. For even if the many are set over against it, still not as coordinate, but as effects toward the cause.
[33] Apart from these things: if the One is a gathering-together of all things — for its proper work is the making-one, and it is the cause of the mixture; and the one-making and gathering-together of all things is elder and more honorable than the things gathered and made-one — it is manifest that the One is the principle of all things, above which it is counter-divided against all, as cause against effects. And this is what we cognize as one. But is there not some other one, namely the one spoken of as genus? It must be said that the one spoken of as genus, we cognize as being some one of all things — as the many: I mean the form, and the good, and the beautiful; for the determinate conception is of a determinate thing. But that One is to be taken not as one-making, but as all-making; for it is both multitude-making, and good-making, and whole-making — and not even one, since it makes 4 being by its own single simplicity. And if the one-making is not to be called "one" strictly — and if there is no proper name of it — then each thing is to be called it: not only one-making, but also multitude-making; and "one," if you wish, and "many"; or rather, all things before the many and the all.
[33] What then? Does not Socrates, in the Philebus, gather together all things and make That the cause of the mixture? All things, surely; but putting it forward in respect of the one property only, the gathering and one-making; for of this the mixture had need. Since the limit too was one, and the unlimited one, and the mixed one — and That is the cause not of the mixture alone, as it seems to be said, but also of the elements. And that Socrates does not bring his thought to bear upon this one, but as upon something august and ineffable, he made plain: letting it itself go, as wholly hidden, but bringing forward, as its tokens, the three monads in its forecourt — the three of the One.¹¹² And yet it was easy to conceive this form-like one, and to cast into the mind the gathering and one-making of the many, and this rather than truth and beauty and symmetry. Further, then: not the limit only and the unlimited were the elements, but also the one and the two; and if these alone were the elements, so that the one was taken as an element —
[33] upon these, what was being sought? The elements, both the others and the one, lay ready before; but the mixed out of these was being sought, how it came to be. The mixed, then, is all things together — the elements and the compound of the elements; wherefore it had need of the cause of all, that it might become all things for the sake of all, as that cause is before all. And how could it have participated in this, unless the things coming together were commensurate and sympathetic toward one another, and brightened by the same light of truth? For these were, as it were, forerunning traces, the causes of the common — the cause of all things.¹¹³ And the determinate one suffers something from the many — either as underlying its property, in respect of its constitution out of many, or as set over against them, since rest too is moved and motion stands still; whereas That is wholly simple. Therefore it is not worthy even to be called "one," because we conceive the one over against the many, and conceive being and being-moved and standing and other and same, so that it is many by participation, but one by the existence of the property.
[33] But the most first of the things perplexed-over is most true: that we do not have a conception of That, complete and one; wherefore it is not even to be called "one" — except in such a way that it is no less to be called "all things"; which Socrates too made plain, through the three monads fore-appearing in its forecourt in whatever manner — truth, beauty, symmetry — symmetry furnishing the order among all things, beauty the mutually-sympathetic blending, and truth the existence; while of That, in truth, all things are present together, ineffably.¹¹⁴
[33] Note 4. παντοποιόν, "all-making," against ἑνοποιόν, "one-making": the supreme cause is not merely the source of unity (which would make it a member of the one/many pair) but the source of multitude, goodness, and wholeness alike — and so "not even one."

## Chapter 34 — Whether Anything Proceeds from That: the Trace of the One in All Things · pp. 89–94

[34] It would follow, upon these things, to inquire whether anything proceeds from That into the things after it — anything at all — or whether it imparts nothing to them; for one might reasonably raise a perplexity either way. If it imparts nothing to the things set forth from it, how did it even produce them, standing so unrelated to it as to enjoy nothing of its nature? And how is it their cause according to its own nature, if it does not impart that nature? And how do those things revert toward it, and how do they reach out after it, if they cannot participate in it — it being in every way unparticipated? And how would the things that have proceeded be preserved, if they are not rooted in their own cause? Does not Socrates, in the Republic, call truth a light, proceeding from That, that constitutes the intelligible and the intellective?¹¹⁵ He too, then, knows the thing that has come and is participated from There. And if matter carries off its last trace, then assuredly the things before matter possess it too — the participations of every kind, made proper to each according to the measure of each thing's subsistence. Nay, something pervading will appear in all things; for each thing is — among the indivisibles and the wholes, the mortal and the everlasting, the solid and the form-like — not many only, but also one before the many; before division, the undivided; before the differentiated, the unified; and what each thing's all-things is, that — before all things — is the concentration of all, which we call the Unified, which we name Being; and before the Unified, clearly, the one — each thing's all-things standing according to the one, as Being is each thing's all-things according to the unified, as all-things-in-determination is according to the differentiated. There is, then, in each thing, the something that answers by analogy to what is before all things; and this is itself That one's procession into all things — the all-perfect subsistence pre-existing, according to the one, in each region; or rather, the root of each thing's subsistence.
[34] But if it proceeds, one might perplex again: in what manner could it proceed? For what will be the cause of its differentiation? Since every procession is with differentiation, and of all differentiation the multitude is cause; for the differentiating is always multitude-making, whereas That is one before the multitude. And if it is even before the one only, much more is it before the multitude; its nature, then, is altogether undifferentiated; it is, therefore, without procession. All things, then, proceed from it into another nature — and it produced that — but it itself proceeds into nothing, nor imparts to anything something from itself; for the imparted must be lower than the imparter, and not be that very thing, but of-the-sort-of that, and not the simply so, but something with a measure for each. Now lowering, and measures, and anything of the kind, are seen in some multitude, and with determination, and according to a flowing and changing of the same — even if no other thing falls in between; but that nature is before every appearance-in-multitude, however it be multiplied; for once the many begin, there is room also for procession, whether uniform or non-uniform. That, then, is in every way without procession, not even putting forth from itself an illumination into any of all things; for the illumination too is differentiated from the illuminant. Further still: not even Being — which we posit as wholly unified — would this proceed either; for this too stands fixed before the substantial differentiation, nor does Parmenides say it moves; for the wholly unified being, in no way differentiated, stands still; it would not, then, differentiate itself into the procession of the many. Nor yet would it differentiate any of the things before it — those that are — nor, indeed, of the things after it; for what could the second do toward the prior, or the effect toward the cause? Being, then, does not proceed into the many, neither by lowering nor by division nor in any way by procession; for 'it will not cut being off from holding to being,' as Parmenides says; wherefore he said that Being is also one;¹¹⁶ nor, then, would anyone say that it proceeds, if indeed it cannot be cut off. Much more, then, neither does the One. Further still: the measures of the one engendered in things — the traces before the other traces, which supervene through the processions according to others and from others — either are unified with one another completely, so as not to be cut off, the one from the One (and thus all will be one, and nothing other than the One itself); or they are somehow differentiated from one another — and that either spontaneously and without any cause, which is absurd, or by a cause, which is absurd; or, then, by the multitude after the one, and the procession will not be proper to the one but to the multitude — or it will be according to the one; and how is the one able to accomplish, or anything before the one, such as we judge that to be which is called, before all things, all-things-one, which is none of all things but all things before all things, as we said — whose procession we are seeking? But That is neither differentiating nor differentiated; neither many, nor multitude-making; nor yet one, nor one-making; so that that nature neither proceeds, nor remains, nor reverts, being all things by what is above all things.¹¹⁷
[34] Besides this: if it proceeds, and there is in each of the things that are and that come to be a measure of That, it is plain that it imparts to each what falls to it; to the perishable and mortal, then — if it imparts nothing, how is it hymned as their cause too? But if it imparts, not the same thing it imparts to the eternal or the everlasting, then what is imparted to these is perishable and mortal; and what perishing could there be of the one — or rather of the not-even-one? — which cannot so much as be imperishable; for the eternal too is far down from it, and so is Eternity itself; wherefore, concerning the first Being, the same perplexity awaits us; for this too is before Eternity, and so before the eternal — much more, then, before what is everlasting in another way; it stands, then, farthest off from the perishable; the trace of the One in each perishable thing, then, would not be a perishable one, an echo of that One.¹¹⁸ But perhaps it is with That as with matter; for matter is on this side of the other things, and is, as it were, a kind of matter itself; partly the one in matter itself, partly the one before matter — and each is in potency, imperishable and perishable, but neither is in act. Yet the argument is not about this — the thing fallen forth to this side — but about what is before matter and before the whole-in-potency, present with the forms themselves. For it is plain that, before the last things, the middle things participate in the one principle of wholes.¹¹⁹
[34] Note 2. The chapter's affirmative pole: a pervading something (ἐπεξιόν τι) appears in all things — the one before the many, the undivided before division — which is the One's own procession into all, the root of each thing's subsistence.

## Chapter 35 — The One Imparts Only Itself: the Single Undivided Participation; the Root and the Center · pp. 92–98

[35] Perhaps, then, it is so: that the One is itself imperishable, and that at different times different ones, among the perishable plenitudes, are constituted around-and-about, changing about the unchangeable. Or rather, this — the participation — is not proper to each, as of this reed-pen that writes these things, and of this paper on which they are written; but it belongs to some good proper to each, if indeed the things proceeded from the principle not undifferentiated. Then again: the perishable itself, as perishable, does it participate in That, or does it not participate? For if it does, That would not be the cause of this perishability; but if it does, what is imparted will also be perishable; and one might reason the same about the imperishable. But perhaps the participation is of the everlasting things only — of the wholes, say. Or, first, as has been said, not even the everlasting belongs in any way to That; and then, what is this allotment, that some of the things from it should participate, and some not — and that, though it is above all the imperishable and all the perishable? Perhaps, then, all things participate in it, but the participation is one, undivided, the same present to all — as the light of the sun is present, the same, to all, even if not whole, because it is divisible and body-like; whereas That, being above the undivided and above the whole, is reasonably participated as the same by everything, the differentiation lying in the participants, not in the participated.¹²⁰ For thus Plotinus claims that Being should be conceived: the same everywhere, present whole, in common to all and to each of the many. But even if the participation is undivided and one for all — both that of Being and that of the One (for let the manner of both be alike) — still it is a participation proceeding from the existence and being differentiated. What, then, differentiates the second from the first? For it makes no difference to speak of differentiating the one from the One, and many such things in series; for that nature refuses the differentiation. But perhaps there is never any other participation of it than its existence; for it gives nothing else from itself to the participants, but itself, which it is.¹²¹ Does this, then, belong to the whole — and, to speak generally, to the elements? For it gives itself, and so it gives to what comes from them, of which matter comes to be the element-like. Or, if one will not say this, still matter, having nothing after itself to give, gives itself to the cosmos. Or rather, this — matter — does so according to the worse; whereas That, perhaps according to the better, gives itself to all and to each, not as matter — nor as form, but as the first participation of the first cause; which is the same as to say, an existence, present in the participants, not even willing to be differentiated from them, even if they proceed from it; and insofar as it participates in the multitude, so that the procession is not from it either, but is generated from the multitude; while from That all things are one, and all things, again, are being — as the root alone, before the outgrowth of the branches and of the trunk itself, is already the whole tree; or as a center, in which also are all the ends of the many straight lines together, and the one is all things before the spreading-apart of the infinite straight lines; but after the center comes the spreading-apart — and the center is not the cause of it, but the flowing of the continuous toward the one.¹²²
[35] And there is, indeed, in it something multitude-making — a cause and principle even of the processions: of the substantial, the substantial; of the unitary, the unitary. But these are august things and surpassing nature, agreeing with our other conceptions as well — both those that lead all things from the One, and those that judge there to be ever in the effects a trace of the cause, present not from outside only but, beyond this, made-consubstantial; since, even if the sun's light is common, for participation, there is also in the eyes a sun-like radiance, already proper and not common; and it is by the proper that we are conjoined to the common. And does not Plato too say there is a certain radiance of the soul itself, which, having inclined, we must conjoin to the light of truth? But further: from the one principle of all things there flows off, too, a certain common participation still, which he has called truth — corresponding not to the sun, but to the sun's light.¹²³ But perhaps Plato kept silent about the precise examination of these matters, because of the many; and in the same place, taking the multitude-making cause as well, had room to differentiate the many from the one. Our present argument, however, contemplates separately, if it is lawful, the one principle, which he did not name; and separately the multitude-making cause; and that Plato passed over such a differentiation he made plain, not even setting the multitude-making cause before the mixed — though he took up many elements of it, and laid down three principles instead of one; and perhaps he did not even indicate, in those, the one we now speak of, but the one after the two principles, according to which the mixed comes to be; for this too is one, and the division of this is the three monads — not of the really first principle.¹²⁴
[35] These things, then, again, if there be need. But our conceptions do not articulate the first principles precisely; rather they simply posit the same thing as cause both of union and of differentiation, not even seeing that the differentiating is other than that which preserves the undifferentiated; this latter being first differentiating itself from the One, then becoming the cause of this for the others as well; whereas the One is cause of all things — yet it makes all things one, and does not even make; for neither is it active, since activity is somehow differentiated from the agent; nor yet is it potent, for potency is, as they say, a kind of extension of substance, and That does not even will to be substance; for substance is third from it, according to the mixed — the unitary substance, I mean, and according to the unitary. But these things later. What he now says is this: that the one principle is so far from differentiating that it does not even unify; for neither does it make anything; for the unifying too is some one thing, like the differentiating; rather it makes all things one — each thing; but of the one the multitude-making and differentiating cause is the cause, while the elder, prior to each thing, makes all things one, so to speak; for neither is it all things in truth, since the all are in differentiation — there where even the whole is; whereas the one is all things according to the one above all things, in that all things are one.¹²⁵

## Chapter 36 — The All-Making Cause beyond Cause and Effect: the One That Differentiates Nothing from Itself · pp. 97–105

[36] Such, then, being the perplexities set before us, let us take up the argument from the beginning — having here too, as it were, called upon the Savior.¹²⁶ That One, then, being all things, and not only the one — and being all things according to the simplest — and this very simplicity, which is the resolution of all things, and the one before all: this is not a unifying one; for the unifying belongs to determination; nor a multitude-making one, for the same cause; it is not the maker-proper of any of the other things, but a common-making cause simply, and an all-making — not making the differentiated things all together; for neither does it make the unified things; for of those and of these there is the same cause, and before both; it is, then, the producer neither of anything unified nor of anything differentiated, but of all things simply that have subsisted in every manner. Its nature, then, is neither differentiated from anything, nor unified with anything, nor changed-along-with any of all things; for it would no longer be all things, but that thing from which it was differentiated, and would have become proper; but it refuses the proper; nothing, then, is parceled out from it into each thing in a proper manner, nor in any way whatever.
[36] But perhaps a common and single participation of all things proceeds from it into all? Then the participation is differentiated from the existence — and there is as yet no determination of anything: not of cause, not of existence, not of participation; nor, then, would anything proceed at all from it; for nothing is in it that might also proceed; for the remaining is always before all procession; and the undifferentiated things are not yet from the differentiating nature. Do not, then, all things participate in it? Quite so, I will say; does it then give itself to them? Quite so, I will say — the most honorable of all things, itself, as existence; but not a participation from itself. Will it not then become the participants' own, no longer its own? Or is it neither its own, nor the participants', nor those things' own; neither thrust out, nor coordinated — since not by existence, nor by participation; for all such things are in determination — whereas it is wholly undetermined; and is neither of all things, nor of none; for, in truth, it is neither in all things, nor before all things, for these too are certain determinations; rather it is simple and undetermined, and this very thing, all-things-one; for we cannot name it uniformly — that it is also the one — for it is other than all things, and the all things are other than the one. About That, then, and after That, the other things make their manifold determinations in the many-numbered causes from it; it itself, then, is neither participated nor unparticipated, but in another manner, the manner before both, it both is, and preserves the other things, and perfects them, and produces all things together according to its one all-making act — which must be called neither productive nor perfective nor any other of such things; for these too are in determination; rather it is all-bearing, but according to a single nature; all things, then, hang suspended from it, and enjoy it in every way, holding fast to it; nothing, then, from it is such-as-itself; in no way; for neither was it possible for it to stand apart from itself by a lowering, no other thing having appeared to make the standing-apart; nor was it lawful for the differing nature to come to be in some difference toward itself, nor for the simplicity of all things to proceed into some doubleness.¹²⁷ How, then, is matter its limit and last trace? Or is it not so? For neither is there in That anything determined as one — as we say matter to be — nor is there from it a first and middle and last; for these too are determinations; nor the in-potency and in-act; nor, in general, anything of the characteristics of matter; for matter too is some one of the elements of the generated; it is determined, therefore; far off, therefore, from the undetermined nature, sprung from somewhere hence in its own property — whence comes generation, and that, indeed, from this principle: not in the first nor in the middle products, but in the last echoes. All things, then, are determined round about That; and the last determination of all marks off, after all things, the dregs (as they truly are) of all things. But about matter it will be possible to speak again, and, having raised the perplexities, to resolve them in season. For now this must be added: that this principle here set forth has comprehended even the last matter, flowed away as it is, within its own undifferenced comprehension of all-complete simplicity.¹²⁸
[36] If, then, nothing is from it, how is it the cause of all things? Or is it thus: that as a determined cause, and according to the conception determined as 'cause,' it is not a cause? For neither is it productive — something else is before this; nor paradigmatic — for something else leads this too; nor, as one might think, the final cause itself — for this too is some one of the causes, and is determined off from the others; nor yet the three causes together, as one all-cause; for the three too are determined off from the many things that are not causes; but There is nothing of the determined things; rather, before all things is That, and cause of all, as cause even of the causes — and not even this, as something beside the one simplicity; but as one from the things below, so surely also cause. And of what is it cause, if cause at all? Of all things, I will say — not of these, and not of those; nor in this respect cause, and in that not; nor any such determined things, beside That. Does something, then, come from There? Quite so — all things; but not such-as-That, but the things after that nature. The generation from it, then, is non-uniform; and before this, the uniform, as more akin; and each thing proceeding from the whole, not from any of the causes determined within it; just as the uniform — and still more, the most common — generation is of all the gods.¹²⁹ For the non-uniform is not of all — as if certain of the gods were called maidens and unwed youths; but the uniform is everywhere, and he who does not bring it forth is barren — which is true of matter alone, if even of that. If, then, the procession of all things from That is non-uniform, assuredly the uniform too will pre-exist — which was shown impossible. Or: to divide the two processions upon That is not lawful; for, being altogether undetermined, it would not make its generation from itself determined — whether uniform, or the two at once; rather there belongs to it, if it is lawful to say, the procession before both, undetermined. But, second, if one should wish to rest in the determined causes, one would conceive both at once as the generation of all things from it: as being all things according to the one, it produces all things uniformly; as being before all things, non-uniformly; and at once, as being the same, both is all things and is before all things; at once, then, it makes its single procession both uniform and non-uniform; for it is all things and produces all things — this uniformly, and is before all things; and produces them this non-uniformly. But in another way again: as wholly simple, the not-simple things wholly non-uniformly; as super-simple, these not-simple things uniformly.¹³⁰ Does it, then, produce? For so it would be active; and before activity is potency, and before potency, existence; perhaps it is neither potency — much more so — nor still more, activity; for such things too are in determination, and are somehow differentiated from one another. It does not, then, fit the wholly undifferenced to exist and to be potent and to be active. Or rather, these things are not present to it as we say them; but as the one, though not present, we nonetheless refer up to it, and yoke all things to the one, for the causes often mentioned, so we would speak, of it, the to-be-active and to-be-potent and to-be, as the three undetermined from one another. For it does not make by being, as one might say; for this would be one making, counter-determined against others; nor because it is That, on this account are the other things; for thus it would be cause of nothing, unless it produced them; rather, according to the all-bearing simplicity, before activity, before potency, before existence, it is the midst of all things. And is it cause simply, and determined off from the effects? Or is both the cause and the effect, after That, determined off from the determining cause — whatever that may be — while That is only unto all things? And if it is cause too, it is the cause in all things, so that all things which are effects from it, as in the wholes, this too being comprehended; whereas That presides — neither as cause nor as effect, but simply and undeterminedly, as one all-things of all things.¹³¹
[36] Is it not, then, determined even in this way — as such-a-thing, from the not-such? But even if the things after it are determined off from it, the determination is not from it; rather the things that proceeded determined themselves off from That — as the moon stood apart from the sun, that one not standing apart. But if not That, what is the cause of the differentiation? For surely not all things are causes of this, even if all stood apart. Or, of the things that proceeded from That, which will the argument declare, as it goes on? That, then, first differentiated itself from itself, then the other things also. Let That, then, be first differentiated by itself, beginning from its own activity, and yet differentiating — and it is plain that, in the differentiating, the differentiated is differentiated. Or is even this not necessary? For when we close our eyes to the sun, it not standing apart, and the sun is bent back — the god being everywhere — we are separated by the unfittedness of our life. And from matter, too, the form is differentiated, though matter does not possess the differentiation; for differentiation is some form, and the form, they say, is other than matter, matter not being other; and the image is like to the paradigm, though the paradigm is not like to its own image.¹³² Or must one not say these things are 'other'? For if by the account of the paradigm the likeness of the image falls short, by this very thing the likeness of the paradigm exceeds the image; the likeness of coordinate things stands equal toward the reciprocal turning, but the likeness of better and worse turns back indeed, yet with the exceeding and the falling-short. If, then, the image is like the paradigm not equally but by falling-short, what prevents the paradigm too from being like the image — but by exceeding? And there is this: that the image is likened to the paradigm, and is thereby like, and the paradigm likens the image to itself, and is thereby like.¹³³ But these things would belong to another harmony of discourse; nor, indeed, is the form other than matter because matter is not other, but only not-whole; for otherness too is differentiating of sameness, and matter is not even otherness; but form and matter are in no way the same — for matter would not be the same — nor again is there otherness in things related to one another; one must say that matter and form are separated from one another;
[36] and the separated turns back toward the separated, so that all things too are separated from that one nature, itself separated. It is determined off, then — this nature too — from all things. How, then, has it undergone determination? For surely not from any of the things after it, above which we call it the determining cause; and how was it itself differentiated, the wholly undifferentiated being agreed upon?¹³⁴ Or, as one must not call things 'other' in which there is no otherness common to both, so neither 'determined off from one another,' nor 'differentiated,' in which there is no common thing and name, differentiation and determination; since the determining or differentiating cause turns back toward its own effect not from the equal, but as maker toward made; the effect is differentiated from the cause, as participating in the differentiating cause; but the cause is somehow differentiated from the effect, as producing it from itself and differentiating it — for thus we judged the like, of image and paradigm, to turn back. But what is beyond all determination, one could in no way say to be in any way determined; since it is even determined off, in that it is in every way determined off; yet it has also something common, one. There will be, then, in the second something from the first, of-the-sort-of That which we despaired of; and if That very thing is both in the second and in all, as we were saying, there would not be a common thing and at the same time a determined one; for in the one and the same these too are determinations — the common and the proper.¹³⁵

## Chapter 37 — The Ever-Laboring Birth-Pang; the Second as Potency Welded to Existence · pp. 105–106

[37] How, then, must one speak — and in what manner dispose these simple and truly tremorless apparitions of this surpassing truth? For either there is nothing after That, and it alone is; or, if there are also other things after That, it is in every way one thing, and stands toward That, assuredly, in a determination. Or should one take even this as from the things below, for a dim indication — an indication, too, belonging to that birth-pang about That which is ever in travail but never able to give birth, possessing its giving-birth in its laboring, in whatever fashion?¹³⁶ As for an indication of this, then, let there be determined a certain manner most unapparent, and least of all distinct as a determination — the most primal additional-determination of all, I mean, and one all but swallowed up by the undetermined — so that the second seems to be a potency of the first: a potency welded fast to the existence, as certain holy discourses already hint at this.¹³⁷ Or, if anything is more uniform even than this, one might conceive it among the things whose nature is before all existence and potency; and let the second be called 'after That'; but That, rather 'than-after-which'; and 'of it' rather than 'from it' — and as many such excesses of speech as one may find.¹³⁸
[37] Are then the other things too, after the second, present to it in the same manner — even the last of all? And are all things of equal honor toward That? But that is absurd. So that, even if it is not differentiated from the second, it is sufficiently differentiated from the others, and most of all from the last? Or have all things come forth together — first and middle and last — holding, indeed, their mutual comparison among themselves, yet, as all together, standing toward the one-all as one: as effects toward the cause;
[37] while the further procession and order comes upon them all from the other causes; from That, these too indeed come, but as items within the all. Wherefore That alone is cause of all things; other causes are causes of other things among these all.¹³⁹

## Chapter 38 — Cause of All as All Together: Iamblichus on the Ascent with All Things · p. 106

[38] That it is the cause of all things as of all-together, its all-perfection makes plain; plain too its indefiniteness — being no more of this than of that; and plain, further, the yearning of all things for such a cause, as of all: for it is surely not the leading cause of some one thing while failing to be the cause of all together, as all. And if it is, what other cause could there be beside the one set before us? Or does it differ from all things just so much — if it is lawful to say so — as the all are all in every manner of way, while it is all in the simplest manner? And that these things can chime with Iamblichus too, I take this as my evidence: that he says the leading-up to That is not attainable for each single thing, unless it should rank itself together with all things, and run back up, together with all, to the common principle of all.¹⁴⁰ If, then, all things together are of a nature to stretch up toward it, while each by itself is not so of a nature, apart from the others, it is plain to everyone that all things also came forth together from There — each not by itself, but one from another.
[38] But if all came forth together, still some are far and some near. Yet these things too were determined after that nature; at that point there was as yet no far and near. Speaking, then, as one ordering the highest things from the things below, one might speak thus; but, to speak according to the truer birth-pang: neither were these things differentiated from That, nor That by these; nor yet are they unified with one another; they are neither the same, nor other; neither like, nor unlike; neither one, nor many; neither of the same rank, nor of a different rank; for not even 'before all things' fits That — and so neither does 'after That' fit them all; neither first, then, nor second; neither cause, nor effect; for such terms stand toward one another within some determination; whereas That is the undetermined — not the opposite of the determined, but the in-every-way simple, and all things undifferentiatedly; for all things are according to the one, and That is the one which is all things, and not one only.¹⁴¹

## Chapter 39 — Neither Proceeded nor Not Proceeded: the Unitary Procession; the Three That Are One · pp. 107–108

[39] Let no one, then, raise the perplexity whether, if the other things proceed from it, they were separated from it, and That, accordingly, was separated from them; or whether, if they are unified with it, they did not come forth. For it is not as we conceive it: they neither proceeded, nor did not proceed. For other is that manner of the unitary procession, which we do not yet conceive together, divided as we are into remaining and procession and reversion; whereas That is above the determination of such things: it is neither necessary that it be unified, if it is not differentiated, nor that it be differentiated, if it is not unified; for That has obtained the undetermined nature before both — while these stand as opposites.¹⁴² Nor again let anyone inquire whether it produces and the others are produced. For if it is active, it is also potent, and exists; the all, then, would be three, not one — existence, potency, and activity; but it has been said that That is before activity and potency and existence; for it is one, not three; and it is before the others as one even of the three.¹⁴³ It is from the helplessness of our intellection and exposition that we nevertheless say it 'produces'; but the manner of the producing must be purified clean, as being unkindred to us, and as accomplished neither by being-active, nor by being-potent, nor by existing, but by the ineffable manner before the three.
[39] Nor let anyone say that some participation flows off from it — neither one becoming proper to each thing, nor one common participation of all — so that the things proceeded from it might participate in it, and That might give something from itself to the things that came forth. Nor, if not this, that they do not even have their being from There, and that there is nothing common between them and That; for then either That must be something, or be in these — and so not by itself; or these must be in That — and so nothing beside it. This kind of perplexity, one must say, has force over the things that produce by way of differentiation; but just as we posited the procession of the things from it to be neither according to union nor according to differentiation, so also the perfecting from There, and the participation of That, is neither as of one giving something from itself, nor as of one withholding the gift; neither as having the given illumination itself as something common with the others, nor as being wholly determined off and in no way communing with them; for all such oppositions are within determination. But That is, as has been often said, undetermined; so that all these things together must be affirmed of it at once — and again, none of them alone, taken by itself as determined; or, what is truer, not even all of them: but the one before all things, simplifying all of these together.¹⁴⁴

## Chapter 40 — The Light of Truth and the Henads; the Root That Proceeds with the Branches · pp. 108–111

[40] What, then, is the light of truth that, according to Plato, is sent forth in advance from it? That Plato utters these things about it in a manner nearer to our conceptions, he has made plain elsewhere — judging it right to station not truth alone, but beauty and symmetry too, in its forecourt; and then, indeed, he has not taken up at all that One before all things, but that from which Being proximately hangs. Wherefore he says this light is what binds together the knowable and the knowing — that is, the intelligible and the intellective — as seated within the intelligible, and making true at once the intellect and the intellected. But this must be examined again hereafter.¹⁴⁵ If, however, we should call truth a light even of That — the truth from it — we shall say that it is the procession of the divine henads, as the philosophers hold. Have these henads, then, nothing in common with one another, in virtue of which all the gods both are and are called one god? Assuredly they have, I shall say; but either as from one and toward one — so that this too is many; or, if there is even some undifferenced one, like a single root of the many gods, this is nothing like That; it is a participation of That: a root of the things that have come forth, proceeding together with the things that proceed — a monad, if it is lawful to say so, of the divine number.¹⁴⁶ And as for the one of matter — if someone should bring forward this too, as some last trace of That — he will miss the whole. For matter is determined off against form, and the last against the first; but the nature of That is before these; and in general, everywhere form is present together with matter; whence form proceeds, from that same order matter proceeds also. But this too belongs to a later inquiry.
[40] What has been said upon all the perplexities already raised is this: the concentration, in each thing, of all things — before all the things in each — does answer to That by analogy; yet it is not, as it were, an image of That, nor its light, but belongs to what has proceeded; and this is crown and root, having come forth together with that whose root it is, in the manner native to what springs from There — just as the one common root of all things also proceeds. But That was not a root, but before all things; nor a root only, but all things together with the root: it is itself one-all and before all, while the all proceed from it, root and branches at once.¹⁴⁷ How then could that root — whether the one or the many — be an echo of That, when we have confessed it to be at once root and branches, having confessed That to be the undetermined one-all before all? For the root is determined off against the branches, and the crown against all the rest. The illumination from There, then, was not, after all, the uniform one that is before all things in each of the multiplied things; this, at any rate, would be in some manner multiplied by its ranking, and somehow determined off from what illumines. Yet it does not follow that, because the others do not participate in it in this fashion, they do not participate at all, and that we shall set That apart, exiled from everything; one must endure the second wave of perplexities also — perplexities that war against the manner of participation customary in other things, but which, taken simply, do not hold good. For let it be: as the surmise of its subsistence is of its own peculiar manner, so too of its procession — neither according to union nor according to differentiation, neither uniform nor non-uniform, but before both; and likewise of the participation: neither coming about by its presence, nor by an illumination separated off from it, but before both. It will not be fitting, then, to say that what is given is common or proper; for this too is beyond the two; no, nor that it is given, nor again not given; for these too are somehow opposed; and That is beyond all opposition — even the contradictory one; much more, then, beyond every other; so that it is neither perishable nor imperishable, but deserves to be called what is before these — if indeed there were any appellation proper to its own name.¹⁴⁸ But how could there be, for that to which not even the proper belongs — nor the common? We are in no way likened to it — to that in which no property resides — but to the first after it; since neither are we unified with That; rather, even union comes after it; while That stands at the one and, so to speak, before the one — the before-the-one and before all things.¹⁴⁹

## Chapter 41 — The Radiance of the Soul; the Only Knowledge of That: Dishonoring All Our Conceptions · pp. 111–112

[41] What, then, does Plato intend by the radiance of the soul? That it is conjoined to the light that is from That — but not to That; or, if to That, is not the light itself conjoined, the light from it? Or is it conjoined according to the image of the analogy, but no longer according to truth? For That does not abide conjunction with another — That which does not abide even the conjoined.¹⁵⁰ But how is the immediately-after-it related to it? Either in that it shone forth first of the others, or in that it has not wholly stooped forth from the inner sanctuary. But about Plato's statements, later; and further, about the second after That, whatever it may be: insofar as it is from That, it proceeds together with all things in the wholly undetermined manner, without the opposition that goes with determination; but insofar as it is a second principle, it will put forward for us other conceptions, about itself and about the things from it. For it is plain that we must liken our conceptions, so far as we can, to the things themselves.¹⁵¹
[41] For indeed we formed our surmise of it thus: we attempted to gather up, from the simplicity of the One before all things, the soul's conceptions that are by nature divided — or rather our torn-asunder surmises — even though our impulse strained to awaken against the contrary; striving emulously to fit them to the one that is in every way one, and that has embraced all things in itself no less (if not rather more), or — better — to the one that is beyond even existing; and perhaps better still, to the one that does not even exist, but is above this: the all-things-one. Hence too arose the great tumult, the divided discourse being ever in danger either of tearing the One apart into many, or of losing altogether its own proper nature and potency and activity.¹⁵² Accordingly we gather also these conclusions, which follow upon those: that of That nothing must be said of all that is said in such determination — nor even all of them brought together at once: as, that it is cause of all, that it is first, that it is the Good, that it is the simplest, that it is the beyond-being, that it is measure, that it is the desired, that it is end, that it is principle. For the conceptions of all these are determined ones, and to That no determination is appropriate — no, not even as the undetermined that is the opposite of the determined; but if there is anything before all these — one, indicative of all — this alone is to be surmised in its case. For one-and-all-together were the two, as one before the one and the all; it has no conception proper to it that is at once complete and simple — much less an appellation; yet it demands such a one as we are at a loss to offer. Wherefore the only knowledge of it that we achieve is this: that by which we dishonor all that is ours, as unfit so to be fitted to it; and whatever we posit about the things after it, these too we dishonor; and we judge That to be neither some one of all things, nor all things together (although we account it cause of all and in every way simple), nor simple in such a way as to be some one of all things, nor as simplicity itself — for this too is some one of all things — but simple in such a way as to be at once all things, and all things in such a way as to be at-once-simple; nor again all things in such a way that the all are many, or a whole out of many; but all things thus: as one before all things.¹⁵³

## Chapter 42 — The Second after That: Neither Differentiated nor Unified; Remaining, Procession, and Reversion Denied · pp. 112–113

[42] But since That has been declared to be of such a kind, it would be next to inquire about what has proceeded after it — whatever it may be. This, however, must wait for us; rather, only in respect of its being from That and after That must it be inquired: one thing, whether it was differentiated from it; another, whether That remains while this proceeds — for the remaining must always be before the proceeding — and whether it proceeds remaining, or only proceeds. Let us begin from above. If, then, the second was differentiated from the first, assuredly the first too was differentiated from the second; for the differentiated is differentiated from a differentiated. But if this is so, then either it has suffered the differentiation from the second, which differentiated itself — and how is the cause somehow altered by the effect, or how has it suffered anything at all? — or it had this from itself: in differentiating the second from itself, it also differentiated itself from that. And how is it differentiating — That which we did not judge to be even one-making? And how, in general, is it differentiated from the second? Or is it even unified with it — That which abides neither union nor differentiation toward anything whatsoever? But if it is not differentiated, how is the one cause and the other effect? And how is the begotten not in every way indistinguishable from the begetter?¹⁵⁴
[42] Perhaps, then, it is safer to say: the first, without union and without differentiation — being beyond both one and multitude — produces all things, as was said before, in the manner unkindred to us; and it is separated from all things, and present in all, in another manner of the same kind. From wherever differentiation begins, from there also begin the exempt and the coordinated, and in general the prior and the second; and we say even these things about those natures wishing only to indicate something concerning the wholly undetermined; so that neither anything else, nor what seems to be the second, is either differentiated from That or unified with it — for then it would be a thing unified with That. As, then, we do not judge it right to say of it 'other' or 'same,' because sameness and otherness are not yet, so neither 'being unified' nor 'being differentiated,' because union and differentiation are not yet. Neither, then, is any remaining of That determined, nor procession, nor reversion — for the same cause. We shall not, then, justly raise the remaining perplexities either; but later we shall inquire where these terms are to be affirmed, and what, in those natures, is the remaining, or the proceeding, or the reverting — and whether they are the same with respect to the whole subsistence, or are themselves three subsistences.¹⁵⁵

## Chapter 43 — Groping in Darkness: That as the Remaining; the First from It as the Proceeding; the Third as the Reverting · pp. 113–114

[43] But if one should wish — groping, as it were, in darkness — nevertheless to contemplate these things in those natures too, by analogy, not by way of indication but in a manner better than the truth that can be indicated:¹⁵⁶ let That answer by analogy to the cause that only remains; what proceeds from it first, to the proceeding — the ruler of procession in the strict sense; and the third from it, to the reverting. And if we set apart these very terms, such as we surmise them to be, we shall know that the analogy runs in their favor.¹⁵⁷

## Chapter 44 — Whether the Remaining Is Other than the One-All: the Regress Halted · p. 114

[44] Except that, from this very point, it must now be asked whether 'the remaining' is something other than the one-all posited from the beginning; for that was in no way determined. Of the three that come after it, one might say the first is 'the remaining'; for even if each of these too is all-perfect and undetermined, still one of them would by now rather give indication according to the remaining, another according to the proceeding, another according to the reverting. Or, even if one should wish to indicate these things in their case, the one-all suffices for the indication of the remaining — inasmuch as even the first thing that came forth from it did not remain, but proceeded from it; whereas That in no way proceeds, because before it was the Ineffable, of which nothing could be said, not even by way of indication; nothing, then, proceeds from That [toward which That itself might proceed]; so neither does the one-all proceed.¹⁵⁸ And the unproceeding, in this very respect, would be said to remain — as by analogy; since even what comes from it might be said to remain, seeing that this also proceeds from it insofar as it is after it; in which respect it will be necessary to posit something remaining even before this thing's procession, if indeed we judge that the remaining is before the proceeding. Either, then, we shall seek another, and this to infinity, or we shall make the one-all the remaining — the very thing we posited as remaining before the proceeding; since, if this is not before the things that in whatever way remain, neither will what comes after it be first among the things that in whatever way proceed. And let this be carried thus far.¹⁵⁹

## Chapter 45 — Two Principles before the Intelligible Triad? Iamblichus, Porphyry, the Pythagoreans, and the Oracles; the Monad from Remaining · pp. 115–118

[45] After these things, let us put forward this for examination: whether the first principles are two, before the first intelligible triad — the wholly ineffable, and the one uncoordinated with the triad — as the great Iamblichus judged in the twenty-eighth book of his most perfect Chaldaean Theology; or whether, as most of those after him approved, the first triad of the intelligibles comes immediately after the ineffable cause; or shall we descend below even this hypothesis and say, with Porphyry, that the one principle of all things is the Father of the intelligible triad?¹⁶⁰ How the Oracles of the gods intend it would belong to another occasion to distinguish; for the present let us pursue these matters too in the more philosophical manner which we have taken in hand. Well then: the uncoordinated cause, the one common cause of all, wholly unsayable — how could it be numbered in with the intelligibles, and be called father of one triad? For that father is already the summit of beings, whereas this cause has stepped beyond all things; and from the father the paternal intellect peculiarly depends, whereas of this cause nothing is peculiar; and the father is in some way intelligible to his own intellect, whereas this is altogether unsayable. Further, on the basis of what we have said, one would call the father of the triad either something more common, or the one-all; but not even this is of equal weight with that hypothesis — much less the more common. Perhaps, then, it is better to speak with Iamblichus. For whether it is monad and indefinite dyad and upon these the triad — this being the whole intelligible triad, as the Pythagoreans say — the One would be before these, as those men also say; or whether it is limit and unlimited and mixed, before these too Plato presupposes the One, which he says is for the mixed the cause of the mixture; or whether it is father and power and intellect, there would be, before these, the one father before the triad. For 'in every cosmos shines a triad, which a monad rules,' says the Oracle; and if in the cosmoi, much more in the abyss above the cosmos; for it least of all befits That to be ruled by multitude. If, then, before the triadic is the uniform, and before this the wholly unsayable, as we were saying, the consequence is plain.¹⁶¹
[45] For again: if the one-all is a second principle after the unsayable one — and this is no more some 'this' than 'that,' but all things equally — while the ruler of the triad is rather existence, as the second is power and the third intellect, it is clear from the very things that the One must be set before the triad, prior to the monad — as belonging indeed to every number; for every number is one, yet the One is not a monad, as we were saying. For either it is a monad — and then the One will be before it, and before this again the unsayable will pre-exist; the monad, then, will be first of the intelligible number, being third as principle — or this alone is called One, and after it again there will be the monad ruling the intelligible number. And one will make much use, on Iamblichus's side, both of the Oracle cited before, and of the argument that posits, after the one-all, the remaining principle — to which, surely, both the name and the thing of the monad will be altogether fitting; for it is from the remaining that the monad is named; and so the dyad is processive — and reversive; and thus a triad, so called not according to multitude, but according to its own peculiar nature.¹⁶² Nor will the remaining deign to proceed at all, but only to come to be by itself, in the recess of itself, after the in-every-way one. It has not proceeded, then; nor is it right to speak of procession in its case. And what comes after the remaining is by now the really proceeding; for from it, first, procession begins, as from the third begins reversion; wherefore this third is also the first intellect.
[45] Upon these things, letting go of these pre-occupied names, let us say that there must indeed be principles after the one principle of all — the principle posited by affirmation, however purified, and declared to be all-things-one. There must, then, after this be another principle: either no longer being all-things-one, or not all things equally, but in some proper manner; and again after this another, of its own manner, and stepping down below even that. For each is all things — since each intelligible principle in the sequence is still all things; and perhaps each ordered world, even down to the intellectuals, is all things. Yet There all things are undeterminedly — whether according to the unified or according to the one — so that one must conceive some other difference among those principles. After the principle that is simply all-things-one, then, must be ranked the principle that is all-one in a certain respect, and not simply; so that some property must now be added — clearly the eldest and most generic of all; and then, in the same way, to the third principle a third property, more common and second by nature. This principle, then, will hold a certain opposition toward that one — which I think the ancients also saw when they named them: some, limit and unlimited; others, monad and indefinite dyad; the theologians, father and power. If, then, these principles, of whatever sort they are, lean toward something in a proper manner, the principle that leans toward nothing, being all-things-one, would be simply the one common principle before them; and before even her is the Unsayable.¹⁶³

## Chapter 46 — The Argument from the Two Columns; Damascius's Verdict: Determined Names Must Not Be Carried Up · pp. 118–121

[46] Nay more, one might establish the same conclusion also from below, as from a piece of evidence. Seeing in beings two columns counter-divided against one another — the one better, the other worse; the one one-like, the other multitude-like — from these we are sent back up to two principles as well, the One and the Multitude (I mean for the things counter-determined), or to others, as one may wish to suppose; each column, at any rate, having its own proper principle, from which the common element is present in each member: in the one-like, the property of the one; in the multitude-like, the trace of multitude. For even if the two series split off from one single principle, still, before the series, their principles too stand apart. And if the two series have also something in common with one another — for they are surely not torn asunder in every way — in this respect, at least, they proceeded from the uniform and single principle. And these things I say in the strict sense, not by way of indication, led up from the things determined in Intellect — or rather even in soul. Since these are here, the causes of them must be presupposed, intelligibly, in the intelligible also, so far as may be by way of indication. From the undivided and uniform column, then, we shall come to the one principle before all, upon which we conferred 'all-things-one' for want of its proper name; and instead of the divided two, to the principles opposed in whatever manner — analogous to those that are truly counter-divided — which one may call however one pleases; we shall not quarrel with him over the names, if what he says bears any indication or analogy whatever toward those principles seated above wholes.¹⁶⁴
[46] Are we then to posit in this way two principles beyond the intelligible triads — and, to speak generally, beyond all beings — as Iamblichus judged, alone, so far as I know, of all before us? Or must we follow all the others who came after him? The truest about matters so great, god would know; but if I must say what seems to me, these arguments do not seem to me firm for the demonstration proposed.¹⁶⁵ For if, being led up from determined thoughts and names, we presuppose such things There also, we would indeed rightly force this conclusion — that the One is before limit and unlimitedness, for each of the two is one, and among determined things this must be so; but that one absurdity will follow: that limit and the unlimited are themselves placed There. For why not also monad and indefinite dyad, according to those who say so, or father and power? Each of these too we conceive, and they are no whit less honorable than unlimitedness and limit. Instead of two principles, then, or three, we shall make many There — as many as the most generic of the determined things; and if not all, at least those laid down by the various schools; and, what is harder still, determined ones. How, then, will the summit of the intelligible still differ from the genera distinguished within Intellect? Or should we carry up to each of the two principles not 'limit,' but the common element of the whole one-like file, and not 'the unlimited,' but the common element of this kindred genus? But even so there will be determination There, and counter-division; so that neither of the two will be a principle of all things, nor all-before-all; each will be all and of all, yet more of this than of that — the one according to the one, the other according to multitude. We shall need, then, to set a cause over the more-and-less as well — and over any counter-division whatever between coordinates. And apart from these things, we shall set before limit and unlimitedness not the One only, but also the Multitude — or whatever the multitude-making or differentiating cause must be called; for as each of the two is one, so both together are two — or not-one. What, then, is the cause for them of such a common element? This too must be ranked before both, if they are coordinate — and if the one proceeds from the other, the second from the first, together with the properties that of necessity co-subsist in this manner; for the first, producing itself first according to its own peculiar nature, thereby begins to produce the other first things as well.¹⁶⁶
[46] Besides this: if everything is taken from the determined, then the One too will be a truly determinate one — the one which, drawn on by our conception of it, we set before the two, the monad and the dyad. But if this is determined, how will it differ from the genus? For the genus too is all things according to its own proper one. How then is it all things simply, and in such a way as to be above all? But if we use these thoughts wishing, from 'the one,' to seize the in-every-way simplest and beyond all; and from 'all things,' to escape the least one and the one determined as some one thing; and from both, to give indication of the one principle of wholes, beyond all and stepped forth from all — then it is plain that the principles after her, too, must be sought by us in the same manner: from determined conceptions running up, so far as possible, to the all-perfect ones; not resting in the determination of the conceptions, nor being content with it, nor carrying that determination There. It is as if someone, wishing to exhibit the simple intellection of Intellect by setting it beside the soul's, should use examples — for the intellective, the casting of sight; for the rational, the reception of hearing — and then, when one ought to press on from the examples to the truer conceptions about those things, should demand of the exhibitor that, just as there is a common sense prior to sight and hearing, so there be some community of substantial knowledge between the intellective and the psychic — failing to conceive that the psychic proceeds from the intellective as image from paradigm. So too those who avail themselves of determined thoughts and things for the indication of the all-perfect and undetermined principles could not justly be required to carry up to those principles what accompanies these: as, that these are many, so those too are many — and not two or three only; that these are set against one another, so those too must be supposed opposed; and that, since the one among these is before limit and unlimitedness, therefore the single position of the One stands before the two principles. Indeed, the very fact that different men have used different names to indicate the two principles — each school speaking well, but each darting upon them by a different intuition — let this be our evidence that those determinate things are not to be deposited There, but that from them, by analogy, one is led up beyond.¹⁶⁷

## Chapter 47 — Monad, Limit, Father, Existence, Aether: Symbols of One Nature; the Egyptians' Unknowable Darkness; Pythagoras and Plato on the One · pp. 121–123

[47] As, then, monad and limit and father and existence and aether — if you will — are, among these determined things, each something different, just as their names also are, while There all are paradigms or symbols of one nature: so too the one, even if it is something different as used by each of these schools, is There an indication of that same nature; and similarly let the many — belonging to the other nature, ranked after the one we have spoken of — stand, by a certain analogy, as an example of her: of whom the unlimited too, and the indefinite dyad, and the power, and chaos are examples, and whatever else one might devise for a more familiar presentation.¹⁶⁸ The one principle, then — someone might say — must not be before the two principles, seeing that it is opposed [to something], whereas the first is before all opposition. Or, first: they are not opposed as things of the same rank, in the way of limit and unlimited; for opposition of that sort belongs to the counter-divided; but if they are opposed at all, it is as cause to effect — as the intelligible cosmos to the intellectual, the whole to the whole. Then, even if we too shall concede that there is the one principle — the one which, seeking it in what went before, we found to be unsayable — yet the one that Pythagoras celebrated is such as we posited the second to be, calling it one-all; and after it he set monad and indefinite dyad. But I shall say this: that each, wishing to give indication of the principle beyond all things, lays down now one token of her, now another — or rather a symbol, to speak most truly: some, 'the One' simply; some, 'God' simply; some, 'Time,' or 'the critical moment,' or perhaps yet another such name.¹⁶⁹ We for our part posited an unsayable principle; or rather, the Egyptians too hymned her as unsayable: for they have named her 'unknowable darkness' — thrice proclaiming this over her.¹⁷⁰ So then Pythagoras also wished to set some name beneath her, though at a loss before the demands of philosophic teaching; and therefore after her he marked off the monad, calling this too a symbol of her, and not some proper disclosure; since the monad, in truth, is where number is; and number is among determined things, not in the undetermined plenitude of beings. Plato, however, is open to dispute as to how he uses the names. In the Sophist he sets the one before all things; in the Republic he makes it an unknowable nature; and in the Parmenides, by the first hypothesis, he seems indeed to leave the one without being — for he removes, as it appears, the 'is' of the one — yet not so simply; rather, perhaps, through the complete negation, and the removal of everything knowable, he gives indication of the Unsayable. But this it will be more timely to examine elsewhere. In the second hypothesis, at any rate, this one is clearly posited — the one which we too have now posited affirmatively as one-all, so far as was possible: the very one that is also simplest of all things; whereas that one, which Pythagoras placed before the monad, and Plato in the first hypothesis, is a symbol of the unsayable principle — each having named her in his own different way.¹⁷¹
[47] If, then, someone should say that the one-all is all-one equally in every respect, while the elder of the two principles is existential rather than productive — or limit-like — just as the second is rather the contraries, and yet each of the two is nonetheless all-one: we shall know that he who says these things is still held fast among the determined things — positing more-and-less in those principles, and marking them off by properties that differ from one another, such as the stable and the processive, or the existential and the potential. Said by way of indication, these would meet with just pardon; but said simply, in this fashion they will work dreadful confusion. For even the base of the intelligibles will be shown to be all things equally, although it is already, in some manner, projecting determination within itself; and let it be known that we too suppose the Unsayable to be all things equally, before all things, in accordance with her being wholly unsayable.¹⁷²

## Chapter 48 — The One-All Heads the One-Like Column; the One above All Procession; the Paternal and the Maternal Principle · pp. 123–126

[48] Further still, in the third place: the one-all, so called in respect of the very one — for 'all things' is set forth as common in each of the principles, toward the disclosure of their all-perfection — this too, then, will head the one column, the one-like, just as multitude heads the opposed column; for multitude too is a principle, and not the mere form of multitude: not some single property, but the principle that is all things according to multitude; so that the one-all, in turn, leans rather toward the stable and one-like nature of beings.¹⁷³ Moreover, let him who reasons out the difference of the one from the monad be reminded of what has been said: that neither monad nor one is in those first principles according to truth; so that neither must their difference toward one another be posited by us in them; rather, each of the two can be led up toward the same supposition and the same indication. And he who cuts procession off at the second principle, positing the remaining before it, even he is still held in the determination of the conceptions — counter-dividing remaining and procession in those principles, instead of unfolding even these into the all-perfect manner of indication; nevertheless, even he will agree with us when we call the second principle processive, and the prior one stable and remaining — which we say is the one-all: not proceeding from the unsayable through procession, but through remaining. For That was unsayable; whereas what comes to be one is no longer unsayable to us — it is one. Yet neither did it proceed. For all procession is dyadic, while the one is above all procession: the one is ever unsplit, even amid multiplied begetting; it is unitive, at any rate, of the multitude in whatever things it supervenes upon; so that the one is in every way without procession — that, at least, which is completely one.¹⁷⁴ If, then, the one stepped down beside the unsayable, its stepping-away is not a procession — or rather, there would not even be a stepping-away; for the one is unitive of all the other things, both toward one another and toward their proper causes; and, so far as rests with the one, all things would be one; so that neither did it divide itself off from the unsayable. Wherefore, even when it is supposed to be one, it is nevertheless shown to be one unsayably; and being such, it is in no way a proceeding thing — and perhaps not even a remaining one; for the remaining is other than the one — unless it be called remaining only by way of indication.
[48] 'But the remaining,' he says, 'either remains in itself — and the one will have a certain doubleness; or in what is before itself — and there will be something sayable in the unsayable, for the remaining is somehow sayable; or in what comes after itself — which is more absurd still, for this does not belong even to all souls.' But we shall say that That is not the remaining thing, but remaining itself, by analogy; for it is the cause, to the others, of their remaining. And even if someone should add that it does not itself remain, I permit him to say it: That is before what remains in another and in itself — neither affording remaining alone, nor soaring off in its train; and just as it is called one, and limit, and existence, and aether, so too it might be called remaining — by analogy.¹⁷⁵ But if someone demands, by way of procession, that the two opposed principles proceed from the uniform principle, leaning toward either side; or sends the downward scissions of beings back up to those principles from one still-connate monad: then, if he speaks thus counter-dividing them — as two after the one and from the one — we do not accept the opposition; but if he posits the one above all, as one; and another after this, herself also embracing all things, yet not, in that first way, all things unsayably; and beneath this another, by now in some manner bringing herself near to the things that come after her: then we agree — the one unsayable; the one-like after her; and the multitude-like third upon these; this last, however, not opposed to the former as multitude is opposed to the one among determined things, but rather as dyad to monad, and power to existence — or rather, in truth, not even so; for power is something of the very substance, while the dyad has been far torn away from the monad; but as a second whole cosmos toward a prior whole: the differentiated toward the unified; except that each of the two is all-one — the one, as it were one; the other, as it were multitude. These things, then, we shall articulate hereafter — presently, indeed, with all speed, so far as may be.¹⁷⁶
[48] For now, simply, against the last of the arguments attempted by Iamblichus, we say this: that we too begin from one principle of all things, and after the one we rank the two — on the analogy of the double column splitting from one connate growth, and not counter-divided: the one principle not yet willing to come forth from the unsayable, but rather swallowed up by it; the other by now proceeding, and given her form by the slackening alone, because proceeding is consubstantiated with her. Wherefore she has become, for all things, the cause of their being differentiated in whatever manner — just as the other principle is the cause of their having grown together with their proper causes; so that each of the two is a principle of all things: the one, of all things' growing together with one another, in breadth and in depth — wherefore she is called one, by indication; the other, of their being differentiated in every manner whatsoever. Let no one say, then, that the one rules the one file and the other the other; rather, each rules both; and of the unified that is before both — being in a certain manner from both — the one is, so to speak, the paternal cause; the other, quite simply, the maternal.¹⁷⁷ But if, letting go the Oracles that advocate for us, one must demonstrate our own position itself, by itself — the position whereon the other philosophers also take their stand: that there is one only principle before all things, and after the one the two, limit and unlimited, or however one may wish to indicate and signify them — from this point, at last, must the argument begin.¹⁷⁸

## Chapter 49 — The One and the Unified; the Not-One; the First Syzygy of One and Many; the One King; the One Not Wholly Unsayable · pp. 127–133

[49] Other is the Unified, other the One — as Plato says, and the common conception bears witness besides. For the unified is of such a kind as to have been affected by the one; while that which is only one stands above the unified. Not, however, that either is torn from the other completely: the unified participates in the one; there is, then, a certain relation viewed between the two, like a composition of the extremes. Taking these in order: if the one, and what is above the one, are without relation, there will be one principle, the unsayable; while the so-called two are the one and the relation — which is the power; for power is first of all relations; and third is intellect, even that Being which we hymn. But this demonstration has been written by Syrianus and by Proclus, on the Parmenides; for the One posited at the opening of the second hypothesis signifies the triad.¹⁷⁹ You may grasp it also, more natively, from the very nature of the unified. The unified is not only one — for then it would be the same as the one from the beginning — but also not-one; nor again only not-one — for then it would not be unified, a name which signifies its having been affected by the one. As, then, because it is also not-one, it has before itself that which is purely one, so also — because it is one, and yet not purely not-one, but a not-one that has been affected by the one (for it is of a nature to be unified precisely because its property stands according to the both-together, if one must speak so) — for this reason there will be before it the purely not-one, so called as subsisting in its own peculiar subsistence: not, to be sure, like 'the nothing,' for that is without subsistence; but as a certain nature that manifested the not-one among beings — through which the first Being also is not-one, just as it is one through the one, and unified through itself. And this not-one some will call unlimited; some, chaos; some, indefinite dyad; and some might say even multitude. Wherefore Being too is called mixed: because it is unified out of one and not-one. But of this, again, hereafter.¹⁸⁰
[49] Now we say once more: Being is either one, or many, or the both-together. One it is not — for the conception of being and of one is not the same; nor many, by the same conception; whence we speak both of 'Being' and of 'beings,' as one and many. And if it is the both-together, surely not according to existence; for one and many are not the same, nor is it one according to existence, seeing that it stands together with many; nor are the many consubstantiated with the one in such wise that what is of both is an element, as it were, by participation. As the one pre-exists, then, so too do the many. And if the one is other than limit, and the many other than the unlimited, it will follow that the principles are more numerous than we wish; but if the unlimited and multitude come to the same, then limit and the one will also come to the same — according to the indication of the undetermined from the determined. Further: as limit seems to be set against the unlimited, so the one against multitude; and if the one is before limit, multitude too is before the unlimited; and if the one is before the monad, multitude too is before the indefinite dyad; and if before the intelligible father, then also before the power. The first syzygy of principles, therefore, is the One and the Many; all the others either give indication, every one, of this same single reality, or are ranked after it — and then the principles before Being are two no longer but many, which not even those who say these things intend.¹⁸¹ Besides this: the one, in that it is one, is in no way of a nature to proceed; for neither being-differentiated nor differentiating belongs to the nature of the one — if indeed differentiation is contrary to union. If, then, union is of the one, differentiation would assuredly be of multitude. These two, then, are principles; and in this way they will take the lead of all things, while seeming to be set against one another; and the principle of the one is not before all opposition — among determined conceptions, at any rate; neither, then, by indication, among the undetermined.
[49] Further: everything that first does something, and first suffers it, becomes for the others the cause of being such — the first beautiful, of each thing's being beautiful; and the first beautified is cause, to the others, of their being beautified; and on all cases the argument is the same. If, then, something first differentiates, or is first differentiated, this would become for the others the cause of each respectively; and the first multitude — being also the first multiplied — of their being many and being multiplied; and with the one it stands likewise. Now if each thing does this very thing to itself — the thing which it is — beginning from itself in its own proper activity, so as also to suffer it from itself, then the form sought would in each case be one: the first doer-and-sufferer. But if the doer is one thing, and what suffers under the doer another, the firsts will be two, divided by doing and suffering — as the first beautiful does, and the first beautified suffers. And the argument we were just stating holds true on either alternative: if the one, by its own nature, is without procession, the many would begin procession, as the first to proceed — just as the dyad, for the Pythagoreans, rules all procession; and the power, on the Chaldaean hypothesis; for she first stands away, be it ever so little, from her proper existence.¹⁸² And what would be the cause of differentiation, of whatever sort, but multitude? For what is it to be differentiated, if not to become many instead of one? From what has thus been agreed, then, this first conclusion must be drawn: the one does not proceed; for if it should proceed, it would itself be what begins all procession, so that even before the one we shall need the principle that does not proceed but remains — and so to infinity; or else multitude, or whatever one may wish to name the cause of all procession. And a second: that multitude, displaying differentiation through itself, would itself be what begins differentiation — whether multiplying and differentiating itself, or being itself only multitude, and differentiative, while it multiplies and differentiates the others; for whichever way one puts it, it would be what begins the procession. This, then, is what all who posit the two principles intend the second principle to be; so that they will posit the one as the former of the two; for the one is set against multitude. And this is the much-rehearsed syzygy of the two intelligible principles laid down after the one.¹⁸³
[49] So that, even if someone should suppose that there is one principle before the intelligible triad, and that this one is the very one-all — for this, he will say, is also the unsayable; and Plato speaks thus in the Philebus, positing the two principles, limit and unlimited, and the one before these, which also supervenes upon the mixed in the unsayable manner (for it is unsayable in such wise as to be made known through the three monads seated in its forecourt); and Pythagoras judges likewise, setting the one before the monad and the so-called indefinite dyad; and assuredly all those philosophers think so who posited one principle before the two. Nay, one might contend the same from the opinions of the blessed men: the two are set against one another, while the one must exist before all opposition; and one would call to witness, besides, the common conception — that praised even by Aristotle — which declares the Homeric verdict, holding that the lordship of many is not good, and seating one king over wholes; for by this argument it will be necessary that the truly one rule all things whatsoever. Wherefore Plato too everywhere gives the elder honor to the one first principle: in the Sophist he sets the one before beings; and in the Parmenides, by the first hypothesis, resolving all things away from it — and 'is' besides all — he leaves the one itself alone, stripped bare of all the others.¹⁸⁴ If, then, someone, reckoning up these things and the like — and knowing, at the same time, the opinion of Iamblichus — should suppose the one to be a single principle before the two, we shall meet him by bringing forward what has been said: wherein the many were set against the one, and the unlimited and the indefinite dyad were driven together into identity with the many — so that the monad too, and limit, come into identity with the one; so that the one becomes one of the two principles; and the second of the two is, in a manner, the fore-cause of all procession, while the one already shows forth from beneath the stable in beings — insofar as it is by nature without procession, and set athwart differentiation, without which there would be no procession; and whatever else one might conclude from what has been said toward this hypothesis.
[49] Yet further, in addition to these, those points too must be stated. One: that the one is not wholly unsayable, but only not sayable by discourse; for it is grasped neither by affirmation nor by negation, but perhaps by some simple intellection — and that neither rational nor intellective, for everything of that kind is form-like and composite; nor by the substantial intellection at all, for not even substance is something truly simple; but by the unitary form of knowledge, and by the flower of such a thrust of the soul's support.¹⁸⁵ To us, however — or rather to the blessed beholders — it gives itself only to be surmised; and this only as far as the birth-pang alone, and all that has been said before concerning it. Since not even to the unitary knowledge is it knowable through and through — because what is only one, and nothing besides, is not even knowable; and if, in addition, it were also knowable, it would no longer be one in the strict sense. And yet even such a purgation of it draws somewhat near to its nature; and while it is still near, it wipes off for itself a certain knowledge of it; but having drawn close, it shuts its eyes — and there comes to be, in place of knowledge, union. But these things were said before as well.¹⁸⁶ And it is plain, even now, that the one would not be the unsayable principle of all. For again: she is in every way placeless, ranked in no manner whatsoever together with all the other things; whereas the one, even if it be all things, is all things by the one, and is posited as one, and is, as it were, the crown of all things. And apart from these things: if anyone should wish in any manner to name what is by nature nameless, or to speak the wholly unspeakable, or to signify the signless, nothing prevents bringing to the one unsayable principle the mightiest of names and of thoughts, as symbols — the holiest that we have — and calling her too 'one,' and the manifest common conception that deems the principle of all things worthy to be one; knowing, however, by the stricter reckoning, that this name is not befitting to her, but is proper to the elder of the two principles — if indeed even to her it belongs, as has often been said, only by indication. And perhaps the common conception of all does reach as far as this principle that is in real truth one — if indeed even to her, yet only in that she deserves to be called something more common, and a principle; but not to the unsayable; since she is unkindred to all our conceptions whatsoever, and altogether beyond conceiving. And if the opposition of the one toward the many demands, once more, a one before the one, we at least would not place that opposition There, but somewhere below, among the determined things — from which we lead up to those principles the opposition that only seems.¹⁸⁷

## Chapter 50 — The Case for the Dyad after the One: Orpheus, the Oracles, Philolaus; Iamblichus's Middle One · pp. 133–136

[50] Come then, let us now say something about this second principle as well. Is it the case that, as well-nigh all the philosophers — and even some of the theologians — appear to posit a dyad after the one hymned principle, so we too must posit it, speaking with the precision we are now attempting? And why indeed not? — someone might say. For what needed to come forth after the one, if not the two? and after the monad the dyad, and in this way the remaining number? So, at any rate, Orpheus brings forth aether and chaos after Time; and the gods themselves, after the one god, show forth father and power as a dyad only; and all the theologies together have been handed down doing the same thing.¹⁸⁸ And apart from these, the argument itself demands it: since Being is from limit and unlimited, as Plato says in the Philebus, and Philolaus in his books On Nature; and in general, since the conception of the one and of being is different, Being would not be the very thing that the one is. Yet it certainly participates in the one; it has, then, something that is also not-one. And this, as has been said, is either nothing — which is absurd — or many. If one should wish only two, they are limit and unlimited; if more, then all the genera of Being must pre-exist There seminally — since if one wishes to place simply all number in the monad, nothing prevents it. Being, then, is many; and of these, some fall to limit, the others to unlimitedness. One must therefore, someone will perhaps say, presuppose the causes both of the one Being and of the dyadic nature of the elements within it: the pre-divided dyad of principles, then, is cause of the dyad we have spoken of — just as the one before the dyad, which Iamblichus posits before both, pre-exists as cause of the one Being.¹⁸⁹
[50] And indeed, to speak generally: if we divide all beings into the unified and the differentiated-in-whatever-manner — even if the counter-divided members stand toward one another as cause and effect — the same will result; for from two files, even so, of the one whole counter-division, we shall ascend assuredly to two principles; before which the one summit pre-exists, being cause of connate growth, while the two principles, with the two channels of all the opposites that grow out doubly from them, are parceled out according to every opposition. For such things he too used to say who championed the principle of Iamblichus, placing it midway between the two and that which is wholly unsayable.¹⁹⁰ And he added this besides: must the two principles be participated by Being? Let the unitary stand before the substantial: the participations in Being, then, are the first elements of Being as mixed — namely limit and unlimited; wherefore Being is also unified, save that by its own property it has entered together with them into the same; but everywhere the elements are counter-divided, so that their principles too have something counter-divided — and so the cause stands even before Being's counter-division. For this argument claimed at once to advocate both the hypothesis of Iamblichus and the counter-division, in whatever manner, of the two principles; since one might say this also follows from it: that the henad before the two principles was all things together before all, but all things equally; while the first of the two is herself also all things, but according to the more limit-like; and the second all things likewise, but according to the more unlimited.¹⁹¹
[50] Further, one may see the same thing from below as well: all things being unified and differentiated, the one principle leads as of things unified, the other as of things differentiated, and the one before both as of things simply. Or perhaps it is better to speak in some such way as this: the one — the limit-like — is as of things remaining; the other as of things proceeding; and the third, which also takes its stand at Being, as of things reverting. But before these there must be the common summit of all, being simply one — the crown of all things: not as of things in any way presided over, but only as of things subsisting.¹⁹² For again: if someone should say that the two — or the three together with the third — are principles of all things simply, how will they differ from one another, all being all things in like manner? And if you say they will differ by the more and the less — what, among those natures, is the measuring-out of more and less, where there is no form-like difference at all? And in general, the more and the less is seen within one property; and again, the principle of the one property is one, and not many.

## Chapter 51 — The Two Channels and the One Cause of Their Connate Growth; the Regress of Middle Principles · pp. 136–137

[51] Against these things and all such, this is ready to hand to say: that all our conceptions are sent back up from the determined things to the undetermined principles before all — both the conception of the one, someone would say, and that of all things; but, purifying our conceptions nevertheless from the determined to the undetermined, so far as we can bear them, we say the one and the all together: breaking off from the one its partial character by the addition of all things, and dissolving the composite character of all things by the addition of the one's simplicity.¹⁹³
[51] In another way, then, must the counter-division also be viewed There — the counter-division of all things together that are counter-divided in whatever manner, whether as coordinates, or as causes and effects. For there is something common to them all according to the most generic division; so that, the things counter-divided in whatever way being taken in two files, two causes pre-exist, and these, as it were, counter-divided. And there must, the two being thus opposed, also be the one cause of the connate growth of the two principles — and of the whole file of the things that grow together, down to the last, out of the pairs of counter-elements that arise at every level; and it is no wonder if this whole file should be superior to the two files, since this is the law among those natures: the whole proceeds before the parts, and the unified before the differentiated, and one principle indeed before the two. This, then, is the simply one, which Iamblichus places midway between the two principles and that which is altogether unsayable; while the two are Limit, say, and Unlimited — or, if one wishes, One and Many; but the One that is opposed to the many, not the one before both, which is without opposition.¹⁹⁴
[51] If, then, someone should so contend, making the two principles opposed and ranking the principle of the one before both, we must say to him, first: that thing which he named last of the middle file — the cause of the connate whole — what ever is it? For if what is before the two is one, being of the connate, it will itself also be connate; so that it is not simply one, but the connate-out-of-two, even if it be before the two; and so before it, in turn, there will be the simply one. But if it is simply one, it will be the cause of the one of that kind at every level, but not of the connate growth out of two. And if the connate growth of the two principles — the one that arises between them according to their participation of the one — is itself the principle of the whole connate file, it will be necessary to make this a one before the two, according to the connate; and before this, the simply one; and from it, the two principles: so that, either way, the middle principles will turn out to be two — between the unsayable and the so-called two principles — and no longer one, according to Iamblichus.¹⁹⁵ But, he will say, the simplicity of the first is not one thing, and the connate growth now being purified another: they are the same; for there is a single summit of the double counter-division. Very well, I shall say: it is one nature, holding together in the same the twin procession. But if even the partition of one procession, gathered up in one partless nature pre-existing according to a single uncomposed nature, does not lead us up to the simply one — what must one think about the leading monad of the double column? Surely, that it cannot be the simplest one. What then will he say? Do we not call it all-things-one? — and yet, for all that, one. Let it, however, be called also the connate growth of the two files, in which all the other things too are strung together — or under which they are ranked.¹⁹⁶

## Chapter 52 — The Refutation: Ascent from All Things, Not from One Opposition; Dishonoring Even the One; the Egyptians' Darkness beyond All Intellection; the Fount of Founts · pp. 137–140

[52] But first: it is better to be led up from all things, in utter completeness, to the one super-simplified simplicity of the one of all things — and not from a single counter-division, even if all things are contained in it; for it would present all things in itself according to the properties of only two characters; whereas one must be wholly unfolded back from all things upon the one cause of all.¹⁹⁷
[52] Second: not even does this generic counter-division embrace all things. For the common-natured procession from the two — the procession that everywhere goes forth before each partition, and gathers it up — this the counter-division has not comprehended; since every counter-division is a partition, while before every partition the partless is viewed: and this is not the one, but, as it were, a fount of the things partitioned from it — as the monad is of all number, being other than the simply one. Then he says that neither does this persuade us: that one of the principles is, as it were, a monad; another, as it were, a dyad; and another according to the one before both — for so, he says, Pythagoras too declares. Or rather: Pythagoras gave covert indication of the unsayable principle by the one, having nothing else by which to utter her to another; but we now dishonor even the one, dishonoring it in comparison with that position — since she will appear more august, made august by us with the Unsayable alone, if it be lawful to say so. Thus, at any rate, the Egyptians also called her unknowable darkness — proclaiming this three times over her — and, further, darkness beyond all intellection; and, further still, hymning her as the great concealment: making a high tragedy, rather, of our own states of unknowing, and by these attempting to give covert indication of her.¹⁹⁸
[52] But indeed the many, too, are before monad and dyad — and, in general, before all number, as he shows in the Parmenides — being elder; and from these one is led up to the first principles: clearly, from the one to its own cause, and from the many to the cause of multitude. And one should observe how we have ascended to the two sole principles from before monad and dyad; hardly, then, would we ascend to them from monad and dyad — or from the one to the single principle before them; for the one is counter-distinguished from the many, and this whole opposition is before that one. — But this I have made as a parenthesis of the argument. —3 Again, returning to the matter from the beginning, this must be said third: that we shall be in danger of driving these two channels of the procession-by-every-counter-division out to infinity. For this too is a certain counter-division — that of the one-before-both toward the dyad of channels; and we shall need to conceive yet another before this one as well; and before that, perhaps, to presuppose another still.¹⁹⁹
[52] And fourth: every division is the offspring of multitude — that is, of the multitude-making dyad. Carrying the whole of what is called counter-division, then, of whatever kind, we shall refer it to that single principle, the multitude-making, which leads off all differentiations. And its summit, which we call one, is not really one, but, as it were, the monad — or connate growth — of the counter-division: a monad pointing toward the simply one; the very thing that Limit, and the truly all-things-one, means to be. For as the counter-division is an offspring of the principle according to the Unlimited, so its connate growth will be the offspring of the principle according to Limit — and we may call the one also the things ranked with limit, as we call the other the things ranked with unlimitedness; and above all the most principle-like of these, namely the one and the many.²⁰⁰ Connate growth, however, and counter-division — and differentiation in general — is, in Being, unified according to gathering: not yet differentiated, but being the sole connate growth of all things before all differentiation; whereas in the intelligible intellect determination first shone forth, in whatever manner — whether differentiation, or any multitude whatsoever. For the middle order, as was said before, means to be in the preparation of differentiation: seen as in the very act of being differentiated, and not yet bearing anything differentiated; so that counter-division in actuality begins, in a manner, from the third of the intelligible world-orders. For the first differentiation and division is fontal; and that order is hymned as the Fount of founts.²⁰¹
[52] Note 3. The parenthesis: in the Parmenides the one and the many are elder than monad, dyad, and all number — so the ascent to the two principles runs from one-and-many, not from monad-and-dyad; and the one of that pair, being counter-distinguished from the many, cannot itself be the single principle before both.

## Chapter 53 — From All Partition to the Union-Mass of All; Existence, the Many, and Chaos; the Orphic Metis, Fount of the Fontal World-Orders · pp. 140–143

[53] Fifth, then, in addition to these: from partition we ascend everywhere to the partless; so that from the common partition of all things we shall be led up to the common partless of all. And this is the gathering of all things — or, to speak most justly, the union-mass of all. For that which is all things unifiedly and undividedly — as the fount of the many channels is an undetermined union-mass — this would be such as we often surmise Being to be. For what has been affected by the one, yet is not one, would be Being: being both one and not-one, though these are not yet determined in it; wherefore it deserves to be called only Unified.²⁰² If, then, from the complete differentiation-mass of all things we ascend to the complete concretion of all things, and from the multiplication of all to the union-mass of all, it is clear that, attempting to climb beyond even these, we shall stand off far more greatly from all counter-division — passing, as it were, from a complete cosmos undifferentiated and unified to a complete cosmos that deserves to be called not even undifferentiated; for it is not even unified, but simpler still — many, or unlimited, or dyad. For the unified carries the appearance of both many and one, even if these are not yet determined within it; but that principle is many only, insofar as she is at all; wherefore she is also unlimited by herself; for multitude conceived without the one is infinitely infinite — the unweighable gaping void of the unlimited.²⁰³ The unlimited too, indeed, is one — but by participation; her existence, and as it were her property, is many only and unlimited only: not many in this sense, as being some several things, so that a unified should arise out of many blended with the one; rather she is one-many by her property. And before the many, the one assuredly is one wholly: one only by its property, and one according to existence, being nothing at all by participation. Wherefore that principle is named Existence — because it is only according to existence.²⁰⁴
[53] And the second, participating the first, thereupon projected as her own property the multitude-making existence of the first; wherefore the dyadic first appeared in her, and the processive — because she first proceeded — and the property of Chaos, because she first contained the one before her, and first stepped out of the one, in whatever manner.²⁰⁵ The Unified, then, is not yet either of those two — nor yet is it the mixed without more; for the mixed requires at the least two pre-subsisting properties, and one that gathers them. It stands, accordingly, in the third place from the first: that in which are two participations — one of the one, and one of the many — gathered together by the existence of the unified, of Being; and the third is indeed a triad. And this third is a complete whole cosmos, and the single root of all things; while each of those two principles is a cosmos more greatly complete — or rather a cause of complete cosmoi: the one, as of cosmoi unified; the other, as of each multiplied; and a cause of the very first of all, which for this reason is called hidden — the wholly hidden cosmos — such that it is not even a seed of the hidden cosmoi that proceed from it, but is still beyond the seminal principle; since before every seed stands the one undetermined nature that has gathered up all things in herself. Wherefore the theologian hymns Metis first, bearing the seed of gods — Metis, who is also called, by the gods themselves, fount of all the fontal world-orders. So far does he stand from that counter-divided opposition, that the single connate growth and union of the whole of it is his, together with the intelligible appearance that is in labor with differentiation. And if Metis is such, much more so the Metis yet in the womb — or perhaps it is finer to say: the intelligible middleness that is pregnant with the metis; and before even her, Being itself — the world-order that is hidden in very truth.²⁰⁶
[53] Still more greatly complete, then, is the cause of this; but it is no longer a cosmos — it is a cause of cosmos, in that the cosmos is all things; just as the principle before her is cause in that the cosmos is also one. For that third too is a certain one-and-many, but as it were undifferentiatedly. Let us bring on, then, the sixth generation of the demonstration as well: that each of the three is all things, and before all things; but the third is all according to the union-mass of all; the first is all according to the one, as one complete simplicity; and the middle is all according to the all themselves. For she too is all things — as many, which is just what all things are; for surely not as some things, since those would be a particular many; she was many simply: therefore all; but all things neither determined nor unified. For she is not the participants, but manyness itself; so that she is all according to existence — just as Being is all by participation, while the Unified is all according to existence, as the one is one according to existence but all things according to cause, if it be lawful to say so. Not that the one is at once also the cause of all — for so it would be not-one; rather it is the one alone, solitary, all-bearing. So it will be fitting to distinguish them by their very names: the first principle is the One before all; the second, All things; the third, One-All according to union. Let so much, then, be essayed toward the indication of the first two so-called principles.²⁰⁷

## Chapter 54 — Neither Two nor One: the Misuse of Names; Intellect Folds Its Intellections Together (Iamblichus); One-All, All-One, and the Unified · pp. 143–147

[54] And it is plain that the two principles are not of the same rank — even if this is often said, by way of certain indications drawn from the more familiar; nor are they two, if indeed all number is below — even the monad itself; nor are they determined off from one another; for not even in the third principle is there ever determination, but only a fore-union of the things that will be determined out of her. Nor does otherness take them apart, if indeed sameness is not in those natures either. Rather — as the gods themselves, conversing with men, declared — the three principles stand toward one another as Intellect and Power and Father would: the existence, the power of the existence, and the intellection of the power. Yet it is altogether plain that not even these things are truly true of those principles; for the determination of these appears — intelligibly, and hiddenly — in the third of the intelligible world-orders; whereas in the Unified even these are unified; for not even the determination of cause and effect is in those natures — no, not in the summit of the intelligibles; for not even Iamblichus judged the principle there to be determined.²⁰⁸ For one is the intelligible continuity of all such things — and not even a continuity opposed to determination; for then there would again be another division before both, and yet before all of it, union: among the intelligibles everything is made fast from the one and about the one. For whatever is surmised as multiplied There — insofar as the unified is not the very one — even this must be viewed within the uniform. For neither could the union There be called the union opposed to multitude; for with that union the counter-divided multitude would coexist; rather, the union before both is one. And if we judge thus in the case of the intelligibles, what must one expect in the case of the two principles that lie before the whole intelligible? Is it not that they are unified far more greatly? Or rather: before the whole unified substance, the two are assuredly — one.²⁰⁹
[54] How then are they two? Surely not according to the dyad; for number is not yet There, nor determination at all; for neither is the monad There; for not even the one itself — that which is called one — nor the many; for these too are counter-distinguished toward one another. We misuse the names, nevertheless, in their case, since we possess no appellations worthy of them; for neither do we have intellections of that kind; nor are the very intelligibles graspable by our intellections; for not even by the watchtowers of intellect is the summit of the intelligible intellected, according to Iamblichus; rather, intellect must fold its own intellections together into the intelligible, if, being gathered, it is to cast itself, in whatever manner, upon the wholly gathered.²¹⁰ We must not say, then, that the principles are two — nor indeed one, as men counting; rather, surmising according to the property, which we declare to be dyadic and monadic: a dyad, in that she is dyad-like; a monad, in that monad-like; and one and many in the same fashion — not by number, nor by quantity at all, nor by some quantified nature, nor by the principle of quantity, nor by that of qualified substance, but beyond all such conceptions; for each of these is partial and determined. Nor are we content with these: we avail ourselves of yet others toward the indication of that nature; and not one of them hits the truth; but out of them all we compel our surmise to flee up into the undetermined and the more nobly born — since we even say that the principles are two, and subordinate the one to the other according to procession, though There is neither dyad nor any procession at all.²¹¹
[54] It would perhaps be better — if this too were granted — not to make them two in such a fashion, as two monads, but to make the two one dyadic thing, as one might conceive the one of the dyad. But not even this fits those principles; for this one is some particular one — one one consorts with one number, another with another. It is better, then, to take up that one which is common to all things; and, having made it two-formed in just this respect — that it is containing of all things both as unified and as differentiated — so to fit it to the nature of the two so-called principles. Whence we attempt to make them clear, or to give indication of them, in the manner that is possible: at one time from the two columns, purified from below and brought to a joint crest at the very top, toward that twin single summit; at another time, more magnificently, from the whole plenitudes that are everywhere, and from the whole cosmoi, as multiplied and as unified — these ever subordinated to those — sending us up by steps thus great to the all-complete precedence and subordination of the first principles. And grander, perhaps, even than this ascent, and more worthy of the height, for indication, would be the one that leads up simply from all things — from things in whatever manner existing, and in whatever manner viewed as causes and as effects; and in however many ways one may wish, or be able, to surmise somewhat the things There, let him not surmise them as these things, nor as such as these hint at, but — still more greatly — as principles and causes of these, which have not yet appeared There; and not even these: I mean the very name and thing of principle, and of cause. For these too are determined, intelligibly, in the limit of the intelligibles; in the middleness they are in process of being determined, according to the still-laboring birth-pang of the differentiation of all such things; while in the summit all things are gathered up into one — the union-mass of all.²¹²
[54] Before this, therefore, stand the two principles: proximately, the second, according to the birth-pang of all things; and above her, the first, according to the simplicity before all — in respect of which the one is imaged forth, just as the many are imaged according to the birth-pang of all things. For — if it be lawful so to define — the first is one-all, and the second all-one; for the first, being all things through herself, is nevertheless all precisely insofar as she brought forth the second; while the third has the one from the first, and the all according to the property of the second — so as to be multiplied according to this latter and unified according to that former; and to become the first composite; and to be made complete as the union-mass of all things; and to project this from herself: the Unified — which indeed we also call Being; whose property is the one as having-been-unified, just as the property of the principle before it is the all, and of the yet earlier, the before-all; the second showing forth all things as one — the all; and the third the one-all: the unified, out of one and all. But of these things again, when we speak concerning the third — presently, very soon indeed.²¹³

## Chapter 55 — On the Unified: Why the Third Is Called Mixed — Philolaus and the Orphic Egg; Out of What Is It Mixed? · pp. 147–151

[55] Accordingly, let us now approach the third problem of the discourse — or rather, the third principle of all things; for we shall be seen to stretch out from her toward the two first principles as well. Let us inquire, then, into the Unified, which we have constantly ranked third. What ever is it? And why do we place it third? And how is it called Mixed by Plato and the other philosophers of the Platonic school — and, still earlier, by Philolaus and the other Pythagoreans? Not only because it is compacted out of limiters and unlimiteds — which is what Philolaus says Being is — but because, after the monad and the indefinite dyad, they posit as third principle the unified triad; and every unified is mixed, if indeed the unified carries the appearance of both one and multitude; so that we must also inquire out of what it has been mixed. For Orpheus too says: Then great Chronos fashioned in divine aether a silvery-white egg. For 'fashioned' indicates something crafted, and not a begetting; and the crafted-not-begotten is all-mixed, out of two at the least — matter and form, or the things analogous to these.²¹⁴ Further, then: whether the Mixed is superior to its own elements, out of which it is filled up; and whether the elements come from forefather principles homogeneous with them in property — for Plato seems to intend these things — and whatever perplexities must be raised about these matters and conceived, so far as is possible, concerning things so great.
[55] Before all else, someone might inquire this: why is the Unified not immediately after the One? For the unified has first been affected by the one; it should therefore come right after the one. — But the unified requires also being many; for a certain multitude appears along with it, as it were swallowed up by the one. — Then the principle of the many is herself both a multitude and a participant of the one: she, therefore, is the unified — having wished to become unlimited, but having been fettered by the participation of the one! — Or rather: the unified means to be such as the mixed; but nothing is composed out of existence and participation; for the participation in a thing, and its existence, would not be elements or parts of anything; since the existence would stand, as element, pre-underlying in the role of matter, while the participation supervenes, like a form upon a single element. And in general, elements are somehow of the same rank; but the participant and the participation are not of the same rank, nor from a single counter-division.²¹⁵ Apart from these things: the elements are two at the least; but the second principle was a dyad as one dyadic thing, and many-and-unlimited as manyness and unlimitedness — each being only one, though by property many and unlimited; there are not yet, therefore, elements of the unified There. For the one, supervening upon several things, works the unified; for it is the one that unifies — not, surely, something else, the one being itself only one and simple — but there must also be several; and the several are not yet There; for it is by participation of manyness that the several come to be, manyness being divisive; and it is the divided that are unified; and these come after the multitude-making principle. In the third, first, then, the several are imaged forth; wherefore also the union of these is in it first; and that is the unified before all things. Before this stands the second principle: she participates the one — for she too became one — but, being many by her property alone, she does not have union. For union is where there was division of several. This, then, one could not surmise otherwise.²¹⁶
[55] In the third, then, what several do we say there are? — Elements of the mixed. — And what are these? — It is ready to hand to say: the participations from those two principles, the one and the many, which came forth into the third — or, if you wish to say limit and unlimited, or monad and indefinite dyad — into the subsistence of the unified triad; for the triad too will be triad by her property alone, and not a composition of several, nor a number; but nevertheless, even so, of such elements: of the monad and the dyad. — But if one should suppose it so, first we shall need yet another principle before the two. For if these are the principles of the two elements, and the mixed is before its elements, it will be necessary to make for the mixed also a principle of its own peculiar manner — itself named mixed, at least by indication — pre-existing as the as-it-were property of the truly mixed; just as we pre-suppose the one and the many, [the principles] of the homonymous elements in the mixed, as something other, and before the mixed, again, the two principles. For every mixed has something one-like and something multitude-like. And in this way we shall go to infinity, forever presupposing principles of principles. Yet not even those philosophers themselves who do these things — who make limit and unlimited elements within the mixed, and the mixed prior to the elements, as Plato does, and beyond the mixed again limit and unlimited, the two principles of the elements — not even they think it right to make, before the two principles, another single principle, the mixed.²¹⁷ Next: neither does each of the two principles stand partially, so as to be the principle of one element — the one of limit only, the other of unlimitedness; rather, each is principle of all things: the one as of things divided and many and unlimited, should it so chance; the other as of things unified, and as of ones, and as of limit-like things — of them all. For, in general, the principle of the many, being multitude-making, is somehow divisive of the elements — whether of the first two, or of more, or of the simply multiplied plenitude in the third; while the principle of the one, overtaking the union-mass before the many, makes that which the mixed is: composed, as it were, of parts and of whole — of the many and of the one.
[55] Do the participations of the two principles, then, complete the mixed? For the argument runs back up, once more, to the one and the many as being elements — the very thing for which we did not accept the philosophers when they do it. — Or is the third one according to the participation of the one, and many — and as it were manyness — according to the uniform procession from the second principle, and not yet the mixed? — Rather, this third is brought forth from the first principle as it were uniformly; from the second as it were dyadically — in which respect it is also named mixed; and from both heteroform-wise, as mixed from unmixed; just as, homoform-wise, it comes from both as one-all and as many-all. And since the participations act back upon one another, having become as it were of the same rank, the one was multiplied and differentiated into several, and the many were gathered up and became homogeneous. And this latter affection became union — being a being-affected of the one in multitude; and the former, differentiation — being a being-affected of the many in the one. And thus, in the third, union and differentiation came together; out of which the whole mixed was compacted.²¹⁸ Further still: according to its self-subsistent procession, the mixed projected itself from itself, and within itself co-divided the elements ranged against one another. For the whole apportions its parts within itself and from itself; and likewise the element-source, which is what the mixed is: pre-existing its elements, as being superior to them, it further differentiates the elements within itself and from itself; for before the divided, always, the undivided subsists.²¹⁹

## Chapter 56 — The Mixed without Elements, Parts, or Wholeness: One Water Much-Divisible; the Congealing of the Flow; the Prayer to the Gods · pp. 151–156

[56] And if you should view them also in this way, proceeding from the principles, you would not throw far from my hope: the one would bring forth the union-mass of the mixed — I mean the mixed itself; while its elemental multitude is brought forth by the hymned principle of the many; and as the one principle is supportive of the other principle's subsistence, so too the union-mass co-establishes the multitude of the elements.²²⁰ But the elements are a this-here and a this-here — limit and unlimited, or one and many, the counter-ranged. As being such, what is it that produces them? Again, the better comes from the better principle, and the worse from the worse; and again the two principles are principles of the counter-divided elements — or else these elements are homonyms only of those principles, the manner of their subsistence being other, or by analogy. Perhaps these too were brought forth alongside from the two principles — yet not the one from that principle and the other from this; or the mixed itself gave them subsistence and differentiated them, according to its own twin single nature: for being one-many — and, to speak simply, unified — according to the appearance of multitude it brought forth the many, and according to the dominance of the one, the one. Or, if you wish, the second principle too divided these within the third — but the many according to herself, and the one according to the unity present with her from what is called the one. The two, at any rate, have grown together, and the connate growth is before the growing-apart: insofar as the mixed has grown together, it comes also from the higher principle; and perhaps each element comes from her too — the one insofar as she is herself, the other insofar as she consorts with the one;
[56] and again each from the second — the one insofar as she is herself, the other insofar as she has taken up the first beforehand. But this, surely: both are in the mixed — the multitude of the elements, and the union-mass before them.²²¹
[56] Should we not rather make the mixed of these two — of which each is all things: the one the gathering of all, the other the differentiation-mass of all — the whole mixed out of both? For as intellect, whole and every form, is neither its many only nor its one only, but the both-together, so too the first mixed would be neither the one nor the other, but the both-together. — Or, doing thus, shall we go to infinity? For the both-together will be counter-divided against each of the two, and again another both-together must be sought; since the whole, too, is before the parts only. And if the whole itself is out of whole and parts, we shall need yet another wholeness; and if out of this and those two, the whole will again require a third set as well — and this to infinity. If we must come to a stand, let us remain at the first wholeness, saying that there are whole and parts only, and the element-source together with the elements. — Do we not, then, conceive the Whole as one thing, the parts as another, and the both-together as yet another? This first mixed is not from things of the same rank; nor from elements; nor from parts; nor is it a whole, nor a composite — nor, therefore, mixed in those senses. It would be like compounding something out of cause and effect — for that too would be a both-together of a kind; or out of user and instrument; or out of paradigm and image. For such a yoking is viewed in some relation, and not in the co-ordering that is according to substance.²²² But if this both-together should be in one — as, in intellect, its unified and its differentiated — how is the one intellect not out of both? It is out of both in this way: as the unified projecting the differentiated from itself. For such a thing seems to be a mean between the two: between the both-together as of elements, which is before its elements, and the both-together of cause and effect, where nothing is common according to substance, a relation only lying between, and that stretching from the cause into the effect — namely, the unity of intellect, which has co-established the connate whole of two plenitudes, the unified and the differentiated. For intellect is the all; and those two are not counter-ranked parts, but plenitudes, the one co-subsisting out of the other — as heaven stands to the sub-heavenly place. For always, what pre-subsists from the separate cause further differentiates the second plenitude and co-establishes it with its cause. Composite, nevertheless, is the both-together even of these; but as composite, a whole; and toward those plenitudes, parts — even if parts of a more whole-like kind; for of the cosmos too the most generic parts are two, heaven and everything sub-heavenly — or so much as is immortal and so much as is mortal; since the material cosmos, too, is filled up out of the three material cosmoi, which hold the ratio of parts to the whole.²²³
[56] Or rather: such a thing is neither composite, nor a whole out of elements, nor out of parts; but it is, as it were, the procession of a series, stepping forward by descent through firsts and middles and lasts; and it does have a certain co-ordering, appearing as one whole — yet not as of a wholeness toward parts, nor as of a mixed thing toward elements, but, as has been said, according to the connate mutual inter-holding of the seconds, always, with their antecedents, and of the produced with their producers. But such a forward-stepping has not yet appeared in the first mixed — it being first, and not yet having stepped down into a first and a second plenitude. Otherwise even the first plenitude will be mixed, and the second likewise mixed; for in intellect each of the two is indeed mixed, since intellect is a mixed out of mixeds; but the first was the simplest mixed of all, and not out of mixeds. Wherefore it would be imaged as mingled rather as out of elements only — for not as out of parts; the partition of parts is greater, parts standing in distance toward one another; whereas elements mean rather to be gathered up, and as it were con-fused, the property of each not showing forth in the mixed — just as the forms do the contrary, each circumscribing itself according to its own shape; and the parts hold the middle station: they are divided — wherefore they are even called parts — yet they are eager to dissolve their partition by the upward glance toward the whole.²²⁴ Proportionally, then: the forms have shone forth in the third order of the intelligible; the parts in the middle; and the elements in the summit — in which nothing proper to anything is truly differentiated, but all has been drunk down by the single union of the mixed. Since not even the several elements There are yet differentiated, so that one might know a this-here; rather, as in the wholly unified, the multitude-like is merely imaged forth, because of the simplicity of the first mixed; for it is much only, and not several things — like one water, much-divisible; and the multitude There, being of that kind, is nevertheless itself also gathered up, and hidden away beneath its union.²²⁵
[56] Not two plenitudes of the mixed, then — a union-mass and a differentiation-mass, as in intellect; rather, the whole is one only — and truly unmixed: the property of mixed shown forth first. For it is not as of several things blended into the same — this one could not justly bring even to the mixture of our own soul; nor as of several things There co-appearing with the one in truth; for it is from intellect that we drag these differentiative surmises onto That. But just as we viewed the many according to one complete property — the one property being nevertheless all things — so also the mixed is one simple and incomposite property, being nevertheless all things within the simple — save that it is so according to the peculiar manner of the mixed of all. For the mixed is all things in the proper sense — yet before all the things that are properly called all according to differentiation; for That is all things undifferentiatedly, according to the union-mass of all. The second principle too is all things, but more simply; for she is all not only undifferentiatedly, like the unified, according to co-ordering and compaction, if it be lawful to say so, but according to the simply unco-ordered unlimitedness of the many, and the indeterminacy superior to every bound; for even the embrace of all things is a kind of bound. And the first, again, is all things — simpler even than that undetermined and unembraced principle which is nevertheless all — according to the very simplicity of the one before unlimitedness: a one not even poured out into the many, but exempted far more greatly from the unified co-ordering of all things in the mixed; in which mixed the unified subsisted according to the as-it-were congealing of the outpouring of the many and of the unlimited nature — an outpouring which we suppose to be a kind of flowing of the one; and this flow, congealed, we say is the mixed, and the first unified.²²⁶ So that all we said before, differentiating the things within the mixed in order that we might conceive it as mixed, we now gather up, by a single argument, into the one undifferentiated property of the mixed — the truly intelligible crown of all things. And I call upon the gods to be forgiving for the weakness of such conceptions — and still more, of the expressions. For without this counter-rampart of arguments, and this frankly metaphorical necessity, we could not have given indication of anything whatsoever, in any way, concerning the most primal principles. May the gods, then, be truly gracious.²²⁷

## Chapter 57 — The Same Doctrine through Limit and Unlimited, Monad and Dyad: the Mixed as the Monad before Number; Father and Mother of One First-Born · pp. 156–159

[57] In the same manner also, if one makes the two principles Limit and Unlimitedness, as Plato holds, we shall view the mixed coming to be from these: pinning down the outpouring of unlimitedness, by the limit-like bond, into the one other property of the Limited, in which are both limit and unlimited. For the limited is neither limit nor unlimitedness, but the both-together. Let it be conceived, then: as the unified is simple and incomposite, so also is this mixed of limit and unlimited — as before both; for not even the division of these is yet There; That is of such a kind before the two. And the same account will hold both of the composition, conceived along with it by our weakness, and of the simplicity of the mixed as it is being purified. And if one makes the two principles monad and indefinite dyad, from these he views the unified triad — not composed out of some three, but being the very one of the triad, and for this reason being one triadic property, furnishing all things according to this one.²²⁸ In this way, then, we shall declare the third to subsist from the first principles — itself first, beyond all the things that are called unified and mixed; while from below, from the things proceeding out of her, we are led back up to her by resolution: from all things together, because she too is the crown of all; folding together, always, and gathering up the many differentiations into the many unions, and the one differentiation before the many into the one union before the many, and the counter-division of these toward one another — whatever it may be, and howsoever it stands — into the single and simple and wholly undifferentiated and un-opposed unified summit, which has gathered all things together at once.²²⁹
[57] And, if you wish, I call the mixed the union-mass of all — being before all the things that are being mixed; and all things are in it; all things, therefore, are mixed, and this mixed is before all: as the monad is every number, even the unlimited number ever being set forth; for the number that steps forward from her will never unroll what has been gathered up in the monad. Wherefore the mixed is from unlimited and limit in this respect also: that it is super-simplified beyond all the things after itself, and has gathered up, without limit, the unlimitedness of the things that come to be upon it. And it is, nevertheless, a monad in the truest sense — not the principle of number, for that monad is many removes below this one, but such by indication: as the one of the first principle is such, and as the many of the second. For the monad before number is a concretion of the one and the many, just as that nature is of the two principles. And such will the intelligible number also appear to us, of the same kind as the monad herself. But let this be deferred to another occasion.²³⁰ That the monad has both the one and the many is plain to everyone, since she has also every number; she is the first number — but gathered and undifferentiated; wherefore the one in her is the more distinct, and the multitude the more exact. For she has multitude simply, and the unlimited; wherefore also every number — whose unlimitedness generation, in unrolling it, would never find a limit of the unrolling. Wherefore the monad too is mixed, out of the things said in whatever way to pre-exist as many in the mixed — I mean all the things that are differentiated from her and after her, but which are in her undifferentiated, according to one unified all-generative nature: a nature not containing many causes of the things after her — for neither is there a differentiation of the many causes There — but one all-working cause; or rather, no cause other than herself. For she is the nature now made known: the fount of all things — not according to the one cause contained within her, but according to her own existence.²³¹
[57] Is then the multitude There unified as having been united out of forms? But that is the mixed of intellect. As out of parts, then? But that was the gathering of the whole — or, if you wish, of the middle. It remains, then: as out of elements. But, first, that will not be the simply mixed, if it is the from-elements; and, next, it is perhaps possible for something to be out of many, or to be many, while there are not yet either elements, or parts, or forms, but only many; for each of these is many; to be many, then, is common to all the manys. And third: the principle of the many was multitude-making only — not of elements, nor of parts, nor of forms; so that even if there is multitude in the mixed, it is only multitude — not the such-like multitude of forms and genera, nor of parts, nor of elements. But even if one should concede this too, not even so will that be the simply mixed, nor the one undifferentiated crown of all; nay, the principle of the many will not be simply the cause of all things, but only insofar as the all are many. And yet many was said by indication — not because she is out of many, or many; nor out of elements, or elements; nor, of the rest, those things. For these are determined first in intellect — I mean their first causes; wherefore I defer speaking with precision about them for the present.²³² But that mixed is as out of all things alike — many, and elements, and parts, and genera, and forms; for indeed out of composites and wholes, all of them; but, as has been said, it is the before-all that is the all. And if one should make it a mixture out of the two principles, as proceeding from them as from a father and a mother — one offspring, the very first-born of all things, from parents — he would not throw far from the surmise that is possible concerning the third principle, insofar as she is called mixed. And if also as out of the all-one and the all-many, in this way too it would have the indication of that nature which baffles inquiry and exceeds it.²³³ This, however, does not deserve to pass unmarked: that the appearance, in whatever manner, of multitude is not a differentiation of the unified, but belongs to the still simpler many — and to things coming to be in that way — out of which the unified is, the already-composite; whereas the differentiation of the unified itself is many unifieds, arising after the first unified; for that first, in this respect at least, is undifferentiated, and as it were one, the unified. But about these things, too, more precisely hereafter.

## Chapter 58 — In How Many Ways Being Is Said: the Four Senses; the Nameless Mixture of the Body; Humanly, Horsely, Lunarly, Solarly · pp. 159–164

[58] Now let us speak again, from the beginning, about this principle — what it is — no longer according to the conception of the mixed and unified, but in that the philosophers, speaking from true conceptions, declare it to be Being and substance: the simply so, and the first substance herself. For even if we do not refer the third immediately to substantial Being, as they do, but before this to the unitary, still: why is the third henad said to be the first Being and the first substance? Before all else, the significations of the names must be divided. For Being is said, first, as some one of the genera of Being, opposed to not-being and counter-divided from the other genera — this Being is eidetic, one of the simple forms along with the other four genera; and in the Parmenides, before the hypotheses, he ranked this too among the generic forms. In another way, Being is said as the connate-whole plenitude of the genera — which we peculiarly call presence, with Plotinus; and it is so taken in the Sophist, when he makes Being many things affected by the one. Being is said also as the whole that subsists before soul, as in the Republic; and he calls this substance, though as he proceeds he ranks together with it the genus of soul as well; and accordingly he thinks it right to call soul the first generation in relation to this substance. And Being and Substance are said, lastly, as the summit of the whole intelligible — that which is also the simply intelligible: the very thing which in the Sophist he shows to be unmoved, and which in the Parmenides, according to the second hypothesis, he takes as Being first; and, having celebrated it as One-Being, he derives from it all the things that in any way are, or are said to be, or become, or are not, as is said There; and he hymns it as substance too, beginning at the very opening of the hypothesis.²³⁴
[58] From which of these, then — and according to the conception of which Being — do we ascend to that Unified? From the genus, as we were led up from the one to the simply one? For this Being is simple, and its conception befits the first Being. But That was all things; and the substance composed out of all would resemble it the more, by so much: being not some one thing, but a complete whole cosmos. For as this substance is all things together, so the third principle is all things undifferentiatedly. We would ascend, accordingly, not from one of the things that have proceeded from her, but from all the things differentiated after her. Or perhaps one must gather both together in her case as well: the simple, from the one genus; the entire and all-full, from the substance composed out of all; so that we should justly call the unified principle by both names, Substance and Being. For before every multitude, surely, there is always the gathering of that multitude: of the forms, the eidetic gathering; of the genera, the generic — and so with the rest.²³⁵
[58] Of such natures there is no name according to truth, nor any concept of the kind that belongs to divided things; for names are in differentiation, and all of them assuredly eidetic; whereas That was in every way one, and all things must be gathered up by its own singleness. How, then, could the straitened peculiarity of names suffice for the disclosure, or the embrace, of the complete unified simplicity that is before all? — when not even of the divided forms, nor of the last things all together, do we possess a common name, or project some concentrated and entire concept; and hardly could we do this in the case of the highest and all-pervading crown. Why say much? When even of the partial gatherings we can name not a single one — except perhaps as gathering, and mixed, and whatever is of that sort. For example, our own body, which has been compounded out of the four elements: what proper name could it have? Body belongs also to each of the simples; and earthy, or wet, or pneumatic, or airy, or fiery, or warm names the whole from some one of the things within it; while the whole itself has no common name as common — though perhaps the human, and the generic, such as animal. Another mixture is vegetal; others again soulless; and the particulars of these likewise. And humanity is some one of the many properties in the mixed, and it supervenes upon the mixture as form upon matter; while matter, by herself, is nameless. And what wonder? — when even some of the forms partake of namelessness, as that man says of the genus of hotness and coldness. Just so, the mixture of the elements also goes unnamed.²³⁶
[58] But further: the common property that supervenes upon the mixture — the one that gives form to the mixture — is it, as it were, an element of the whole, as of a whole from matter and form? For it is simple, as each element is. Or not so: rather, it is the property of the mixture, according to which each of the composite forms is named — these being so called in contradistinction to the elemental and simpler genera. And the property of each genus, too, is simple; while the other mixture is of the others, by participation either of priors or of co-ranked things. So too intellect, and life, and Being itself assuredly: of which each is all things — but the one according to the peculiar character of intellect, the second according to that of life, the third according to that of Being. Is Being, then, also a simple peculiar character — say substancehood, as lifehood in the case of life and intellecthood in the case of intellect? Or does it rather seem to be something between an element and the whole composite form — like the whole intellectual plenitude? For the elements come from one place into another, and are ranked in the role of matter toward the form-giving property; while she characterizes, and gathers, and alters the elements toward herself, sufficing for them all and stretching alongside them by her own simplicity. Wherefore she means to be entire, more than any of the elements whatsoever. For each of them belongs to her, and is by-named from her; and the others stand according to her: the four elements subsist humanly, or horsely, or lunarly, or solarly; and the whole of both together is the form, or the genus, or the intellect, or the animal, or life, or Being — which last we posit as the first of all the things subsisting in this manner.²³⁷
[58] Yet one must not suppose that we are asserting composition in their case: each form is one and many — one, insofar as it is a peculiar character;
[58] many, insofar as we call them so from the elements seated together within it: the many proceeding from the one and remaining in the one. For intellect, beginning from its own gathering, brings forth within itself its multitude of genera and forms; and indeed each form, imitating the whole intellect, begets within itself its own multitude of genera and forms; and these are many, as proceeding from one; elements, as from a unified; parts, as from a whole; genera, as from composite substance; forms, as from intellect. But these things belong to a later stage.²³⁸

## Chapter 59 — The Mountains Seen from Afar: Names as Taperings-Off of the Plenitudes; the Root That Never Leaves the One; Iamblichus on the Intelligible in the One · pp. 164–166

[59] For the present, taking the argument back up, we say that there is no one name for the entire plenitude; and we must be content to name the bare properties — since even to conceive them is barely within our power, as they come to us beforehand, narrowed from afar into the differentiated and, as it were, atomic character of our conceptions. In the same manner, I think, the mountains also, from afar, appear smallest and still unarticulated to our sight; and of the stars, and of sun and moon, the lights — the most visible of all things to our eyes — are driven together into something narrow and faint and commensurate with us, because of the efflux of the appearances, as from the greatest distance. Some other such thing, we suppose, the eyes of our soul suffer with respect to the radiance of the forms that shines forth toward us.²³⁹ Are these simple properties, then, as they are imaged, narrowings — certain taperings-off of the plenitudes There, which are entire? Or rather: these, as they reach us, are indeed of that kind; yet the simple properties are not only such; among those natures too they shine forth — more richly there, and more distinctly — and simple nevertheless, dominating all their companions by their own light; and for this very reason they win through even to us, so far off, in whatever measure they do, while the rest are quenched and do not fall out to us along with them. For of mountains too, and of all else that is seen from far away, the more general features run on ahead, while the more particular lie hidden.²⁴⁰
[59] But the original point must be taken up again: we name the summit of beings Being and Substance not from some property marked off and, as described, shining forth ahead — for all the properties are in differentiation — but because it is all things, and the principle of all, and the principle before all: as the unified principle of differentiated things that are, and live, and know, and subsist in whatever manner. As all these are severally, so is that nature all of them in concert: so great a gathering of all things is she. Yet she is called Being, by indication, from one of the things after her and from her — the one that was allotted the second nature after the One; for that name befitted the first principle.²⁴¹ Let our ascent, then, be made: as from the differentiated to the unified, so from all the things that in any way are, called thus or thus — to nothing else than the single fount, undifferentiated still, of the many and diverse subsistences that are divided off from her: a root that has never departed from the one, and for this reason unified, set over the things that grow out of her like countless branches. And there is also something like a trunk from her, which is not yet branches — though what is so viewed is assuredly already partial; but these things are not yet so.²⁴²
[59] And that the intelligible has its substance in the one and about the one, Iamblichus also proclaims in many places. And as the One is not this determined thing, nor that upon which any conception of ours casts itself as upon some one of all things, but, by the indication that runs through this name, leads us up to the before-all — even to that which is the one simple nature of all things: so too what is constituted from That and about That — Being — is none of the many, nor unified to any one of them, nor is it what is viewed according to being alone; rather, by indication, and this the indication of the nature that has gathered all things at once, and is all things. And we call all things beings from the one Being, and that Being so, because it too has been gathered up within itself; while the whole-together has no proper name, since every name is differentiating, and barely lays hold of one property — exactly as definition does. From all things, then, one must ascend to the one crown of all: to the unitary crown, from the henads as they are differentiated; and to the substantial, from the substances.²⁴³

## Chapter 60 — How the Third Proceeds from the Two: the Flight of the First Principles from Being; the Titanic Monad; Being Draws Nigh to Being · pp. 166–170

[60] Come now, let us view how the third proceeds for us from the first two principles, according to Being. That the unified is the one and the many, we gave indication earlier. But how was Being first constituted — how did Being come to subsist, as it were compacted into being? Each of the principles before it fled away from being, and in the better manner: the second into the gaping void of multitude — as it were poured out to infinity, nowhere able to come to a stand, or rather not enduring to, in her longing for the unlimited nature; the first into the simplicity and partlessness of the one — having wished to be nothing other than one, as indeed not even having wished to be. Wherefore the third, first constituted and eager to subsist, furnished the principle of Being: through which everything that subsists is neither one only nor many only, but one and many — or rather unified and multiplied; or the unified alone suffices, since it has within itself the appearance of the multiplied as well. For in the third, neither did the one remain unaffected by the many — it was somehow differentiated in its co-ordering toward the many; nor did the many preserve their own unlimited outpouring — they were twisted together, according to the necessity of the one, which ever bounds what proceeds. Out of both, the unified came to be; and Being bloomed forth upon the constitution and the subsistence.²⁴⁴ And again in another way: the many are of a nature to bring forward the differentiated, and the one to gather these into union. As, then, the second principle is immediately after the first, so the many, in proceeding, proceed about the one — the things from it and by it — and are bound together and called back toward union, because the second principle, too, is seated in the first. What comes of both, accordingly, is neither one only nor many only, but one and many. And this we call Being: having stood out from the one, having stood out from the many, becoming an other, a third, after both — possessing no proper name; for neither were its principles called by proper names; and as they are named, by indication, with the names of the determined things that come after them, so this third principle too is hymned as substance and as Being: because it is the first unified, and one-and-many, as each of the beings is seen to be.²⁴⁵
[60] But if the unified is Being, and each of them is double — either unitary, if by its property it is being and unified, or of itself and according to subsistence being and unified — what is it that has set each apart from the other? For how would the first unified differ from the first unified — the unitary from the substantial? And how could there be a unified according to existence at all, if what is called unified is the thing that has been affected by the one — while the supersubstantial one has not been affected, but wishes to be the very one? — Or rather, it is as body is double: this body here, which stands apart in three ways, and the wholly unextended and bodiless — yet a body nevertheless, according to the paradigmatic property; and soul likewise: the one is she who is called the first generation, the other is intellect and god, according to the stationary property. And the paradigm too — say the beautiful itself and the just itself — is either some intellectual form and a substance, or the preconception in god, and god, as Parmenides says: which is not a substance, but a supersubstantial one — yet beautiful, for all that, and just: the unitary before the eidetic. So also the whole intellect: the one is substance, the other a henad projecting the character of intellect; and life likewise. Just so, then, both Being and the unified: the one will be unitary, the other substantial; yet each is mixed, and out of several — or rather, the unitary is mixed according to the property alone, and out-of-several in the same manner. For it is not because it has several — it is one only — but the one according to the property of the several. And a unitary multitude is as the one number of each: a triadic One, and not the simply one.²⁴⁶ Indeed it is simpler even than the arithmetical one; and since multitude, too, is simpler than number — because number is out of such things: for number is out of many monads, whereas multitude is filled up out of henads; and the monad is many removes below the henad, if we take it as eidetic, together with the number that accords with it. That unified, then, and the several within it, and the mixed, are according to the property alone; and it is a one of such a kind, third from the first — and for this reason a triad, and for this reason the mixed. But Being itself is unified also according to subsistence; and the several in it are differentiated — if not according to number, then according to multitude; or rather not even as the scattered, but as what has grown together within it and is utterly unified.²⁴⁷
[60] But if several are conceived in each, in whatever manner, what would each of them be? A monad it could not be, for the monad has been isolated toward determination — the monad is somehow Titanic; whereas each of the several There does not even wish to be each, but also all the others — or rather, one in place of all, yet having gathered all things; for those are the first fragments of the one, and for this reason each is at once encompassed by the union and compacted together, if it be lawful to say so, before the differentiation; for it is only in labor with differentiation; and the whole differentiation of the several There belongs to the what-it-is.²⁴⁸ Is it then still one, and not yet the unified? Or is the unified itself the birth-pang of the one toward differentiation — being, it seems, nothing else than the one that has conceived the many, and for this reason has stood out from the one? Why, then, must each of the several There be each, rather than unified? But no partition of the unified has yet come to be; for it must pre-exist the things partitioned beneath it. Each, then, is one; and if this, then the whole-together also is one — yet not a unified built of them; for the many points are not a line. And in general: is this one self-complete, or incomplete? If incomplete, how did it proceed There, and from what — the incomplete? But if self-complete, how are the many gods — the third — hymned as one god, and as Being? And how is Being many substances, when we say that it is all things undifferentiatedly? And one might raise this difficulty besides: how shall the several be conceived beforehand, where the mixed is what is spoken of? For the common is always before the proper There; and the unified, or Being, before the differentiated, everywhere and in every way; for even in the last generation there is also the procession from the more complete to the less complete.²⁴⁹
[60] Let us speak, then, calling upon god to take part with us, and indeed to be indulgent to the discourse — which strains, always, after the truth of the single nature of those things, but is dragged aside, through its own weakness, now to these conceptions and now to those. Let us say, then, with regard to the unified: That is the first unified, and unified in the highest degree — so that it is not in any way either differentiated or being-differentiated. It is not, therefore, one-and-many in this sense, as the many after the one; nor mixed in this sense, as the one out of many; but one nature — which, being able to call it neither one nor many, we posited by folding One and Many together, according to the unified: which appeared many just so far as the one stepped down, and one just so far as it transcends the many of differentiation; and this is nothing else than the unified — not wishing to be composite, as one might suppose, but a mean between the one and the many that stand in some differentiation; wherefore it would carry an appearance of differentiation, though not, in reality, differentiation. For why should a mean need to subsist between the things already being differentiated and the wholly one? — a mean which is one still, and yet undifferentiated. And this was the unified; wherefore it also seems to be the first Being — insofar as the conception of Being is neither some simplest thing, nor does it refuse what is in any way multiplied, as the one does; nor yet does it admit differentiation — being one only, and simply Being. For being draws nigh to being, says Parmenides in his verses; wherefore he also calls it one, because only by the one could it have been affected, as Plato would say; and it is none of the many beings, but Being itself. And Being, therefore, like the unified, is immediately what comes after the one, and before all the things that are being differentiated. The unified being supposed by us to be of this kind, the perplexities no longer have any room.²⁵⁰

## Chapter 61 — Existence, Power, Activity: Iamblichus On the Gods; the First Activity Is Reversion; the First Intellect of the Chaldaean Triad; Amelius · pp. 170–173

[61] Come now, by another approach let us demonstrate the third principle — what relation it would have to substance and to Being. We say, surely, that that is, which can do something and act; for what is, as it might seem, but does not act — this we say not even to be. The first principle, then, is viewed according to existence, as in the Oracles; the second is plainly so called according to power; the third, therefore, will take on activity as well: it will be at once existing and empowered and acting; and this is called substance, and Being. And this is why substance comes after existence: because it is with power and activity; while before these is existence — being itself the subsistence-making cause of all things, as power is the empowering cause of all, and as the third principle is what awakens all things into activity, being itself the begetter of every substance that at once exists and is empowered and acts.²⁵¹ And surely every substance is before power and activity; for these come from it; so that the simply substance should not yet have either power or activity. Or rather: she does not have these that come after her, which we posit to be her stretching-out; for in that there is already a certain differentiation; but she has what one might say to be one with the substance that is before power and activity — a power and activity con-substantiated with her, according to which she begets and projects the power and activity that come after herself. This one might leave with the first substance even more connately — power and activity; wherefore before her is power only, with existence; and before power, existence only — in no way whatsoever either power or activity, but the simplest of all things: existence.²⁵²
[61] Is then existing something other than being? — as the philosophers seem to make it, and Iamblichus himself, both elsewhere in many places and in his treatise On the Gods. Or rather: being is denominated from substance; while substance — even if you take the one before power and activity — is con-substantiated out of three peculiar characters: the subsistence-making, which we also call existing, and which is sometimes called being as well; the powerful, which is the fertile element of existence; and the active, which by now stretches out toward the things outside and displays its own use. And as these are separated in conception, we are led up to what is simpler, by indication, concerning the first principles: from existing alone, to the first — to which we were led up also from the one, and from limit, and from several other names; and from power, which also has existence, to the second.²⁵³ In this way, then, existence is other than substance: as one property stripped bare of the others, toward the indication of the first principle. But, to speak according to subsistence, existence would even be the same as substance — wherever, that is, it has truly subsisted together with power and activity. For the things before these are before all existence too, and one only, as has been said many times; whereas existence and power and activity subsisted from Being, and in Being first — save that in Being, both power and activity are according to existence, as we said; while in the second order of the intelligibles, both existence and activity are according to power — for all things stretch out into what is being differentiated, in whatever manner; and in the third order, both existence and power are according to activity — which is by now a limit of the intelligible, and in a certain manner stretched toward what is outside. Wherefore the first activity is that of the intelligible intellect. And what, indeed, would be the first of all activities, if not the one that reverts from the third to the first? For that of the second is not yet activity — for there is not yet any standing-away from being, but only, as it were, a preparation; just as that of the first is not even a preparation for standing away, but being only — needing neither power nor activity.²⁵⁴
[61] In this way, then, one may view these things according to the more manifest and transitive form of conceptions; but to speak more unsayably, and by indication: the hypostasis of Being — which is the subsistence of the third principle — holds the third rank according to activity, since in it is the active, even though that active is what has grown together with existence. This, then, as it were gives form to the third; the second is power, because she is the first stretching-out, in whatever manner, and not yet proceeding into activity; and the principle of the one is conceived as the first existence, by indication; for the one is what gives subsistence to all things, while to it nothing gives subsistence. For it would no longer be one, if it were itself something, and participated in a giver of subsistence before itself. So that through all these considerations it is plain that Being is the third principle.²⁵⁵
[61] In the same way it will be shown, too, that the first intellect is the third principle, according to the triad hymned in the Chaldaean manner. For intellect first stood away from its cause, and turned back toward it, and exercised this first activity. For what is still in the act of proceeding has not yet stood away; and what does not stand away has no need of reversion; for reversion is the setting-right of the standing-out. For if Being is the third, it is the first to act; and this acting is to revert toward the cause; and what is of such a kind is intellect: what follows is plain. And if the third is intellect, it is the first intelligible; and the intelligible is substance: the first substance — which they call existence. And if the first is existence by indication, it is plain that the third, too, is intellect by indication, as standing toward that first intelligible. And if the third is the first intellect, this is what first proceeded from the one and turned back toward the one — and this is the first unified. And if the third was the first to escape the principles of Being that pour over it — bound and unboundedness alike — having itself first become a determined one, and as it were congealed into subsistence (and this was Being): then the intellect so called by indication would come to the same as what is properly the first Being. Wherefore it is hymned also as substantial intellect — characterized not according to intellection, but according to being; and if Amelius wishes to speak in this way, let him call intellect this.²⁵⁶

## Chapter 62 — What Do We Mean by Being? The Sophist's Power; Strato of Lampsacus; the Etymologies of Existing and Subsisting · pp. 173–175

[62] Come, let us examine again from the beginning: what do we even mean when we say Being? What is this property? What else, I shall say, than the one signifying the being of each thing? For there is no other way to conceive the properties than through themselves; and they are more distinct when made known through themselves than through other things. For man signifies what it is, more than rational mortal animal does. And in the case of the simple genera it is not even easy to define through elements; for there are properties, some simpler — such as those of the first forms — and some more composite — such as those of the things composed out of the former, as the animal is from the genera of Being, or whatever things are composed from these. Being, then, will be what furnishes to each thing its very being, and that whereby it is being. And as the is is a bond of the other verbs and nouns, so Being is for you a bond of all the forms — like a root of every form, from which each and every form grows out and is settled; save that the one is a root even of this root, a simpler one.²⁵⁷
[62] Concerning the order of the forms, or of the genera, it is not now proposed to inquire. But Plato, in defining Being, attempted to make it known from activity; for what is able to act and to suffer — this, he says, we call Being. Then — whether being wary of giving the cause its subsistence as standing or as moved, he declares it to be neither standing nor moved; or because, being unable to seize, in the double character of this activity of acting and suffering, anything common to both — in the way that the being-able goes forth as each before each — he fled down upon the power, and made this to be Being: as if one should attempt to make even power known from activity. For power is of such a kind as activity still remaining within; as activity is power that has already gone forth toward the outside; and substance is of such a kind, remaining wholly within, as power preparing itself for motion.²⁵⁸ Looking to this, it seems to me, Strato too declared Being to be remaining — since he saw that power is the stretching-out of Being. But he ought to have observed besides that even if remaining coexists with being, it is nevertheless not the same; as the conceptions clearly distinguish, knowing being as one thing and remaining as another. For a thing must first be, and then remain or be moved. And remaining is opposed to being-moved — for remaining and standing are the same; whereas being either has no opposite at all, or only not-being, as Plato in many places sets them against each other. So that one would straightway define Being to be subsistence. But this conception is carried back to the same point as Strato's; for to subsist is something denominated from standing; and if anyone makes subsistence carry a proper signification of its own, let him say from what this disclosure has been formed — if not, surely, from the is; but that signifies being: so once again the thing is explained through itself.²⁵⁹
[62] But perhaps being should rather be called existing; for substance is existence, as we say. Yet if the thing is to be pursued according to the name, this would signify some second principle, subordinated to the prior one; and perhaps Being would then be a second principle, coming after the principle of the one that is ranked before it. And if, by a certain usage, we should take the word as signifying being, we cannot say from what it has been formed, such that existing should be the disclosure of being; so that I would not come to know being through existing, but the contrary. Perhaps, indeed, only being discloses the nature of the thing together with the conception; since the other names are taken from the properties that sit alongside it or are conceived along with it — properties which There are undifferentiated, but which in our intellections are differentiated shapelessly: such as existing and subsisting — the latter as not yet having made procession; the former as ranked under the very first principle. And in this way you would find each of the other names, too, affected from some property — even the stranger among the names: such as to-come-to-be, because it runs toward a telos, and the telos is somewhere near — wherefore it is even disputable of what the striving is: of being, or of the One alone; for the striving after well-being is for the both-together. And to-be, because it draws nigh, and wishes to be near, the one. And to-be-preserved: for being is somehow of this kind, because it is intact and sound, and nothing is lacking to it; for it is all things. And to-attain, if ever it should signify being, even when said by itself: because, before all things, it is attaining of the common telos, and filled full of the good. But of such matters, enough.²⁶⁰

## Chapter 63 — Being from Going: the Cratylus Etymology; the Philosopher's Dream; All Things Become of One Another by the Exchange of Friendship · pp. 175–178

[63] But the name Being itself — whence does it come? Or is it from the source that Socrates in the Cratylus divines: from going? For it would be going (ion); and — the hovering of the sound being still more analogous — it should be written with the diphthong; whence Homer says: let us go, as he commanded, up through the thickets. Of this verb, they say, the participle would arise — both ion and on; which means that Being is this: what is of a nature also to act, like the acting thing — as that definition says, the able.²⁶¹ What then: is Being alone the acting? Or also the beautiful, and the good — and indeed the one and the many, the as-it-were genera, and rest, and motion? For every form whatsoever has some power and some activity. But perhaps: insofar as each is being, in this respect it is also acting — or is it a substance? Yet motion and rest also act — a motive activity and a static one; and in the same way each is also able, with a power of its own peculiar manner, apart from its substance. Or rather: the name and thing of Being is in this way common over all — not according to the conception of the one genus, the Being which we say is counter-divided from the other genera, but according to what is said to be of each thing in actuality: whether this be said relative to the in-potency of each, or relative to the becoming of each — which the having-already-become being discloses; as a certain dream also disclosed to me, saying that Being is this: what of each thing is the in-actuality. And this is by now common to all things, as being according to the substance which we are accustomed to counter-divide against power and activity.²⁶² For if there is, properly, an activity of each of the forms or genera, why not also a substance, according to some common disclosure, as there are each of those? But perhaps this substance, too, is by-named from Being — as activity is motion, and named from motion.
[63] Perhaps, indeed, power too is motion; for each of the two is a stretching-out of substance; but rest also acts and is able. Or does it act because it too participates motion — as, participating Being, it is substance by participation? But, first, the genera participate one another according to their own subsistence, before power and activity — sameness and otherness at once, one and many, limit and unlimited, according to their substances first — and hence rest and motion likewise; motion, therefore, does not lie in the activities and powers alone. Next, the powers and the activities also participate the other genera, and Being itself; or rather, each substance participates each of the substances, each power each of the powers, each activity each of the activities. Further: substance is counter-divided against activity, and power is the mean of these, spoken toward each of the two; whereas motion is spoken against rest alone — neither against substance, nor as some mean of rest and motion.²⁶³ And further still: we do not project the same conceptions when we hear to be moved and to act; for conceiving standing, and resting, and sleeping, and all such things as acts, we conceive them not as movements but as the contrary; for standing is contrary to being moved; and if acting belongs to both, being-moved could not be its contrary. And if we call the common element motion, what shall we say standing is? For rest must always be set in opposition to motion; and if power is motion, what would rest be? For there is nothing that is opposed to activity and to power except substance, in a certain manner; substance, therefore, will be rest. And this, I suppose, is the thesis of Strato — which did not seem sound. And if substance is generative of power and, after it, of activity, while motion is some one of the many genera, just as rest is: then motion is counter-divided against Being; it is not, therefore, its offspring and a kind of stretching-out of it — since the one does not participate the other any more than the converse. For each of them, by itself, is what it is; and thereupon all things become of one another, according to the reciprocal exchange of friendship; so that Being, too, participates both motion and rest; so that motion is not from Being, nor is it the activity of Being as its source. For how shall the effect impart anything to its cause — the begotten to its begetter?²⁶⁴

## Chapter 64 — Activity Is Not Motion: Suffering as Work; the Dancing and the Dance; Every Form Has Its Activity · pp. 178–179

[64] Apart from these considerations: acting is a kind of activity — but suffering, how could it be an activity? Yet suffering, too, is a motion; and the patient has its acting in just this — in suffering: its suffering is its work; as one might say of matter that its one and only work is to suffer, though acting does not even belong to it. Now activity is the fulfillment of the proper work; and power is the preparation of activity. But if activity is conceived as this — the rendering of the work that accords with nature — then we must inquire what the work is: whether it is something other than the working, or the very same thing. If the same, then substance too will appear to be activity — and so, on this showing, rest as well, and every form and genus; and motion will not alone be the work; and the argument will demand the whole rendering of the work over and above the work, and so it will demand activity likewise; and activity, therefore, is not motion, but rather work. But if the work is the former — something other than the working — then there will be a work of motion also: to move the things that are; there will therefore be an activity of motion as well, being the rendering of its work.²⁶⁵ And if this rendering is the work itself, it is no doubt absurd to say that activity — being the laborious fulfillment of the work — is the very work. But if the work lies in the rendering, and the work is itself the fulfilling — as the dancing is the dance — still there will be some product of such an activity, for the sake of which the activity is projected; for every activity is for the sake of something, and is not itself, in the primary sense, that for whose sake. Indeed motion, too, moves; for motion imparts this its peculiar character, as rest imparts standing; so that motion will act, exactly as rest does; activity, therefore, is not motion.²⁶⁶
[64] And if motion, insofar as it is motion, is nothing other than motion, while activity connotes, by its very name, also the work that is being accomplished — and is, moreover, as numerous as the things that act: the activity of a man is a man acting, and that of a horse, a horse; for activity, too, is a kind of whole form — how could it be motion, or motion only? Or will one say that activity is not the motion that is a property, but a kind of composite form — even if it is given its form rather by motion, according to predominance? Or rather: activity can be both composite — the activity of composites — and simple — that of simples; for, in general, motion too has an activity: both the simple motion (not insofar as it is being), and the composite, supposed as a form.²⁶⁷ These things, then, have been said even beyond measure, because of the disagreement concerning them with the philosophers, who are accustomed to say constantly that this — activity and motion — is one thing. This, however, it is necessary to add: if activity is not motion, is it some form, itself as well, so that the others act by participation, just as they are moved and stand through motion and rest? Or is it the stretched-out element of each of the others — as it were a procession of each thing from itself into itself, or toward another?²⁶⁸

## Chapter 65 — The Same Difficulties about Power; the Three Folded Together in the First Mixed; Being, the Most Unified of the Genera; Mixedness · pp. 179–182

[65] One might raise the same difficulties about power as well. If one should give the second answer, whence does this property — the being-able, and the acting — come to the others? For in each thing, the being what it is, and the being-able, and the acting, are different. But if the first answer, then activity and power are not the procession of each thing. Or rather: procession too is one property; and so is differentiation; and everything that has some marked-off conception is assuredly a property; for it is some differing thing, and this from a principle of its own peculiar manner — not to be saved out of the spontaneous — if indeed there is a difference of things, and not of names only.²⁶⁹ And further, the philosophers themselves say that power begins from the first Power, as existence from the first Existence, and activity from the third and mixed principle — because in this the activity appeared third, as having proceeded after power; whereby it is also plain that activity is not motion; for the genera of Being are not yet There. Are then activity and power and existence in the first mixed? And yet that, surely, was unified! Or must we confess that these too have been unified — that no stretching-out has yet proceeded, but the three are folded together and unified with one another; or rather, that they have not yet even been differentiated, the three being one — the so-called mixed, as was said before.²⁷⁰
[65] Accordingly we say that being is the activity of Being — although it signifies, rather, its nature; and if it also makes-being, still its character is being, and its making-being is in this manner. For the activity of intellect is clear — concurrent with the substance and as it were compacted with it; but the activity of Being is the substance itself; while that of life carries an appearance of separation; for we say that life lives, and the living seems to be something other than life, and yet it is, for all that, itself upon her; for it signifies being-life. In the case of souls there are both the activities that run concurrent according to substance, and others that have flowed from the substance — as with the enmattered forms, where the substances themselves have flowed out toward the exterior. But these things belong to another discourse.²⁷¹ As to whether being is the same as Being — as the activity of the substance gathered in the middle, together with its power: Being is one of the genera — for this is what we conceive — and being belongs, determinately, to this genus; but That we named from this by indication, as has been said — or rather from each substance, against which its proper activity and power were counter-divided. So it is plain that the genus Being, too, is unified — since in its case as well being is the same as the being, and the activity the same as the substance. The unified, then, would not be exempt from the summit of beings, nor from the intelligible union-mass, as we were saying — since it belongs even to the genus, which is by now a form, or something near a form; just as we conceive nothing simpler than the property of the one — and yet the one is a genus, marked off from the what of the others; and it is by now composite, if it is some one of the genera or forms, though by its property nevertheless simple. As motion is one thing and rest another, so Being too is, in one way, unified by its property — and Being the same as being; yet it is, for all that, some one of the many genera, and counter-participates them.²⁷²
[65] Then indeed it will even be convicted of not being a true unified — because it is counter-divided against the others, and has suffered division toward them; so that it is also divided. And further, it counter-participates the others, so that the others appear plainly within it, just as it appears in them. How then is it exactly unified? For in this way the one, too, is caught out: not being really one, since it participates the others and is determined against them; and yet it wishes to be the very one — what it is according to its own fore-shining nature of peculiar manner; wherefore it seemed best-natured of all toward the indication of the cause that is all things — or rather, that is beyond all — according to one all-bearing simplicity. So too, then, this Being — the most unified of all the genera — would justly be indicative of the principle that is unified according to the single summit of all beings. And perhaps, the principles containing all things and being all things, the things that come from them are wound off from them, each different according to a different property, being differentiated and brought to a stand.²⁷³ For that unified summit does not stand according to the unified that is counter-divided toward the differentiated — for so it would not be complete — but according to what is above both, and, to speak more truly, above all things, and has gathered all things in itself; since the one, too, that was indicated before all, was not determined against the others, nor simple as against some composite, but is what has snatched itself away before all things — before the composites and the simples, the many, and the one that is set against them. But since of such transcendences we possess no conception to bring forward, we are content to give indication of those natures from what we have — compelling, by the argument, the things we conceive to take the lower honor beside the self-sufficient positions surmised of those most venerable principles. If, then, the one is simple — yet as among genera, and as among forms, and according to the property alone, as the form is good by its formhood, and beautiful, and whatever else of the kind — in the same way it is also one, and unified, and Being.²⁷⁴
[65] One might pause, however, on whether the unified is some property of its own apart from Being — and Being participates it most of all things; unless, indeed, the participation of the one is what makes the unified, as that of multitude makes the multiplied. If this be so, Being would be the first participant of many and one — and most of all, of the one. But if the mixed also takes its beginning from some source, and there is some existence of such a kind, through which every form is mixed, then the unified too would be something of its own — the summit of this mixed. And how should there not be the simply mixed, if the particular mixeds exist — man, horse, and animal; and, in general, the substance mixed out of the genera; and, to speak universally, the composite form, from which being-composite comes to the other composites; and one is justified in calling a thing mixed and composite according to the simple property of the form or the genus — a property which might be called mixedness, set in opposition to simplicity. But about these things hereafter.²⁷⁵

## Chapter 66 — The In-Actuality as Each Thing's Standing; Partitioned about Her; Neither One nor Being — Plato's One Being and the Middle Nature of Soul · pp. 182–185

[66] Running back at last to the beginning, let us say to ourselves: Being is according to what of each thing is in actuality — whereby not Being alone, but each of the others also is being: motion, and rest; for each of these is a substance, against which activity is spoken, and power — each of the two from the substance; and what each thing is, is activity even according to its existence already; for the in-potency stands somewhere relative to the in-actuality, and not after it, as in things that advance from the less complete to the more complete. The in-actuality, then, means the already-proper existence of each thing, according to which it stands.²⁷⁶ And before all the severals of this kind there is the simply Being itself — which is also simply activity. For That stood first according to its own activity, as what is before it stood according to power, and what is still before this according to bare existence — to speak by indication only; since these coexist with one another: existence and power and activity; and this is substance — an existence at once powerful and active; which is substance in actuality, and with activity. For what else does in actuality disclose, than already with activity — as in potency means with some power? The in-actuality, then, comes to the same thing: to a being that acts in this manner and first projects activity. But There the three are still unified — activity, power, existence; for she is existence alone, having, in mere existing alone, both the being-able and the acting; for by being she both is able and acts; and the three are being alone.²⁷⁷
[66] And what wonder, if the summit of beings stands thus, when even Being the genus seems to stand thus, as was said — save that the genus, perhaps, does so according to the character of its property (as the one is simple, though not simple), whereas That does so according to the complete, undifferentiated subsistence before all things; and in the middle of the intelligible even these are being prepared toward differentiation. In the third, therefore, substance is first as such, and in some manner stretches itself out toward power and activity — wherefore intellect is said to intelligize, and to revert toward the intelligible, and to be king of the intellectuals and, in general, of the things that have proceeded from it; and yet even these activities are compacted with the substance and never depart from it — activities none the less. For how else is intellect of such a kind than as being in activity by its very substance, as that man says? But in the summit of beings, power and activity are drunk down by the existence — being one with it nevertheless. Wherefore the existence There is not bare, but already substance, as was said before.²⁷⁸ And what is there strange in this, when not even one thing is transparent in That? For it has nothing of the determined things appearing in it part by part; it is one all-holding gathering above all things — which we do not yet know, because we are unable to bring forward, for the conceiving of it, an intuition complete and made equal to it; and setting ourselves to conceive it as we are able, we partition it — or rather, we are ourselves partitioned about it.²⁷⁹
[66] And again, from the beginning, we gather her up, toward the indication of the complete and, at once, before-all single crown; and if we claim just this of her, she is neither Being nor substance — since she is not characterized according to these either, but is beyond these, as beyond the rest; so that That is not even intelligible. What then would it be? Surely not one; first, because it is distinguished even from the one; and if one calls it so by indication — in what would the third principle differ from the first of the three? for that, too, is a one of this kind. Must we then say: the unified itself, alone? And indeed, how should there fail to be some mean of the one and Being — the mean which one would call the unified, for lack of a proper name? For why are there meannesses of all the other things, though they differ by a whole genus in procession, and yet none of the supersubstantial and substance — of one and being? Since Plato too, as it seems, having seen just this, in the Parmenides has called it neither one nor being, but the whole One Being — through lack of a proper appellation, wishing to present the mean from its extremes; just as he makes the soul, too, known from the things lying on either side of her — she being a mean — calling her between the partless substance and the substance that is partitioned about bodies; although she also is one single nature, and not, as it might seem, compounded from the extremes.²⁸⁰ Just so, then, the One Being also is not some composite, nor two things — the one leading and the other following, as the philosophers expound it — but one nature of both, in the middle of the one and of Being: already slackened from the simplicity of the one, and not yet projecting the gathering of Being.²⁸¹

## Chapter 67 — Why Being? Why Intelligible? Iamblichus on the Intelligible about the One; the Plain of Truth; Orphic Night, Nurse of Kronos · pp. 185–187

[67] But why do we call That Being, when we call it all things? And why intelligible, when it has taken in the intellectual and the sensible as well, by the power of cause? For it is not even the unified, as was said before — this thing we conceive as not yet being differentiated, and as set against them — but, by indication, the before-all. How else does Iamblichus, expounding the intelligible, say that it has its subsistence about the one, and is never-departing from the one — unless he too conceives along with us what we call the unified and the One Being: as not yet really being, nor yet some one, but ranked through the middle of both?²⁸² And besides this, after the One Being he sets substance over against the one, having differentiated the two at the summit of the intellectuals — where he also brought to light, together with them, the divine otherness; so that, before these, it was not possible to determine that one of them is the one and the other being, lying under the one; rather, the both-together is One Being — not as a mixture out of each, but as a mean of both, and, as it were, a forward-stepping of the one into Being. Indeed, when Plato made his cutting of it, did he not divide the whole into one and being? — and he made each of the two portions a one-being; and if he says that the one and being are parts of the One Being, nevertheless, proceeding a little, he made it quite plain that neither is being without the one, nor the one without being. And if each seems to be determined as participating the other, still this serves as disclosive of the nameless meanness — as if one should say that the partless in soul is one thing, and participates the partible, and the partible another, participating the partless: whereas each must be conceived according to the single both-together nature, which is somehow unmixed, and simple relative to the partible and the partless.²⁸³
[67] And if one calls it intelligible, we shall say that this is another intelligible — or it is as we say that Being is knowable; for the knowable is counter-divided against knowledge; but That is all things, and counter-distinguished against nothing; nor is it the one alone — which alone escaped intellection; and besides, let it be intelligible in this way: as Being. But neither does it have Being transparent in it; for it is all things undifferentiatedly; and the intelligible, accordingly, is of the same kind; for its being is not one thing to itself and another to its intelligible — since then it would not be truly unified — rather, it is all things, the intelligible included; and the most venerable things are drunk down within it; or rather: Being, and the intelligible, and the most venerable and honorable things, are the more appropriated and assimilated to it; wherefore it even seems to be these very things — though it is not, in truth.²⁸⁴ And perhaps in the Phaedrus, too, he gives indication of this very point — saying that the souls, having taken their stand upon the circuit of heaven, behold the things beyond heaven: that substance, surely, which is without color and without shape and intangible, beingly being — which he justly called also the plain of truth; and that the soul is nourished from the meadow There — the intelligible substance being There. And still more plainly in the Cratylus he says the same; for having made heaven the one that looks upon the things above — and clearly the first that does so — it is plain that he means by what it sees, the first visible, that which lies proximately above it.²⁸⁵
[67] And Orpheus, too, seems to know Kronos as intellect — as both the whole myth concerning him shows, and the epithet crooked-counselled; and to know Night as the first substance and nurse of all things — hymned, for this very reason, as having nursed Kronos himself above all: as being, in the station of the intelligible, the nurse of intellect; since for the intelligizer its intelligized is nourishment, according to the Oracle. The theologian says, at any rate: And out of them all, Night nourished and reared Kronos. Since even if Zeus drinks down him who is before him, yet he does so through her, and him who abides at her side; and perhaps it is also in labor with something intelligible — the consummation of the unified. But of these things, enough.²⁸⁶

## Chapter 68 — The Contrary Hypothesis: One and Being Yoked without an Entering-Wedge; Vehicle and Rider; the Battle about a Name Only · pp. 187–189

[68] One might also advocate the contrary hypothesis, saying: after the supersubstantial, what would one take other than substance and the unified? What else could one name it than the being that has been affected by the one, as says the Eleatic Stranger in the Sophist? And how is the unified not the gathering of all beings and of all substances? And the one substance is also the gathering of them all, as we were saying; wherefore it is one being, because unified — for there is also something differentiated. And if it is as henad and being, the both-together according to one nature, the middle one — still, because the one stepped down, while Being, as first, is most one-like, it is not easy to distinguish the vehicle and the rider — or rather the haver and the had — because everywhere the firsts resemble, as closely as may be, the things before them.²⁸⁷ For this reason, then, he called the both-together not one and being, but One Being — giving indication of the unspeakable union of the unified being toward the one; since he made it plain that it is not as something ordered, by saying that the one participates and the other is participated. Moreover, in the first of the hypotheses he takes being away from the one, and posits the one, for a while, without being; then, indeed, he removes even this. And as in that hypothesis he removes two, so in the second he posits two. The One, then, and Being are yoked together, being two, to one another; and they hold of each other so connately as to leave no entering-wedge for what would differentiate them; for so there would be otherness; but where otherness too found room — the union having been slackened because of the procession — there substance was counter-distinguished against the one, as a vehicle against its rider; and she became the principle of the intellectuals, which have their being in differentiation.²⁸⁸ Wherefore each of the things here has become one and many; and for this reason, in this order, substance too has become pure, stripped in some manner of the one; and the many subsisted from that point — whereas before, the multitude was in the unified by appearance only. Whence Iamblichus also declared that the intelligible remains in the one, because it is the more unified toward it, and is given its form according to it rather than according to Being.²⁸⁹
[68] Assuredly, nothing is determined within it — not substance, not intelligible, not anything else; but in this it has its being: in being all things according to gathering; and this is its character, and the intelligible of Being is all things; for it is — but intelligibly, says the Oracle; for it gathers all our intellections into one, and makes one complete intellection, taken together out of them all, undifferentiated and truly unified — such as Iamblichus wishes the intellection of that intelligible to be. And if elsewhere he indicates that substance is the summit of the intellectuals — whether he, or Plato, or any other of the divine men — there is nothing strange in it; for the pure substance, even according to Iamblichus, appeared in this order; and this would be the intellectual summit, being intellectual substance; and that means: determined by itself, and turned back under the one as other to other, according to the substantial and unitary otherness that shone forth There.²⁹⁰
[68] And yet, while seeming to contradict much, we appear to be waging the battle about a name only. For if we call substance that which is already being differentiated, the unified would not be substance of that kind; rather, substance is that which, after the unified, has become one and many; whereas that was one-many as unified. But if one should call this too substance, according to the indications we have stated, there is nothing strange in supposing that, before the substance that is differentiated into many through otherness, there is the wholly unified and un-othered substance. Wherefore, otherness not yet having shone forth, the One did not seem to stand apart from Being, but to be as it were con-fused toward it; and this is the meanness we were seeking, of the one and of Being — the connate growth of the two.²⁹¹ Or perhaps, between the one and the unified being, the many stand in the middle: being one still, not yet unified, but many as one still and in process of being unified — if indeed as participating the one, insofar as they are many by property; while the unified stands between the one, however spoken, and the determined substance. Or rather, in place of all these, that must be said which is most true: that what is called the supersubstantial one is neither being nor one — not, in truth, the one that is counter-divided against Being, as a rider riding upon a vehicle, or counter-divided in any way at all — but above both: even that which someone says is both One and Being. There is, however, the one before both, viewed in one simplicity as the both-together; and as this is one, of such a kind is That unified — not one of the pair, nor the unified of the pair, but the unified before both, as that was the one before both. For as the one leads each of the two, having pre-taken each insofar as it is simple, so the unified too has pre-taken the unified of them toward each other — their connate-grown union — and leads both the one and Being: as before both, and the union-mass of both. The one before both, then, is both according to the simplest — which is also simply supersubstantial; while the unified before each is both according to what is connate-grown of both, above both, so as to impart these to them. Third comes the connate growth as of things now other; wherefore otherness also co-appears with it. Above stand the two — but according to the unified before both; and highest of all, above both — but according to the one. Wherefore Plato, after the One Being, differentiated substance and one from each other — by now through a certain otherness.²⁹²

## Chapter 69 — The Mean as One Nature: the Blending before the Blended; Body, Soul, and Intellect Mounted in Order; Plato's Three Hypotheses Vindicated · pp. 189–192

[69] The mean, then, is neither one nor being, but One Being: as one nature that has pre-taken both — the things differentiated below — according to the unified. Let no one say, accordingly, that this meanness is simply substance, nor simply one; rather, either a meanness of both, imaged toward each of the two as the other; or one as being at once, and being as one; or the both-together One Being, according to the as-it-were blending that is before the things blended out of differentiation — so that it is at once substance and one. But insofar as it is one, we have no name to utter — unless someone should say unified One, the one being shown forth in this together with the unified, which latter was an appearance of Being. Yet neither is the one in this by participation, nor being according to existence; for it is not yet being, nor yet one; for what is before the unified was neither of the two, but itself the both-together, according to one simplicity capable of carrying both. Wherefore after it, and from it, each of the two proceeded — the One separately, and Being — the one leading, the other following, having stood apart from each other in some manner through otherness; just as from the demiurgic intellect, which is all things together, there proceeds the whole bodiform nature, and the soul riding upon this, and, further, intellect mounting upon her.²⁹³ And if the three are in the demiurge according to cause, why should not the one and Being likewise be in the unified — though not by determined causes? For There is no determination as yet, but one cause-form existence of both — the existence of what is truly unified. So that, summing up, one should claim: what is called One by indication is not even one, in truth; the many spoken after it, by indication, are a meanness, and as it were a forward-stepping of that toward the unified — a descent of the first principle into the subsistence of the third; and the summit of the unified is this third principle, being the unified existence of the whole unified order. For after her comes what is being differentiated of it — of whole and of parts — as expressive of the unified: as if one should call it a birth-pang of the unified's differentiation, and as it were a preparation of it. And after this meanness is the base of the intelligible — the differentiated of the unified nature; wherefore even the things There that have in any way stood apart are unified still; and each of them is such that it falls short in nothing of the two sections — neither of the one nor of being — as says the Platonic Parmenides. And the intelligible intellect — which is what is intelligibly differentiated — must be viewed as divided into unifieds, not indeed into forms; unless one makes the union-masses paradigms of the eidetic paradigms. This, then, must be surmised to stand thus.²⁹⁴
[69] And that Plato too plainly embraces this hypothesis — namely, that he posits the first as neither of the two, the second as the both-together according to the unified, and the third as each separately — he showed: by denying of the first both being and the one; by gathering together, in the middle, the One Being; and, upon these, by setting the one and being apart, together with the otherness — of whatever kind, and operating in whatever manner — that makes them stand apart. Since only thus, indeed, would we barely escape the ancient perplexity. For how could anyone rank what is primally Being — which we claimed to be also the unified — completely, as substance, before life and intellect, there being no determination There; although life is determined off from intellect, and substance from life? How could there be determination, otherness not yet existing? And how could the wholly first unified be determined against an other? So it is plain that substance — as substance alone, relative to life — has appeared as what is viewed together, by this alone, with the peculiar character of life, along with a certain property; whereas the truly unified is neither life as yet, nor intellect, nor substance — except by some analogy, or by that cause-form appearance which even the philosophers sometimes intend when they say this — but all things, undeterminedly, and according to the unified pre-eminence before all; wherefore the unified is counter-distinguished against nothing, being all the things that are determined, part by part, in our conceptions. Concerning the unified, then, in relation to one and substance, these things must be conceived, so far as is possible.²⁹⁵
[69] And if, in what went before, we posited the third principle as unified according to Being, and made this double — the substantial and the unitary — yet now, having folded the two together into the one before both, and having ranked the differentiated two lower than the intelligible, we have seemed to speak in accord both with Plato and with the intelligible itself — wholly unified, and wound up together about the Good, according to Iamblichus — to which we have dedicated the most august of our conceptions. And further, we shall easily transfer what was then syllogized to what has now been decided; for all those things were said concerning the first mixed; and the first mixed, in the present arguments, has appeared to be the as-it-were both-together before the one and Being.²⁹⁶

## Chapter 70 — Is the Unified Knowable? The Great Iamblichus; the Oracles on the Flower of Intellect and the Turned-Away Eye · pp. 192–196

[70] Since, then, drawn on by the argument, we have ascended in due course to the most august and most unified crown of that subsistence of things which is never divided, come now, let us justly inquire in what sense we call it intelligible. That it is graspable neither by opinion, nor by discursive reason, nor by the intellective intellect, nor by intellection accompanied with reason, but only by the complete watchtower of intellect; and that it is not seizable by the flower of intellect, nor by intuition at all, nor according to any determined leaning-upon, nor according to embrace, nor knowable in any such manner — all this we must concede to the great Iamblichus when he claims it. But first he must himself be asked: shall we say that it is knowable at all? and that the intelligible — that which fulfills intellection — belongs to the same nature: the unified intellection pre-supposed, before all intellections, in one intelligible simplicity? Or is it unknowable — as being fixed fast, as he says, about the unsayable principle and the Good — yet fulfilling of intellect and generative of it, ranked in the portion of the Good relative to it, and wishing to be the desired of intellect: of intellect not as intelligizing, but as being? For since this man seems to be carried toward each side — or rather makes us be carried about, partitioned around his single intellection — and the argument, if moderately put to the test, will have much pull toward each, consider:²⁹⁷ At once, we say that the knowable is being; but That is above being — even above the being against which the unified stands counter-determined, the unified we placed before both. It is not, then, knowable at all, since it is not even being, simply. Further: if it is knowable before substance, substance too would have to be somehow knowing, so that with knowledge she might revert toward the knowable. But the knowing — intellect — is third from substance, life being the mean of the two, even she in some manner knowing substance, as having something intellect-like toward the intelligible, and as coming after the intelligible; or else substance too must be allowed to have something knowing, as having stepped out from the intelligible — if the unified is of that kind. The knowledge of intellect, then, is of a nature to revert through life toward substance; for intellect belongs to her, and not to the unified — nor is the unified that in which it dwells.²⁹⁸ Third: if the unified is intelligible, as the knowable stands to the knowing, then the intelligible intellect will know the unified before itself; it will not, then, itself be unified; for knowledge is an activity determined off from substance, even if concurrent with substance; and, in general, the knower stands in much determination toward the known — and no such thing could arise in the unified. Intellect, at any rate, having stood away from substance, is content to return through knowledge into substance; but if the unified should be known, it will not be unified only, but also knowable; it would not, then, be unified, the knowable being determined within it; and if it should not be knowable of itself, but should have even the knowable undifferentiated along with the rest, it will not be known of itself; rather, there will be union alone — the contact with it, and the reversion. Further: many are the reversions, and three are first — according to substance, according to life, according to knowledge; the last makes the knowing, the middle the living, the first the substantiated, and that which submits to being knowable; but the unified is before all of these; it will have, then, neither the knowing reversion, nor the knowable, nor the middle one. And perhaps the unified is not even of a nature to revert at all — for neither does it proceed; every reversion belongs to what proceeds, and comes after procession; but it stands thus, undifferentiatedly — so that it would be even before substance and before the one, at least the one before substance. And, upon all these: knowledge wishes, in circumscribing, to embrace the known; and everything circumscribed is a form; but the unified is uncircumscribable — completely unknowable, therefore.²⁹⁹
[70] But on the other hand: even if one should suppose That to be unknowable, the argument is baffled; for already we ourselves seem somehow to surmise the unified — that it is before substance, and before the one that is before substance, and, before both, the both-together. And even if we do not yet, still the divine intellect assuredly knows the unified — whatever it means to be — according to the one nature before substance and one. Next: as the unified is before substance and one, surely there would also be, before the unitary knowledge and the substantial, what would be called simply knowledge — being before both, according to the unified nature. For life too being double — substantial and unitary — there would also be the simply life before both, as there is the simply subsistence; and nothing prevents us from speaking of the both-together signified in yet another way: the simply life as a subsistence, and substance likewise — the one according to the summit of the unified, while according to its middle stands what we have called the unified knowledge; and this is the truly intelligible knowledge, and the intelligible life, and the intelligible substance — each having the intelligible in common; and this common element is the unified; for it is all things — but intelligibly, says the Oracle — and that means: undifferentiatedly and unifiedly. There is, then, an intelligible knowledge, and this is the simply knowledge; for it is neither unitary nor substantial, but before both — which is the same as to say, before all knowledges. For the first determination is that of the one and substance; and That is simply life, and likewise substance, according to what is common to the unitary and the substantial. And this intelligible knowledge is of the simply intelligible; and simply intelligible is what is before the intelligible that is determined as unitary against substantial: so that the unified, too, is known — by the unified knowledge.³⁰⁰ Again: if the unified is wholly unknowable, then the one before the unified is still more greatly unknowable; and in that case, by what shall we say that unsayable principle differs from this one, or from the unified? Or are these, too, wholly unsayable? And yet we do conceive how the unified differs from the one, in the way we said before.³⁰¹
[70] Apart from these things, the gods themselves plainly declare that the intelligible is known; they are not only said to be intelligized, and to intelligize. The philosophers, it is true, expound these matters in another way as well — saying that the intelligible lies before intellect not as known but as desired, and that intellect is filled from it not with knowledge but with substance, and with a whole intelligible perfection; for so, in many places, both Iamblichus and those after him maintain. Yet not always so: elsewhere they leave knowledge too in the intelligible and about it — as, in his Chaldaean writings, Iamblichus confessedly does. They call the gods themselves to witness, in the verses where the gods speak to the theurgist: For there is a certain intelligible, which you must intelligize by the flower of intellect; for if you incline your intellect toward it and intelligize it as intelligizing some thing, you shall not intelligize it: for it is the power of an all-round-shining strength, flashing with intellectual cuttings. You must not, then, intelligize that intelligible with vehemence, but with the subtle flame of a subtle intellect that measures all things — except that intelligible; and you must indeed intelligize it: for if only you incline your intellect, you shall intelligize it too — not fixedly, but bearing the pure, turned-away eye of your soul, to stretch an empty intellect toward the intelligible, that you may learn the intelligible: since it exists outside of intellect.³⁰² For these things are said plainly about the intelligible, and about the knowledge that will be able to know it: he instructs what kind of knowledge it would be that shall lay hold of the intelligible — not the vehement knowledge, pressing hard against some known thing, nor the one that hastens to make the intelligible its own, but the one that lets itself go to That, toward the unfolding of itself into it, and is eager to be intelligible rather than intellectual; for it knows that there is no differentiation standing between, in the middle: it presses to be laid up, unified, with the unified, having denied every determination — both its own and that of what is intelligized — declining them not as being, but as not being; nor seeking after anything: being knowledge, the simply and first and most properly so — because it has grown most connately together with its known; not such, however, as the intellectual knowledge, but such as one would truly hymn as intelligible, gathered up into the undifferentiated of the intelligible: Clothed in the all-armored vigor of sounding light, having armed intellect and soul with three-barbed strength, to cast into the heart the watchword of the All-manifold, and not to frequent the empyrean channels scatteredly, but massively.³⁰³ Such things too the oracle-chanting god says about this knowledge; whence one must not be afraid that the circumscription of knowledge, as eidetic, is being brought against the unified; for knowledge of this kind is not such as to circumscribe the intelligible — rather, to be circumscribed by it, and bounded, just so far as it gives itself over into the vision.³⁰⁴

## Chapter 71 — Knowledge Poured Out Whole into That; the Hidden Triad in the Unified; Know Thyself, Ninth from the First Substance; Knowable and Unknowable Together · pp. 196–200

[71] What then — is knowledge not an embrace of the known, and a kind of circumscription? Every knowledge, rather, is itself given form by the known, more than it gives form to the known; and the unified knowledge of the unified does not even subsist in any other way, except by unfolding itself together with the union of That — or, to speak more justly, by letting itself go and being poured out whole into That: attempting, with its own uncircumscribed, to seize the uncircumscribed of That, and making the intelligible the same as itself, it has itself come to belong to the intelligible.³⁰⁵ Nor, indeed, is the peculiar character of reversion alien to the intelligible. For even if it is unified, still there is also a unified procession of it within itself — being, as it were, a birth-pang of the procession below; and likewise what is common with the remaining; and the reversion There will be, as it were, a cause of reversion — itself also hidden. For, to speak generally: the unified, relative to what is called the one before it, has proceeded — so far as it is lawful to say so, and so far as a procession can come from the one; but relative to the principles determined in whatever manner, it still remains about the one and has grown together with it. For it has proceeded only so much as to remain within itself and in no way to have proceeded.³⁰⁶ And if the unified has its substance according to the remaining in the one — as, according to the procession from it, the middle race of the gods, and according to the reversion, the race of the intellectuals — still, viewing these too as within the remaining, there is also of That a first and a middle and a last, as it were by cause, and altogether hiddenly — and this is the very thing we mean by unifiedly. Some reversion of it, then, will appear in truth — the intelligible reversion — though perhaps not the intelligizing one; for it is not knowable in the ordinary way, because even the knowable in it has been gathered up, and as it were drunk down, together with the rest, by the union. Much more, then, is there no knowledge in the unified; for knowledge stands many removes from the knowable — from it, knowledge seems to be a kind of third. And the cognitive is also third among the reversions, if before it is the vital, and before that the substantial; and we say that according to this last is the self-subsistent, according to the middle the self-living, and according to the final one the self-knowing — and the Know Thyself; and the three reversions stand to one another in the proportion that intellect bears to life, and life to substance. Knowledge, then, is ninth from the first substance, which we say is the knowable. And what argument could turn anyone back to supposing so great a differentiation in the unified?³⁰⁷
[71] Or rather, against arguments of this kind, that must be said which was said: that it is we who are partitioned about it — giving up the knowing of all that it is, and how great; not yet projecting intelligible intellection, we who cannot purely and firmly project even the intellectual kind, nor the last kind — I mean the rational — pure and well-jointed; and if we do at all, it is a knowledge hoping to descry from afar something of the truths, and in mere hopes fore-taking, artlessly, the end of its whole eagerness. But the intelligible is all things — but intelligibly, according to the Oracle. There is, then, of it the summit — as it were substance — being the unified of the one and of substance, but before both; and the middle, which is before life, and before the one determined according to life — a certain unified life, homonymous with each of the two below it, because it is neither of them, while pre-existing both. And so the third is the intelligible intellect: being a union-mass of the intelligible and the intellectual one, the both-together before each; whose knowledge is neither unitary nor of the appended intellect, but is itself also one and unified before both; for, standing in any other way, it would not in any manner have fitted the unified. Just so, the knowable too is knowable neither by the unitary knowledge, nor by that of the intellect-according-to-substance, but by the unified, as has been said.³⁰⁸ The knowable, then, belongs neither to the lower substance, nor to the one that leads her; it is the knowable before both, and the really simply knowable; for this belongs to the simply Being; and such is the unified — if indeed it is neither the unitary one, nor as the vehicle of this one.³⁰⁹
[71] Is then to be unified the same as to be knowable? But in that case it would not be knowable of itself; and if it is the same, how is the knowable not determined There? Or rather: divided it must not be — for all things are unified; yet this too, the knowable, is there along with the rest — not in potency but in actuality, according to the gathering that precedes all division. As, then, being one, the whole is knowable by the property of the knowable; for every form is knowable as a whole by the property of the knowable — as it is whole by that of the whole, and beautiful and good by the beautiful and the good. Is it then also unknowable, by the property of the unknowable? Indeed: least knowable, and most unknowable, would be what is beyond all the divided things; and in general the generators are always unembraceable by the generated, and super-simplified beyond their substance — let alone beyond their knowledge. There is in That, accordingly, something unknowable as well — and this rather than the knowable; and yet that first nature is, as we say, intelligible. So it is even most intelligible: by knowledge it is of a nature to be known as most knowable; but far beyond knowledge lies its unknowable — whatever that knowledge be, and of whatever sort it happens to be.³¹⁰ But the knowable-and-unknowable is both in Being, and present in the one, and, before both, in the unified according to the both-together. So then the knowing element too is There according to the unified — pre-existing both the unitary and the substantial knowledge. For as the knowable is unified, so is the co-ordinate knowledge — the intelligible knowledge of the intelligible; and knowledge accompanied by some differentiation comes later, while There both the knowledge is unified and of-the-unified, and the differentiation likewise; for even There, intelligibly, there is a first and a second and a third. If, then, the third should revert, and should know — what wonder? Nor is it necessary that substance be cognitive because the unified stands before her; for it is not the case that, because That has all things intelligibly, according to the Oracle, all things are thereupon in each of the determined things; for all things are wound off out of the unified, each according to its proper determination: the one, substance, life, the one of life, intellect, the intellectual one. And substance is not, on this account, life. There is also in the unified the life, according to the analogy of the unified before both; nor, then, is substance intellect, nor cognitive, merely because in the unified the third element is cognitive; for from the knowable above is made manifest the knowable below; from the knowing, the knowing; and from the middle, the middle. To the perplexities, then, one might respond in this manner, so far as is possible.³¹¹

## Chapter 72 — How Was the First Other Differentiated from Other? Relatives That Do Not Convert; Otherness Is a Form — Matter Is Not Other than Form · pp. 200–202

[72] Again, beginning from another starting-point, let us speak about the knowable and knowledge — and, still before these, about remaining and procession and reversion; for from these accounts it will appear both what the use of knowledge is, and what the knowable; and from these, further, we shall raise the difficulty whether there is any remaining and procession and reversion in the unified. And before everything it must be asked: how was the first other differentiated from an other? For take the first term that is being-differentiated, or has-been-differentiated — let the argument concern the latter: the differentiated [implies], before itself, that from which it has been differentiated — which must itself also be differentiated. But that is not yet the first differentiated; rather, the first differentiated stands third from the unified, the being-differentiated being the middle. How then could the first unified be the first differentiated? For it is from this that the first differentiated thing was differentiated.³¹² Perhaps, then, it is among coordinates that the converse of relatives holds true; for among these, mutual subsistence too is true; but with cause and effect it is not in every way true that they convert. For the effect does not make the cause a cause; on the contrary, the cause makes both the effect, and itself the cause of it. But if it does not also mutually establish, let it nevertheless be relative according to the synonymous relation, as the equal is equal to an equal.³¹³
[72] Or rather: the differentiated differentiated itself from the first within itself — and not within that first — having made the differentiation by its own stepping-down; just as the material body was differentiated from the immaterial by the form's inclination toward matter, while the immaterial nevertheless passes even through the enmattered, not admitting the differentiation. In this way, then, body stood apart from soul; yet intellect passes through all the seconds, and soul likewise. Or this is true, and nevertheless intellect too was differentiated from soul, and soul from body, by the change of their subsistences — so that, once again, the differentiated is differentiated from a differentiated, even if the mode of differentiation is different for each. For the beautiful is other than the just, both being others; but the otherness is not the same, except in the genus of the property; for in the very respect in which the forms differ from one another, so too do the genera that fill them out.³¹⁴ But surely the other is not always other than an other; rather, only when each of the two is a form. The form, at any rate, is other than matter; yet matter is not other than form — because no otherness fills her out; for otherness is itself a form, and she is formless; so that the form was differentiated from matter, but matter was not differentiated from form — because differentiation, too, was a form, and a thing arising only in forms. And above, likewise: the first differentiation is the form's, from the super-eidetic — which remains undifferentiated; for being super-eidetic, it could not suffer anything form-like; and being-differentiated is such a thing. The differentiated, then, is not in every case differentiated from a differentiated; the first differentiated — or the last — would not stand so.³¹⁵
[72] What then? Does not each of the two stand from itself — the one matter only, the other form only; and the one, if it so chance, being only, the other intellect only? Indeed, neither of the two is the other; rather, by as much as the second stepped down into a differentiation of nature, by so much the first is exempted into an unconfused pre-eminence relative to the second; nor shall we be at variance — provided only the mode of the differentiation is not the same. For the immortal is differentiated from the mortal, and the mortal from the immortal; yet the differentiation is not the same in each, since in the one it is immortal, in the other mortal; and in the eternal both the differentiation and the otherness are eternal, while in the temporal each of the two is temporal. So it stands also with the ungenerated toward the generated, the paradigmatic toward the iconic, the rational toward the irrational; for all things are in each according to its own peculiar-natured manner. So, then, differentiation everywhere stands, and otherness — and indeed sameness as well, even if she seems to work connate growth. For if man and horse are the same insofar as they are animals, still the animal is other in each; so that the form of sameness too, whatever it is, is one thing in horse and another in man; and indeed in the form it is eidetic, in matter material — that is, in potency — and in the super-eidetic, super-eidetic — that is, by cause.³¹⁶ But as for the relation: if the one term is in potency, so is the other; and in some respect each is unlike each; for they are in activity together, and according to existence, since they have co-subsisted; and so the cause is at once with the caused — even the sameness of matter being in activity; for the in-potency relative to form was, of matter herself, the in-activity; and the by-cause There stood, relative to form, as existence — the cause having gathered up in herself the differentiation too. But if the differentiation is gathered up, so is what is said to be differentiated according to it; for if it is determined as first and second, the differentiation would already be separated within it — so that what we still call unified would be differentiated even within itself; for the differentiation, determined within it, would co-differentiate with itself the rest as well. For what allotment would explain that, of the genera or forms within it, the differentiation alone got determined? And it is absurd that anything whatsoever be determined in the unified. In general, we confess things to be determined by just this: that we posit the one to be unified, and the other differentiated.³¹⁷

## Chapter 73 — The Unified's Privilege: Not Its Own, but the One's; Differentiated Only So Far as to Remain Undifferentiated · pp. 202–204

[73] How then is the unified, of all things, differentiated? For what is said looks like a contradiction; and the perplexity is greater if we compare the unified to the one as something that has proceeded from its producer. Or rather, this is precisely the exempt privilege of the unified nature: not to admit differentiation toward the one, nor procession from it, but to have grown about it; and in this consists that famous being-unified — in not being its own, but the one's. But in cases where we clearly posit being-differentiated of the one term, the reciprocal naming of the differentiation, when it is demanded for the other term of the pair, furnishes much perplexity to inquirers.³¹⁸ Perhaps, then — the nature of relatives being abundant and of every sort — there is among them also a relation of such a kind as to equalize by the conversion, while by the nature of the converted terms it does not furnish the like: as the different differs from a different — yet the one term has the difference according to form, while matter is formless according to the difference; so that the difference itself is both of the formless and of the form. For so, too, the image makes its counter-comparison toward the paradigm as toward a like; for the likeness is common according to the rough whole of the property, yet not the same for all that: the one paradigmatic, the other iconic. In the same way the unified, too, is united to some united thing; so that, if it is united to the one, the one too will be unified — and then no longer one. Rather, the being-united must be asserted only insofar as they are yoked — according to the relation alone — since the one is above the unified. For in just this way the caused, too, is yoked to the cause: not according to a common nature of the relation, but according to one that differs in truth. The relation in the cause, at any rate, is cause of the relation in the caused — as the one nature is of the other nature.³¹⁹
[73] Simply, then: both what is in the unified, and the unified itself, are united; and so, in the unified, the unified too is differentiated from the differentiated — yet as unified. For there is indeed the difference of unified toward differentiated; and this is: the undifferentiated toward the differentiated; for the undifferentiated does stand apart from the differentiated — differentiated only so far as to remain undifferentiated, and so far as to stand counter-distinguished toward the differentiated.³²⁰ So far, then, does differentiation of this kind stand from differentiating the unified, that it even guards it undifferentiated — or rather, it is differentiated by the differentiated; and this is, once again, to be undifferentiated. So that the differentiation is common in name — the name and thing of the relation being imaged as roughly the same — while it is not the same: standing here according to the differentiated, there according to the undifferentiated; here differentiated, there undifferentiated — the differentiation itself remaining undifferentiated. And if we name even differentiation itself, as though it were some one of the others, pardon must be granted; for names belong to things determined and eidetic; wherefore also, when we say that matter is differentiated from form, we syllogize truly — yet we do not name truly. So much, then, concerning these matters.³²¹

## Chapter 74 — Remaining and Procession: the Engrafted Property and the Root in the Earth; Compelling Our Intellections to Unfold; Everything Both Remains and Has Proceeded · pp. 204–209

[74] Since the differentiated proceeded from the undifferentiated, and we say that everything which proceeds makes its procession while remaining in the producer, and again reverts toward that from which the procession came; and since, in general, we say that these three stand in succession to one another — remaining and procession and reversion — come, let us raise the difficulties about these very things. And first: is it necessary that what proceeds, proceed while remaining in the producer? And, still before this: what do we mean by remaining in the cause? Surely not as in a place, nor as in a vessel, nor as a part in the first; for how would it then still be a thing that has proceeded, in any way at all? Let our discourse now concern the procession of what has proceeded; for it will be possible to view the same points upon the middle as well, in respect of its being-differentiated.³²² Is it then in the first, the cause, and in this respect remaining — while it has already become third, and in that respect has proceeded? But that is impossible; for it is either first or third. Does remaining, then, signify this: that it does not stand out of the property of the producer, but, holding this within itself, engrafts upon it its own property, in respect of which it proceeds — as the man within the animal, and life within substance? For life is a substance of such a kind, and intellect a substance of such a kind together with life; for its own is always grown onto the common, or is projected from it; and what has proceeded remains, accordingly, within the property of its begetter.³²³ But if this is so: first, it is not the proceeded that should be said to remain in that, but that common element to have proceeded together with the proceeder. Next: this proceeded thing — the common we speak of relative to the begetter — has it, too, itself alone proceeded? And this goes on to infinity. So it is not necessary that the proceeding remain in proceeding; so neither is it necessary that the proper remain; and if the common does remain, still, that which we say has proceeded — does this not remain? And the thing in question was whether the proceeding remains — not the remaining. I forbear to say that it is not even in every way the case that something of like nature proceeds from the producer; this we shall show a little later to be enveloped in much perplexity; and it will perhaps be shown not to hold simply, nor of all things, if indeed it holds of some.³²⁴
[74] Perhaps, then, the proceeding — or the proceeded — has its cause in the producer; and this is the remaining in that: to have its root in it, namely the cause from which it grows out; for the plant, too, sprouts up from the earth while remaining in her only by its root. Or will this also appear irrational, if one should test it precisely? For the cause is not the very thing that is produced from the cause: the one is second, the other first; for in the first is seated the cause of the second; indeed, the cause of the produced is a certain substance of the producer — not a part of the produced, but of that; nor is it analogous to the root, but rather to the principle of the whole plant — a principle that is whole, and en-substanced in the nature of the earth.³²⁵ If these things appear to stand so, the same refutations will arrive: for neither does the remaining proceed, nor the proceeding remain; for neither is the produced still in the producer, nor does the cause proceed from that into the produced — for then it is no longer cause, but from-cause. It must not be said, accordingly, that the proceeding remains, but the cause of the proceeding. Perhaps, then, what the saying means is this: that, that remaining, this proceeds? Or not that simply, but the cause within it remaining. And since the from-cause is of like form with the cause, the remaining and the proceeding are somehow said to be the same — and they are the same in the rough-whole sense, by property and by form; but in truth not the same, nor in subsistence.³²⁶ But if one should suppose it so, first he will tear the produced apart from the producer — if nothing is common to them according to subsistence, and the proceeding things are not continuous with their producers, but are begotten from them severed, as man from man. Second: if it is by a rough-whole account, and not a true one, that the proceeding necessarily remains, the axiom would not be true, but apparent only — since the sameness too is apparent, being indeed only the community of the relation. And from thirds: this account will say nothing august, if what it says is this — that the first is not the second, nor the second the first; or that the begetter is not the begotten, and conversely; that the one remains and the other proceeds, and neither at once both proceeds and remains.³²⁷
[74] Perhaps, then, the proceeding is of such a kind as to be mastered by neither — neither by remaining nor by procession alone — but to have something at once remaining and proceeding together, which both-together, we say, constitutes its being; for the both-together belongs to the very nature of the begotten. For so the proceeding would rightly be said to remain: if it should at once proceed and remain the same. But if we say this of the middle — which has its being in proceeding, and not in having-proceeded — well; whereas the proceeded, which has already stood apart and been let go from the first, as third — how could it still be said to remain in that? For it is a contradiction, if the proceeded has not proceeded. Or rather: it has both the remaining and the proceeded — as it were having planted itself firm above, and then stretching itself down toward what is below.³²⁸ But in this way the former arguments will come at us: that neither does the proceeded remain, nor has the remaining proceeded; and, besides these, it will not be whole proceeded — that which we say subsists in having-proceeded — nor does it remain whole — that which, remaining, we say has proceeded; and it will differ in nothing from what subsists in the first, if it is whole in each of the two ways. And if it remains by one part and proceeds by another, it will be partible, in addition to all that has been said — if indeed it is wound off from above into what is below. Or rather: does our conception partition even the impartibles? They must nevertheless be conceived as those things ought to stand, and not as we conceive them; and the human intellections must be compelled back, and accustomed, to unfold themselves and to broaden out, so far as is possible, into the truth that befits those natures.³²⁹
[74] Whole, then, I say, is the proceeded — and it remains in its begetter in just that respect in which it has proceeded: because the proceeded itself, by its own peculiar-natured nature, is most like and most akin to the producer, and is, as it were, the producer itself according to the third measure, so to speak, of the stepping-down. For even if one form comes from another, yet the change-over is close-knit and of like nature, and the standing-apart is not so great as that which we carry up to those natures from the dis-spannings here below. For such is intellect toward life, soul toward intellect, life toward substance, that to one who saw it at the first cast, the second would seem to be the very thing before it — most of all the most proximate, but then even the farther, even if it be the last of the things proceeding from one source. For nothing among the produced is, in any way whatsoever, of another tribe toward its producer; nothing is un-akin; nothing is not embraced by the begetter as its own. And if the difference of the names, and the differentiation of our partible phantasms, deceives us into supposing complete standing-apart in those natures too — this is nothing against their truth. For everything begotten There, simply, in one respect — as itself — has proceeded from its begetter; in the other — as from that — it remains; for the from-that is not an accident, but is itself the substance of the proceeded; and the itself is no less after that: a genuine offspring of it — as if a son should be most like his own father: a son assuredly, and the other the father, but the form almost the same.³³⁰ And if There the begetting seems hetero-form, one must know well that There the things that are other in form have grown together with one another more than, here below, the things that are the same. Intellect, then, as intellect, has both proceeded from Being — a third from the first — and, though the first is something near, it has taken on the third rank; for the third itself, and the triad, is the very nature of intellect; and as many and of what kind the first is, so many and of such kind is the second, in a certain manner — save that There union dominates, and here differentiation.³³¹
[74] And to speak generally: if of coordinates and counter-divided things we predicate union together with differentiation, sameness and otherness, much more of begetters and begotten shall we say that they are both other and the same — both differentiated from them, and at once unified toward them. Insofar, then, as things are the same and unified, each is justly said to remain; insofar as other and differentiated, to have proceeded. On the whole, accordingly: each thing both remains and has proceeded — beginning from the firsts, down to the things that have proceeded to the very last; but now in greater and lesser degree: here with remaining dominating, in those things in which the differentiation is hard to find; there with procession, in those in which the union is non-apparent. And it is setting out from these last that we falsely ascribe, even to the first processions, the complete dis-spanning — which is not complete even in the last.³³² Everything proceeded, then, remains both in the nature and within the bounds of its own causes; and what does not remain — that is, what is in no way and nowhere this from which it is said to have proceeded — this has not even proceeded; for who would say that what is in no way and nowhere the being's has proceeded from the being?³³³

## Chapter 75 — Reversion: the Longing for the Ancient Nature; Procession Substance-Making, Reversion Perfection-Making; Two Rests between Two Motions; the Three Elements Blended in the Third · pp. 209–214

[75] Let this, then, be procession, and this remaining; and let each have grown together always with the other, as has been said. But what is reversion, added upon these? What is it, and what use does it furnish to what has proceeded? That it belongs to this latter is plain; for it seems to be a return; and every return is of what has proceeded; for what has not yet proceeded, but still remains in the first — what need would it have of any reversion to the first? Remaining, indeed, is better than reversion; and what possesses the better — what need has it of the worse? Reversion belongs, then, to what has proceeded. But what is it? What else would one say, than the return of what has proceeded to its begetter? For it is set against procession, and is, as it were, its setting-right and resolution. Accordingly, soul resolves her own procession through reversion. But if this is so, it will no longer be a thing that has proceeded; for it will destroy this, if it should revert. Or rather: with soul, now the one and now the other comes to pass; but with the eternals, each holds at once and in the same respect. Is it not, then, the proper work of every reversion to assimilate the begotten to the begetter, as from procession comes the making-other? For procession is differentiative, and reversion gathering — an up-leader of the third to the first, as that is a forward-leader of the first to the third.³³⁴
[75] Come then, let us see what we even mean by saying that the proceeded reverts. We say that it reverts while remaining in its being-proceeded; the reverting, then, in the portion of the proceeded, comes nearer to the producer; and the reversive is taken on in addition, after the processive; for let each of the two be supposed according to substance — and what ever pre-subsists is better than what supervenes, so that the processive is better than the reversive: it does not, then, come nearer to the begetter insofar as it reverts than insofar as it has proceeded. And if the proceeded also remains, as has been shown, what need has it of reversion, being already assimilated according to its remaining? And if reversion is a recovery of remaining, it would itself be a remaining — though after procession; and reversion signifies nothing third, if it works nothing besides the remaining. And yet reverting is, in conception, other than remaining: for according to remaining, the begotten wishes to be the very thing the begetter is; as, according to procession, it wishes to be the very thing the begotten is, after the begetter; according to reversion, however, the begotten longs for the begetter — itself remaining, and that one remaining, each within its proper bounds. For the desiring holds onto the desired as other onto other; and the other comes always after the proceeding.³³⁵ Perhaps, then, reversion is the desire of the third, in its yearning? For in remaining there is not yet desire; for the desiring has not yet stood apart from the desired. Nor yet in having-proceeded; for this is just the standing-apart and differentiation of the two, in order that the one be desiring and the other desired — or rather, in order that the third, having stood away from the first, should afterward desire it, in longing for its ancient nature. Wherefore reversion does not work the remaining, but the enjoying-from-afar of the begetter, now revealed as desirable; whence, also, proceeding is finer than reverting: for having-proceeded is substance-making of the third, while reverting is perfection-making.³³⁶
[75] But the desiring hastens to become the very thing the desired is; so that the third strives to become the first — and becomes so through reversion; yet it became so first through the remaining, by its very remaining in the first. Or does it have the one before procession, and the other through reversion, after procession? But it is absurd, as was said before, that what it already has, it should take again — and the more absurd, that it should do so through the worse activity. But perhaps it is not the thing itself that it gains through reversion, but some image of it — which will then appear even worse than procession? Yet nothing desires the image, nor at all the worse of that very thing whose better and elder subsistence and enjoyment it already has. It is like one who, possessing the most complete health, should then desire the inferior kind; or one who has acquired the contemplative virtue praying to obtain the political. So what remaining furnishes, and what reversion furnishes, are not the same in form; for remaining and reversion are not the same in form. What then does it take on through reversion, which it possessed neither through the remaining nor through the proceeding?³³⁷
[75] And upon these perplexities there naturally grows also that further inquiry, which supposes the remaining to be double; for not only the proceeding, but also the reverting, does what it does through a remaining — the latter its reversion, the former its procession. For there are two motions — the one from above downward, the other from below upward; and between two opposed motions there must be two rests, as say the children of the natural philosophers. And indeed we said just now that reversion is not a resolution and destruction of procession; rather, the thing makes its reversion while remaining in having-proceeded. Either, then, we must make two only in genus — rest and motion, or, if you will let me say it, remaining and way; or four in species: procession and return, and remaining, in its turn, double — the one holding above, and the other below: this latter belonging to what is about to revert, that former to what is about to proceed.³³⁸ What then is this much-rehearsed counter-division of the three — remaining, procession, reversion? Perhaps someone will say that the three were divided relative to the one first, according to the three relations toward it: that in which, and that from which, and that toward which; and it is plain in what respect each is made proper. But I shall say that the in-which is double — the one above, the other below; for the thing both remains in the lower form, and is roused up from it according to the reversion, and stretches toward it first according to the procession; for on either side the remaining is the mean — but here projecting the procession, and there projecting the reversion.³³⁹ And to such inquiries this also justly attaches: if reversion is double — the one of a thing toward itself, the other toward what is before itself — what does each give to the substance of the reverting thing, and how do the two differ? And where the second is, is the other also? And further: why is not procession also double, and remaining likewise — the one in the better, the other in itself; and again the one from the better, the other from itself? For if these three activities are always of the same rank, then as the one stands, so the others stand likewise. And let this too be inquired: whether, where the one shows itself forth, the others also appear within it; and whether to the third belong the three, to the second two — remaining and procession — and to the first one only, the remaining? For remaining seems to belong properly to the first, procession to the second, and reversion to the third, as having already proceeded. Marking off their properties from above, then, let us state the appearances; and may grace lead us toward the truth.³⁴⁰
[75] Remaining, then, is the nature of the first as in-mingled with the third; and procession is the third's standing-away from the first; and neither of the two is unalloyed: neither is the standing-away bereft and torn from its proper cause, nor has the first's nature, within the third, drunk down the procession — nor does it allow the proceeded to vary into another genus, even that very thing which is said to have proceeded; rather, out of both, as out of elements, the third was brought to completion: a genuine offspring of the first, and one that bears that nature within its own variation. And the reversion is the constitution and circumscription of the third viewed in itself — neither as remaining nor as proceeding; or rather, it is the union of the two elements into one another, and the reversion of the processive into the stable, according to which arises the blending of the two elements — the blending according to which the character supervenes, and the form of the third. Wherefore reversion, too, belongs to the third alone; and it is called property-making; and it is also a stretching-up of the proceeded-and-third toward the first — because the proceeded, according to its remaining element, is in the first. And you see that, according to substance, in the third the three have been blended together with one another like elements; and the whole has the three, and acts toward itself in a triple manner: remaining in itself, and proceeding from itself, and reverting toward itself; for the three are elements of its substance, and each stretches into the whole — all of them toward one another. It remains, then, through the stable element — the whole and the parts; and again it proceeds through the processive, and reverts through the reversive. Accordingly the third remains in itself according to the in-mingled property of remaining, and proceeds from itself, and reverts toward itself.³⁴¹ But the three are said to act also toward the first; what then is the difference? It is that the differentiation is double: the one from the first, whereby it is third; the other from itself, whereby it is multiplied within itself — becoming not simply a third, but triadic, according to the triad that has appeared within it. But every triad is also a monad — or rather, before it there is assuredly a monad; so that according to the triad it proceeds from itself, according to the monad it remains in itself, and it reverts according to the union of the triad toward the monad. And if one should put it even so, he would not throw far from the truth: that the triadic in it is cause of the reversion — for reversion is third; the dyadic, of the procession — for procession is second; and the monadic, of the remaining, because remaining is first of the three. But these things belong to another discourse.³⁴²

## Chapter 76 — Toward Itself and Toward Its Prior: One in Subject, Double in Relation; the Three Elements Gathered in the First, Dividing in the Middle, Divided in the Third · pp. 214–216

[76] Toward the first, then: the third remains in it, because it has not in every way stood apart at all; and it reverts, because it joined what had parted to what had not parted, according to the reversion we have described. Is the reversion, then, one, or double — the one toward itself, the other toward what is before itself? Or is it one in the subject, and double in the relation? For insofar as it circumscribed itself, as has been said, through reversion, it turned toward itself; but insofar as it stood whole, circumscribed according to itself and complete, it was likened to what is before it — because that, too, before this one, is complete according to itself, having been allotted a proper nature of its own; and insofar as it is third, it gave itself subsistence toward that first. For this, too, is a kind of reversion; and there is, before these, the fact that the begotten was brought to completion such as the begetter wished it. By becoming, then, the very thing that it is, it has been turned at once both toward itself and toward what is before it.³⁴³ And as the reversion stands, so also the procession: for the very thing that it is, it both proceeds from itself, according to the differentiated within it, and from what is before it; for according to each it is what it is; for according to each it has proceeded; and indeed it proceeds also from the cause according to the both-together; for the proceeded itself, whole, is what it is according to the both-together; since its being differentiated from the first, according to the third differentiation, showed it differentiated also within itself. In like manner, then, the remaining too is the same in the subject, differing only in the relation. For its not standing wholly apart from the cause — this is what made it not stand wholly apart from itself either. By the same stable element, then, it remains both in itself and in what is before it; and by the processive it proceeds both from itself and from that; and indeed by the reversive it has been turned both toward itself and toward that. And this is the third element, in that the processive is bound together with the stable. Out of these three, then, is the proceeded — not insofar as it proceeded simply, but insofar as it is this determinate thing: say, intellect.³⁴⁴
[76] The three are present also in the proceeding, and not only in the proceeded; they are present also in the remaining, before the proceeding — but in this last they are gathered together and undifferentiated; in the third they are divided; and in the middle they are in middle manner, and only being-differentiated.³⁴⁵ But if they are undifferentiated in the first, then not even remaining could justly be predicated of the first: as possessing the stable element it could not be said to remain — for it does not possess it in truth as something marked off; but as not proceeding it might be said to remain, by analogy, relative to the third — or at any rate to the second. And likewise the proceeding, relative to what has gone forth, might be called both proceeding and remaining; in truth, however, neither; for not even in this middle are the elements yet determined. In the third, then, the three are determined off from one another; the third, therefore, is properly the first in which they are so — and it remains, and proceeds, and reverts toward what is before itself: toward the proximate — which was the second — according to the variation and subsistence that come from the second, that is, from the being-differentiated; and according to the subsistence that comes from the undifferentiated, it does so first toward the supreme itself. For intellect, let us say, has the triple relation both toward life, and toward Being, according to its generation from that. But about these matters, again, hereafter.³⁴⁶

## Chapter 77 — In Every Intellect the Three; the Lower Remaining a Participation of the Higher; the Necessity of the Division: Variation, the Begetting Form, and the Presented Offspring · pp. 216–217

[77] In what has first become third, the three, having appeared, go forth also through all the things in succession. I mean, for example: if they appeared in the first intellect, the three are in every intellect as well; yet remaining dominates in the summit, giving form to the others; in the last, reversion; and in the middle, procession. Wherefore, in each intellectual triad, the first is the more stable, the second the more processive, and the third the more reversive. Accordingly, upon these grounds the double remaining was not supposed otherwise — if indeed to remain is not to stand wholly apart from the begetting cause, nor from its nature; while to revert is to circumscribe one's own subsistence within having-proceeded together with remaining: so that the same thing may be at once proceeded and not proceeded — neither of the two torn apart, but becoming a certain both-together through the reversive property. For, being of such a kind, what other remaining could the whole third have, besides this reversion, or this procession? — unless, perhaps, toward the things after it, the things produced from it; for what produces from itself, in its own form and its own rank, the things that come from it, would have the stable from its con-substantiated remaining. Unless, indeed, one should not even say that the producers remain, but rather that the produced remain — in their producers and in themselves; or else the remaining of the producers must be viewed in their not proceeding along with the things they produce.³⁴⁷
[77] What then? Does such a whole not revert toward the first — or will it make a reversion? First: if it should revert toward its begetter, it must be a thing that has proceeded — and then it does not remain, as the perplexity runs. And if someone should say that it remains in having-proceeded, he would be calling that same remaining an intensification, and as it were a confirmation, of having-proceeded — not the remaining that is counter-divided against procession and reversion; since reverting, too, is a proceeding: it is a certain advance — only not an advance from the cause. And if one should view a participation of each in each — since the stable proceeds into the third; and if it also proceeds, it also reverts; for in this way procession, too, has something reversive, if indeed it also has itself proceeded; and reversion will have something stable, if indeed it has also something processive. Supposing it thus, we shall agree well; for the three, being of the same rank, will participate one another; and the perplexity will have no place; for the division was not made of the properties according to existence; the lower remaining, accordingly, is a participation of the one named above.³⁴⁸
[77] What, then, is the counter-division of the three? For proceeding and remaining are contradictory — the thing is said to proceed and not to proceed; but reverting — what is it, relative to these? It is that proceeding discloses only standing-apart and variation — not yet any twisting-together and constitution of the character, in which the proceeding came to a stand and was circumscribed; this, then, is what reversion, added upon them, brought in besides: so that the one term is disclosive of the standing-apart — or variation — from one thing to another, namely the processive property; the stable is disclosive of the begetting form; and the reversive is presentative of the begotten. Whether the begotten participate their begetters, and how they participate or do not, we shall inquire after this. For now, only the necessity of the division of the three has been rendered: the two are viewed at the limits, and the one at the middle; for the thing remains in the producer; and it reverts according to the produced, which is what it is; and it proceeds into this latter from that former.³⁴⁹

## Chapter 78 — The Three Reversions — Substantial, Vital, Cognitive; the Self-Subsistent; Intellect Steps into Its Own Bound and Is Made Akin to Being · pp. 217–219

[78] But since these matters have been determined universally, come now, let us take them up in the things themselves. For each of the three is divided in three ways — remaining and procession and reversion alike; for each is either substantial, or vital, or cognitive. That there is reverting according to knowledge is plain; for the knower knows both itself and the things before it. And that there is reverting according to substance, is shown by the necessity that there be something self-subsistent, and not only subsisting from elsewhere. For either we go to infinity; or nothing is self-subsistent; or else, immediately after what has wholly stepped out of subsistence — so as to subsist in no way, neither from another nor from itself — we shall posit what subsists from elsewhere, and shall look down upon what subsists from itself, although it is a mean by its very nature; just as we agree that the self-moved is a mean of the unmoved and the other-moved. For even if what subsists from elsewhere is, in one way, better than what subsists from itself, still there is also a sense in which it is worse — which it is true to say of the bodiform things; and the by-nature better must exist, if indeed the worse does.³⁵⁰ But that the self-subsistent is, we shall inquire hereafter — both this, and what it happens to be, and in what order it shows itself forth. Now this giving-subsistence-to-itself is precisely a reverting of the thing toward itself according to substance; and it will be self-living too, by the same causes, in that it makes itself live, and does not receive its life from elsewhere only. Toward itself, then, it displays the three reversions in this manner.³⁵¹
[78] But toward the first — how? The cognitive reversion of the third toward that arises because it knows that; the vital in a certain manner; while the substantial, perhaps, shows itself forth more plainly. For we said in what went before: since the third proceeded, and came to be according to itself, and got from itself its proper bound, in this very way it was turned toward the first — having become another thing of the same kind in the third rank, as that is in the first: as that is Being simply, this is intellect simply; and as that is unified substance, so this is gathered intellect — with the gathering that befits intellect, not the gathering that befits Being. Wherefore intellect, by stepping into its own bound, was made akin to the bound of the first, which appeared as the bound of all things. This, then, is the substantial reversion of intellect toward Being. And what would the reversion according to life be? Since life comes after Being, and the contact of life with Being is immediate, what reverts vitally toward Being presses into that contact with it which life herself, before all others, joined toward it.³⁵² So the substantial reversion makes the reverting thing such as that; the vital makes it only joined to it, immediately, according to life; while the cognitive knows it from afar, and leads it back from the third rank to the first; and this — the third reversion — is the one proper to the third, as the intellectual reversion is proper to intellect. For great is the standing-apart of intellect from Being, and of the knower from the known; for the seer stands in notable differentiation toward the seen; whereas life is almost substance, coming immediately after it; and the living is not far from the substantiated. But of these things we shall speak again — presently, very soon indeed.³⁵³

## Chapter 79 — Intellect Three-Formed throughout the Whole of Itself; To Live Rather than To Be Life; Turned toward Its Cause Not as Its Own, but as Hers · pp. 219–220

[79] Now we have rendered the reversions of intellect toward Being — of the third toward the first; in like manner we shall render also those toward the second: of the third, and of intellect toward life. For intellect knows life, if indeed it knows Being, and in the like manner; and moreover it will also step into her bound — which is her substance — according to which intellect becomes intellectual life, just as it becomes intellectual substance according to its assimilation to Being, and just as it is intellect according to its own third property. For conceive intellect for me as being third — as having become three-formed throughout the whole of itself: being and living and intelligizing; gathered, and being-differentiated, and differentiated. Life, then — even in the way she is differentiated, so far as the being-differentiated can be within the differentiated — intellect is assimilated toward her, and is, as it were, set into life; and this is the substantial reversion toward life. And what would the vital reversion toward life be? Is it not one thing to stand according to the bound of life and to become life — and another to be an other, standing according to itself, which is to be joined to life as a third to a second: to live, rather than to be life; and to desire life, but not now to become life?³⁵⁴
[79] And let the same stamp fit us everywhere for the three reversions — wherever they may be, and of however many things, or toward however many of the pre-existents; for the reverting thing reverts toward each of the things before itself, whether from near or from afar, and is assimilated to every one of those toward which it reverts: whether according to the proper characters — of plenitudes or of elements — that flow together into it from the things toward which it reverts (these being either con-substantiated with the receiver, or becoming adventitious in other ways); or according to the different existences within the reverting thing itself — existences that are its own, and have not come from above, yet are analogous to those natures of its elders, toward which, accordingly, the reversion is accomplished by analogy. For the argument, as it went forward, seemed to say each of the two: at one time assimilating intellect to Being by its proceeded and third bound; at another, leading it up to the unified before it by the unified within it — I mean the gathered element of Being. Whether each is true, or neither, or the one — whichever it be — or all of these, in what way and how: I defer to the discourse concerning the participations.³⁵⁵ For now I determine only this much, rather briefly: that it is one thing to be the very thing one is, and another to be likened to another according to the very thing one is. For example: intellect is from itself, remaining what it is, according to the reversion into itself, having circumscribed itself substantially and vitally and cognitively; but this very thing that intellect is has also proceeded from life — possessing all things from There too, as many as it possesses from itself. Every intellect, then, and wholly, has been turned toward its cause — not insofar as it is its own, but insofar as it is hers; it desires, accordingly, to be joined to the producing cause, and to be, in some manner, that very one, so far as it can, and to see her as ranked before it, and as separated. And so it stands toward Being also, and toward each of its producers — even if the productive causes be many — toward each alike.³⁵⁶

## Chapter 80 — The Ten Aporiai: the Triadic Counter-Division Itself; Self-Known, Self-Living, Self-Subsistent; the End of Knowledge; Who Acts on Whom · pp. 220–223

[80] The argument next demands, raising its difficulties — first: why have we divided each of these three in only three ways — reversion, I mean, and procession, and remaining — calling each substantial and vital and cognitive? For one could also speak triadically: undifferentiated, being-differentiated, differentiated; or unitary and multiplied, and a certain mean, which one will think fit to call unified. Indeed it is possible to view the matter in many ways: for in each cosmos there is, for each, a remaining and procession and reversion of its own peculiar manner; and in each form, one proper to the form and by-named from it — not only in these three, intellect and life and Being. And perhaps one might raise the further difficulty: what is this triad itself, and whence did it get its counter-division? For knowledge is counter-divided against the knowable — and let there be a mean, if you wish: knowing and known; but this is not yet life, nor is the knowable in every way Being. For many other things, too, are knowable — every form is knowable, and intellect itself is knowable. Why then is intellect, as knowing, counter-divided against Being as known? And whence does substance lie over against intellect, so that we should also rank life in the middle? For if life is motion, what would be the rest set in opposition to that motion? Either intellect appears even outside the counter-division, or substance is the same thing taken according to rest — and intellect outside the antithesis. First, then, as I said, the difficulty must be raised about the triadic counter-division itself.³⁵⁷
[80] Second: whether the reverting is in every way the third — as the argument seemed to hold when it began; for it spoke of the third's reversion toward the first. Or does the second also revert toward what is before itself — as the argument wished intellect to revert toward life, which lies proximately above it — so that one will expect life, too, to revert toward Being? And yet what has not proceeded, we say, does not even need reversion. Third, upon these: whether not only reversion is viewed in three ways, but remaining and procession as well — substantial and cognitive and vital: the one from itself and in itself, for each; the other from what is before it. Fourth: how is it that in the cognitive reversion there are these three — knowing, known, knowledge — while in the substantial reversions there are no longer such, nor in the vital? And if in some manner there are, of what kind would they be?³⁵⁸
[80] Fifth: why is the self-known that which knows itself, while the self-living and the self-subsistent is that which makes itself live, and be? For the proper work of each reversion, one must say, is to incline the thing together toward itself only — not, however, to make it live; for this belongs to life, or to something life-making, and not to reversion, which wishes only to turn the thing toward itself. Likewise the substance-making is alien to reversion; for the knowledge of oneself is not knowable-making, nor productive of the knower — and yet it seemed admissible that this reversion too be taken according to making, if indeed those others are. Sixth, then, in addition to what has been said: why, among the reversions toward the more ancient, does the cognitive stand in like manner with the reversion toward oneself? — for it only knows that prior, just as it knows itself, according to the reversion; whereas the vital and the substantial are not in the same manner; for what reverts by them toward itself substantiates and vivifies itself, yet does not act in any way whatsoever upon the things before itself.³⁵⁹
[80] Seventh, accordingly, it must be asked: how does it know what is before itself? Does intellect, by knowing itself, know also what is before it — just as, by standing itself within its own bound, it assimilates its own substance to that of the producer, as we were saying; and as it reverts in substance, according to the proceeded, into the producer, so too, by the knowledge of the proceeded — which is the knowledge of its own nature — does it come to recognize the nature of the producer? Or does it, letting go its own, lay hold of hers — and says, indeed, that she surpasses this one, as one who also reckons in the difference? But if this, the cognitive reversion is better than the substantial — if the latter is accomplished according to the bound of the proceeded, and the former according to that of the producer.³⁶⁰ Eighth: what is the end of knowledge? And what accrues to the knower from the known? Is it the form of the known, arising within the knower; or the in-potency of the knowing, becoming in-activity according to the knowledge? And what is august in either of these — or what profitable? Ninth, worthy of inquiry: whether the knower acts upon the known, or the known upon the knower; for whichever one should say, the worse in nature — and the caused — will act upon what is better than itself, even upon its cause; for the known is better than some of those that know it, and worse than others. Tenth, then, upon them all, it must be asked: what is knowledge? what the knowable? what the cognitive? And is it present everywhere with the third? or also with the second? or even with the first, insofar as it is first? — for the first intellect is cognitive, as indeed is every intellect. And, so far as it bears upon what is proposed, the difficulty must be raised about life and substance as well: what is each of the two, and in what do they differ from knowledge?³⁶¹

## Chapter 81 — The Whole Cosmoi: Substance, Life in Travail with All Things, Intellect; Knowledge the Consolation of Standing-Apart; the Shining of Being; One Gathering of All Knowledges — Substance toward Substance · pp. 223–232

[81] Come then, climbing back supine, from the last to the first of the problems posed, let us examine what must be said to each. The substance, then, which we now set against life and knowledge, we shall say is neither life nor knowledge. If indeed the three were of the same rank — whether as species, or as genera, or as parts, or however one might put it — nothing would have prevented them from participating one another; but as it is, we mean by the first, substance; by the second, life; by the third, knowledge; and the one is their cause, the other the caused, the other the both-together relative to one and to another; the priors, accordingly, will not participate the posteriors: life, then, is above what possesses knowledge, and Being and substance above life. And further, in this way too: we do not call these things genera, nor species, nor certain more partial subsistences, nor such as come after the first principles — which these names wish to signify — but whole cosmoi, and these the first of all the things that seem synonymous or homonymous with them: as, for instance, there lies before us now the first intellect, which contains in itself all the intellectual world-orders; and life, accordingly, the one before this, is a whole-complete cosmos, full of all things life-wise — of all that intellect has intellect-wise; so that substance too, about which the argument runs, is a whole cosmos: the eldest of all cosmoi, and the most embracing of the things disclosed by the names before us.³⁶² It is no wonder, then, if intellect has taken part of life and of substance — and what this participation may be will appear as we go forward. Life, however, would not participate knowledge, if indeed knowledge is the prerogative of the third — or, to speak more commonly, of what has proceeded; and substance would have neither knowledge nor life, being neither proceeded nor proceeding — if indeed life too belongs to the middle, and to what is proceeding. Substance, then, is a whole-complete cosmos that has gathered all things together in the undifferentiated; intellect is a whole-complete cosmos subsisting in the differentiated of its nature; and life is a whole-complete cosmos in the being-differentiated of the middleness — in travail with all things.³⁶³ The first is itself uncircumscribed, and embraces all things uncircumscribably; the third is itself circumscribed, as having proceeded, and has inscribed the things within itself, as many as have proceeded in it and been differentiated; while the middle one, the one according to life, has neither been fixed fast in the uncircumscribed nor settled together in the circumscribed, but is, as it were, amphibious, and as it were in motion from this to that — whence they name this one life, as a stirred, and as it were seething, substance. For the eidetic life too, added to each form, brings upon it this seething and stirred character.³⁶⁴
[81] For just so the unmoved nature of Being, having stepped down a little, relaxed that fixed and undifferentiated character, and projected a certain procession, and an appearance of differentiation; but when it had now proceeded, and been differentiated, and come to stand in its own form, it was circumscribed according to the differentiation, and differentiated and circumscribed the things within itself — the most whole-like, and eldest of all. For it was not differentiated with the differentiation that goes out into all things, but with that which is nearest the one — to speak generally, the first differentiation, and the differentiation of firsts. Whence, since a standing-apart had come to be for it both from the things before it and from itself — for it was differentiated also itself within itself — for this very reason it took in hand a certain setting-right of the standing-apart, and as it were a consolation: knowledge. For knowledge exists among things that stand apart from one another, or from themselves, and are taken asunder by otherness; for without otherness there would not be the one term knowing, the other known, and the mean, knowledge. Fittingly, then, it was in what had proceeded and been differentiated that this subsisted — just as the other determinations also begin from there, and the other relations, as many as are differentiated. Now the other relations too have something binding of the things that stand in relation; but most of all does knowledge join the knower to the known; for it stretches the knower out into the known through love of the true, and it sets the knowable within the knower through the lightning-flash that leaps across from it into him. And this was the cognitive reversion of the proceeded into the producer — even in the very respect in which the one is differentiated from the other; for, otherness not existing, neither is there knowledge; so that substance could not know herself, being united in every way; nor could she know another, being nowhere differentiated so as to have the knowing as one thing, and the known, and indeed the knowledge itself. And life is called intelligible and intellectual from the extremes, but is neither of the two in purity; rather, insofar as it is only being-differentiated, so far it has both knowledge and known and knowing — not differentiated, but still being-differentiated; and that means: dawning from beneath.³⁶⁵
[81] In intellect first, then, is the first knowledge — since the first circumscription also is in it: of itself toward itself, and toward the things before it. Insofar, then, as it was differentiated toward those, by so much it was joined to those, from afar, through knowledge; and insofar as toward itself and from itself, in this respect it is joined together within itself through knowledge, in a certain standing-apart toward itself; and the things within it, toward one another and toward the whole itself, each stood apart and were circumscribed — for which reason they also know one another, and the whole; and the whole, having come to be entire in differentiation and circumscription, fittingly entire and whole is filled with knowledge: it was made true, and became intellect according to intellection, and was gladdened by the light of intellectual truth — first projecting within itself the eye of knowledge, in order that, beholding that from which it proceeded, it might return again to it, and might lead itself back toward it, so far as is possible within the standing-apart. For the substantial reversion also joined it — but according to the first standing-apart, by which it stood away and was bounded in its subsistence; and the vital joined it too — but according to the second differentiation, by which it was being differentiated from the substantial subsistence into the cognitive; and the cognitive joins it according to the farthest — being ninth from the undifferentiated, and third from the differentiated; for reversion being third after remaining and procession, the third reversion is the one that comes about through knowledge. Wherefore, having stood away the greatest distance, into its own last — the third, as it were, of the third — intellect is content to be joined with the joining of things that stand apart; and this is knowledge — which has been called a reversion, and, this too has been said, the last reversion.³⁶⁶
[81] What, nevertheless, is knowledge? An apprehension of the known within the knower? But we do not yet know any of the things we are saying. What the knowable might be, or the cognitive, it is not easy to know while knowledge itself is unknown. Knowledge, then — as the name half-reveals — is a coming-to-be knowing, which is intellection; and intellection is so called because it goes toward being and the is, and returns thither — so that it would justly have been called a going; but as it is, giving the word solemnity through the eta, and making it well-mouthed by the contraction, we call it noesis. So intellect, too, is named because it goes toward Being; and it goes the substantial return as well, and the vital; but in the third rank, and as it were from afar, it goes through the cognitive intellection; and insofar as intellect is cognitive, it is so in a certain manner through activity — but the activity neither of substance nor of vital power; wherefore this intellection is, rather, one that is coming to be. And this one is more evident to us, because it is most differentiated; wherefore most of the philosophers give intellect its form according to this. But one ought, before this, to name the differentiated and circumscribed subsistence also an intellection — this prior one, before the cognitive — as being the first return, into Being, of what proceeded from it; from which return intellect also has its name: already inclined toward Being, and returning, before knowledge.³⁶⁷ And perhaps knowledge wishes to be a generation of being and of substance; for the knower is substantiated by the return into Being according to knowledge — not the first substantiation, but an as it were coming-to-be one; wherefore intellect is the things themselves, as Aristotle also says. But let each fit the names to the things as well-naturedly as he can. That intellect, at any rate, subsisted according to the return into Being, and that knowledge has been projected — every return belonging to what has proceeded and already stood apart, and for this reason needs the return: a return that does not dissolve the standing-apart, but leads the very thing that stands apart, in the manner and so far as it stands apart, back up to that from which it stood apart — this is plain even from the name of knowledge.³⁶⁸
[81] What then is knowledge? Is it a shining-round-about, and as it were a light's fore-escorting, of the known within the knower? For sensation subsists according to the sense-datum, and imagination according to the imprint, and opining and intellection — the one according to the thing opined, the other according to the thing thought; universally, then, knowledge subsists according to the gnosma, if one may so speak. And the gnosma is the known itself — but now en-substanced within the knower. Knowledge, then, is the attainment of the knowable as knowable; for even if it is of Being, yet it is of Being as knowable. What then is the knowable, and in what does it differ from Being? Is it that a thing is knowable relative to another, while in itself, what it is, it is being? Or is this indeed added, while the nature of each has not yet been determined? Or rather: the one is the subsistence, and the other the shining of the subsistence. For to the enmattered form, let us say, its subsistence is one thing, and its being sensible another; and its sensible is that of it which falls forward and fore-shines from it as far as sensation — and is commensurate with sensation, becoming in a manner sensation itself. Just so the shining of Being is like a light of it, escorting forth as far as the knower, and going out to meet him as he strains upward toward it; commensurately it grows together with him, and perfects, and satiates his desire of Being, by the filling of its proper light. Intellect does not, then, know Being — but the shining of Being; or Being according to the shining; and Being according to the knowable. And assuredly it desires Being; or rather, it desires it as Being, but attains the same as knowable. And perhaps even the desire must be said to be of Being according to the knowable; for the natural desires are of the same things of which the attainments also are; and confessedly the attainment of Being comes to the knower according to the known.³⁶⁹
[81] What then do we say this shining is? It is the appearing that holds itself out to the seconds, and furnishes itself into commensurability for those who wish to enjoy it, and to embrace its forth-escorting light, for those who long for it. Not the whole, then, is knowable, but only the light — as to sight only the color is visible, and not the substrate. Or rather: it is no wonder at all, but even necessary, that something of the firsts be always ungraspable and unsayable to the seconds; for so the wholly stepped-out was unsayable simply, toward all things; while each of the others has its own unsayable toward the seconds only, and becomes unsayable relative to something. This then, as I said, is nothing paradoxical; but that, perhaps, one might raise as a difficulty: whether in real truth intellect knows the fore-escorting of Being, and not Being itself — and yet it was said to be knowable according to its shining. Let it know, then, this fore-escorting of Being — yet not as some efflux from it, as the earth-encircling light flows from the sun, but as one who sees the sun itself according to the brightness of nature that is within it. Does it then know only the surface, if it should know the shining of Being as a kind of color? Or must the shining be conceived as going through the whole — there being nothing of it that does not shine through, and hasten toward shining-forth: as if you should say that glass, or any of the diaphanous things, is visible as a whole, because the nature of the visible has gone through the whole of it. Yet even so the body is one thing, and the through-and-through shining another; so that even There the shining would be present — but not beside Being; and first, the same difficulty will come back — that the knowledge is not of Being, but of the shining, which is other; for of the wholly diaphanous, too, it is not the body that is visible, but the color only; and next, we shall be determining, within the wholly undetermined, one thing as the shining and another as Being — as the substrate to the shining, or however else differing from it.³⁷⁰
[81] Or rather, this must be said in answer to these things: Being itself, what it is, in one respect is only itself, and only undifferentiated; but in the other respect intellect stood apart from it, having been differentiated from it; and it became not only undifferentiated, but also a differentiated's differentiated; and since the differentiated held it as an undifferentiated standing apart from the truly differentiated — to just that extent the knowable dawned forth in it. For in intellect, according to the differentiated, the cognitive showed itself forth; so that in Being also, as in a manner differentiated, something correspondingly shows within it — not, however, the cognitive, because this belongs to what proceeded from it, but the knowable: because to the proceeded, through knowledge, That became a knowable it could attain. And the knowable is not in Being itself as some determined property; for neither is the differentiated in it as some property; for it was, according to the undifferentiated, a differentiated's differentiated — a thing which would neither have subsisted nor been named differentiated, so far as from its own nature, if one may so speak, had not the really differentiated been differentiated away from it. Thus, then, it appeared and was named knowable not according to something among the things within it, but according to the counter-comparison toward intellect. For intellect, having seen itself differentiated from That, while That remained undifferentiated, named the stepping-out from That differentiation — a differentiation existing within itself, but in That only according to the undifferentiated, and according to the not-having-stepped-out-together. Thus, then: because intellect, having proceeded, became cognitive of that from which it proceeded — in the very respect in which it proceeded — projecting the cognitive reversion, as was said before, it made that which it desired through knowledge be named knowable; or rather, it shone forth the knowable that was in it, though not determined; for the differentiated is not in determination There; for it is not in it as something beside life and intellect; for all these — both the names and the things — belong to the eidetic nature; but that nature was wholly undifferentiated, as we say; in the middle nature it is being-differentiated, in a manner; while in intellect both the rest were differentiated, and the knowable and the cognitive and knowledge; and the properly knowable is intellect, being cognitive of itself. For form is both formed and form-like; wherefore with every form there coexists some knowledge, of whatever degree; and every form is a living thing — or a corpse of a living thing, having suffered the privation at once of the living thing and of the form: as stones, and timbers, and the dead among bodies; since the things that are in their natural state are living things, and have a certain con-sensation, even if the faintest, and to us imperceptible; since even the plants are living things — though of another kind, says Plato; and rocks, and metals, and the whole earth, and each of the other elements, that they are not soulless in every way, is shown both by the life-generation of the things contained in them as living, and by the whole-completeness of their form-giving. But these matters would need another discourse.³⁷¹
[81] And intellect, having been differentiated within itself, became, whole through whole, both cognitive and knowable; for, differentiated from itself and standing in the differentiation, it is joined to itself through knowledge — which is the law for things that stand apart, toward that from which they stand apart. Properly, then, as I said, the knowable and the cognitive and knowledge were differentiated from one another in intellect; and insofar as it is the thing differentiated, it appeared cognitive; insofar as it is that from which it was differentiated, in this respect it is knowable, prior to the former; for what proceeded desired to return; and returning through knowledge, it made its return as a cognitive toward a knowable; and it is itself both the from-which and the to-which: itself, then, the knowable and the cognitive, and in the middle of these, knowledge. As I was saying, then: properly these belong to intellect and are in intellect; and yet also from Being — in another manner; for intellect was, all the same, differentiated from it, so that toward That too it set out through knowledge; for this was the last contact of the things that have proceeded. And wishing to be joined to it and fitted upon it, it gathered its own knowledge into one gathering of all knowledges; and having wrought one unified knowledge, with all its speed — as one might say — it set out toward the undifferentiated, the knowable in very truth; not making the cognitive stand toward the knowable as one toward one in differentiation, but, having in a certain manner shown its knowledge to be substance by the great union, it cast itself upon the knowable as substance; and it desired, indeed, as a cognitive desires a knowable — because of the from-afar; but having been joined, and having attained, it knew the contact to be not of a cognitive, nor toward a knowable, but of substance toward substance. So that toward That the return is rather substantial; while toward itself it is rather cognitive.³⁷²
[81] Why then is intellect both — cognitive and knowable at once — while substance is knowable only, although she too is seen in a certain differentiation, as has been said? It must be answered: the knowable wishes to be a certain desired thing, and the cognitive a desiring thing — in differentiation, however it be — and these stand toward each other just as intellect and substance; and substance is the desired, for she is the better; and intellect the desiring. So it is plain that the desiring and the cognitive belong by nature to the more needy, while to the better belong the desired and the knowable. And if intellect is both knowable to itself and desired by itself — or by the others that come after it, or have proceeded from it — what wonder? The more needy participate the things before them — not, however, conversely. Accordingly substance is not intellect, while intellect is both substance and intellect — but the latter according to existence, the former according to participation; substance, then, is knowable, and intellect is knowable according to participation; while intellect is cognitive — such, therefore, according to existence. Against the perplexity, then, these things suffice. And perhaps one might suppose even substance to be cognitive — if indeed she is all things according to her proper gathering — yet not according to the determined knowledge; for in the same way she is also knowable: but undeterminedly, and in what is relationless toward another; but when intellect had proceeded from her, and a relation had arisen toward something before it, as of cause toward caused — since the caused appeared, having become cognitive, substance too projects something knowable: just so much as the property of the relation fore-appeared, counter-divided toward it. Let so much, for the present, be said about these things.³⁷³

## Chapter 82 — The Cause Acts into Itself and the Caused: the Phaedo's Rod and Number; Substance Breathes Desire into What Stood Away; Knowledge the Guide, an Eye Fore-Escorting Desire · pp. 232–235

[82] Ninth from the top, then, among the problems posed, was this: if things subsisting according to relation mutually establish one another, how shall the caused not also act somewhat into the cause, and the desired into the desiring, and indeed the knower into the known? For if each of the two comes to be in actuality together — still, how is it possible for the caused to act into the cause? Among things of the same rank this might perhaps be true; and yet even with these one might raise the difficulty, whether what does not touch acts at all upon that which it does not touch, by the mere drawing-near of the relation; and whether the patient, though itself changing nothing, is nevertheless said to suffer from it. Or rather: the things that approach, or are separated, hold the rank of matter; and the form of the relation straightway shines upon them — whether both, or only one of the two, approaches or departs. For men, coming together, attain a certain number that supervenes upon them from without; and the one rod, cut into two, participated a dyad instead of a monad. These things Socrates teaches us in the Phaedo.³⁷⁴ But if the caused stood counter-apart from the cause in the procession, and either two came to be instead of one, or the one became the knowing and the other the known — that something should come from each of the two into the other, the argument of Socrates does not allow even in the case of coordinates; and that what belongs to both should come from one of the two, rather than from what is before both, has no account in those cases where there is nothing before both — as with the first knowable and the first cognitive, or the first cause and the first caused. Rather, it is plain that all things that are in the caused come to the caused from the cause, together with its very substance. For the producer makes the produced stand away from itself, and differentiates it from itself; it is the cause itself, then, that gives the differentiation both to itself and to that; for in this way, too, the paradigm is assimilated toward the image — because it assimilates the image to itself; and the desired lies before the desiring and is set over against it, because, when this latter stood away, the desired breathed into it a desire of its own rank.³⁷⁵ Thus, then, substance, having begotten intellect, fore-shone herself forth as knowable to it, and made within it a power cognitive of herself — and not in potency only, but the in-actuality as well; for such things do the higher impart to the lower. For a thing is knowable in just this way: as filling the cognitive with knowledge; and it is desired in just this way: that it raises the desiring up toward itself, and fills what desires with itself. So too does Iamblichus take the intelligible in relation to intellect: that it has filled intellect with the intellection of itself. The caused, accordingly, does not act into the cause; but the cause acts both into itself and into the caused; for together with the substance it also co-produces the relation of the counter-position; and, if one may so speak, before making the produced — the caused, and the desiring, and the cognitive — it pre-makes itself knowable, and desired, and cause, and producing. This, then, could not stand otherwise.³⁷⁶
[82] The eighth from the beginning of the things inquired demands the use of knowledge — what benefit it furnishes to the knower, or to the known, if one should wish to demand this besides. Let it be said, then, first: knowledge furnishes to the knower its very being. For it has its being in knowing — that being, I mean, which is substantiated according to knowledge; for intellect is in intelligizing; so that intelligizing is the substance of intellect; and what works the intellection within produces the substance of intellect; and this is the intelligible and knowable. Next: according to the counter-position of himself toward the intelligible, intellect shines forth the knowable in That — even if it does not give it subsistence, as we said before. And a third benefit, upon these, intellection furnishes to the intelligizer: that it gives form to intellect according to what is intelligized, and sets it — third, or second, or however far it has proceeded — within the form of the producer. And this is most august: that, in the manner that is through knowledge, it even adorns the caused with the forms of the causes.³⁷⁷ But if the things known happen to be worse: where there is sympathy of the knower toward them, the assimilation to the worse makes the knower bad; but if the knowledge of the seconds — or, generally, of the worse — is without passion, then in another manner it leads the worse back up toward the better, and sets them within those; or rather, it leads those forth into communion with the worse, according to the projection of the form-giving of the worse that takes place within knowledge.³⁷⁸
[82] And if one should seek the beneficial itself, and the good: let him consider the kinship of all things toward one another that comes to be through knowledge, according to the recognizing of the common kinship; and, still further, the road of all things as they set out toward the one principle, as toward the Good — on which road knowledge sets right the wandering, and is established as guide for those who are setting out upward. For it is like an eye fore-escorting, and leading, the desire as it hastens toward That — kindling its proper light. Wherefore knowledge is, of the things that lead toward the end, the most accomplishing. And further: giving form to the worse according to the cognitive form-giving of the better, it becomes reversive of the lower into the better — and into the mightiest of all at once, through the common leading-back into Being. For it is not to the Unsayable that we are joined through knowledge, but to Being; That has been joined to the Unsayable through total union; so that through this mean it would join the rest as well.³⁷⁹

## Chapter 83 — How Intellect Knows Its Prior: the Imitation Found in Knowing Itself; Her Tender Love for Her Offspring; Knowledge a Recognition, a Greeting Stretched Out across the Standing-Apart · pp. 235–239

[83] But let us go now to the seventh of the things inquired; and first let us make a defense of the ranking — of the reversion according to knowledge and the reversion according to substance — namely, that the latter is better than the former. For as intellect, standing in its own bound, imitates what is before it as standing according to its proper bound — even if its bound stands toward that one's as the unbounded toward the bounded, and the undifferentiated toward the differentiated — so intellect, having known according to its own bound, imitated that of That which is seated above knowledge, in the knowable alone. And this is, confessedly, a second bound — not of subsistence toward subsistence, but as of knower toward known; so much, universally. If there is a substance of intellect, and a circumscription, as of a thing proceeding from itself, there will answer to this the cognitive reversion according to which intellect knows itself; and if it has proceeded also from what is before it, then to the procession from the subsistence above would answer the knowledge that knows what is before it; for it has been turned toward That with both a substantial and a cognitive reversion.³⁸⁰
[83] Next let us see the second part: how does it know That? Does it, by knowing itself, know That also? Or That, letting itself go? Or neither alone, but the both-together? For it knows neither That alone, apart from itself; nor through itself alone, as one who does not look toward That before it, but only toward itself. All must run together at once: for according to subsistence it proceeds, all its own, from That — so that also according to the knowledge of all itself it will know That; for knowing itself, it finds itself the imitation of what is before it — itself, and the as-it-were That; and again, knowing the imitation and the as-it-were That, in knowing itself it knows That. Only, in the one way it will know the likeness, and in the other the unlikeness: that the one is itself, and the other generative of itself; the one That's own, the other from That; or the one cognitive, and the other knowable.³⁸¹ It must be said, then: just as intellect was differentiated from Being as the differentiated, and showed That forth, apart from itself, as undifferentiated; so, knowing itself, by the knowledge of itself — its godhead being circumscribed — it knows the uncircumscribed nature of Being; a nature that does not know, but is known only; and this because she submits to be made commensurate toward intellect, by, as it were, a tender love for her own offspring. Intellect does not, then, look toward its cause in the way it looks toward itself; rather, having stood away from her, it was inscribed toward her; and, having wished to seize her, instead of this it knew her; or rather, it seized her in such a way as not to become her, but to embrace her cognitively; and this is: to have its eye flooded round with the light of her light. For such is the contact of the knower toward the known: not to become that, nor to be that's, nor to receive an efflux from that, nor itself to be led back into that. For all such intuitions confound the things that have once been differentiated, and no longer allow even the form of knowledge to stand — the form which subsists in a differentiation standing according to the bounds of the known and of the knower: being a recognition of things that have stood apart, and a welcoming greeting stretched out in return, together with the standing-apart.³⁸²
[83] But by the such within, they say, we know the such without. Then, I shall reply, intellect did come to be outside of Being, by the variation of its nature; yet, having proceeded, it is nevertheless such — as far as may be — as the substance that remained; for the differentiation alone changed over; so that with the whole of itself intellect would know substance — no less than if it contained in itself a trace of substance. And if there is in it, before the differentiated, the gathered plenitude, this would be an intellectual image of the unified substance before it — an image, as it were, by which it will know the paradigm, as by the paradigm the image; and yet great is the differentiation of the image toward its own paradigm. And if something even of the unified nature itself — that of Being — should be present also in intellect, whether simply or in some manner, whether connate with Being or con-substanced with intellect, and where, and how: these things we shall seek in the discourse concerning participation, a little later. If, then, some such thing is present in intellect, by this intellect will know That as well; for the nature being in a manner one, the knowledge of it will also be in a manner one. These matters we hope to pursue more precisely in the discussions concerning intellect — the intellect truly so called — when we have added the discourse on participation.³⁸³
[83] But the sixth had been proposed to us upon these: how does intellect give subsistence to itself according to the substantial reversion toward itself, and yet not also to what is before it, according to the like reversion toward That? And the same difficulty was raised about the vital; for the cognitive we see standing alike in the toward-itself and the toward-That: it acts nothing in either case, insofar as it knows. For even if knowledge were a working thing, still, insofar as it acts something and gives subsistence, it is no longer knowledge, as of a known, but a poietic cause of some made thing. For making is not proper to the knower — only the knowing of what already is; whereas giving-subsistence belongs to substance and to life: or rather, to substance belongs the substantiating, and the furnishing of a first subsistence; to life, the as-it-were stirring of substance and rousing of her toward a certain procession — or the giving of the poietic nature of this.³⁸⁴ Why then does the substantial reversion into itself give subsistence to intellect itself from itself, while the reversion into what is before it does not give subsistence to That? And how indeed could the cause be given subsistence by the caused! Such a reversion, then, is not substantial, if it is not substance-making? Or rather: it is substance-making of the substance of intellect — as of one begotten from what is before it; for according to the substantial reversion into That, intellect, as proceeding from That, circumscribed itself by the turning toward That, receiving its being-from-That; for just so must the substantial reversion toward itself also be conceived: as giving subsistence to intellect as proceeding from itself. And supposing the same things about the vital reversion, we shall justly preserve the analogy in its own right.³⁸⁵
[83] And indeed the fifth we shall resolve easily: agreeing that the proper work of reversion is the inclining-together toward some other thing — toward which the reversion turns the reverting — or toward itself, if the reversion be toward itself; while the inclination comes to be, in the case of substance, together with the property that gives itself subsistence, and in the case of life, together with the life-making one. For reverting and making are not the same; but the maker assuredly reverts toward what is coming to be; and we wished to recognize the form of the reversion from what accompanies it — from the substance-making, or the life-making; since reversion is other than knowledge too: the inclination, as has been said, is toward another or toward itself; whereas knowledge is, as it were, an assent, and an agreement that each thing is what it is.³⁸⁶ And to the fifth must be joined the fourth; and the same divisions must be made for the three reversions: there is, even in the case of life, what answers to the knower — plainly, the living; and what answers to the known — that life which the living lives; and to knowledge — the act-of-living. So one may say in these cases too: the vital, the livable, the act-of-living; and so also in the case of substance: there is the substantiation and subsistence; the being-substantiated, the subsisting; and the substantiable — that which in intellect is substantiated, and according to which intellect is substantiated. For, to speak more plainly: the reversion is seen at the middle; and of the extremes, at the reverting end will be the cognitive, the vital, the substantiative — that is, the knowing, the living, the substantiated; and at that toward which it reverts: the knowable, the livable, the substance-making; for each of the former is desirous of one of the latter — the one of the knower's object, the other of the living's, the third of the substantiated's.³⁸⁷ And let us not pass over in silence what deserves attention: that in the case of knowledge the names have been differentiated — inasmuch as knowledge subsists in a notable differentiation; while in the others they are not laid down, because great is the union of the living toward its life, and greater still that of the substantiated toward the substance by which it is substantiated, and toward which it reverts in substance. Wherefore knowledge is both an activity and a passion — for we say I know you, and I am known by you; whereas I live and I am are spoken in neither voice, and are viewed by the grammarians as standing in simple subsistence — unless one should take on the making besides; for in those the transition arises, as I make-live, and I am made-live.³⁸⁸

## Chapter 84 — The Double Procession and the Threefold Remaining; Being Only Is, Simply; Life a Birth-Pang and an Advance; as in the Chaldaean Triads, the Power · pp. 239–243

[84] To the third, then, we shall say that procession is double: the one is the procession of the proceeded — which one would see as third: as of the knowing, proceeding from the knowable; as of the living, from life, or from the cause of life; as of being, from the first being; while the other is the procession viewed in the very proceeding — according to which alone we say that life subsists; since of this latter the three could not be differentiated; or, if they are in any way differentiated, and project some appearance of their counter-division toward one another, at any rate in the substance that is coming to be it is impossible to divide, in any manner whatsoever, the substantial and the cognitive and the vital. If, then, one views and names only the remaining — that settled state bereft of procession — he could not divide even this in three; but if he means the remaining of what has proceeded, he will see this too divided three ways: for intellect remains both in the knowable, according to knowledge; and in life, according to its own life, or in the cause of life; and in Being, according to its not standing wholly out of Being — as we said in what went before.³⁸⁹
[84] So that toward the second also it is easy to say something from these: the reversion belongs to the proceeded; for this is what needs the return — the very thing that made the approach; not the proceeding, if it still proceeds; and much less the remaining before the procession; for this does not even proceed. Is then the reversion only of the proceeded? Or also the proceeding, and the remaining? For the very thing that remains has proceeded; and the middle holds the having-proceeded, and, remaining, holds the procession; in general, the three stand in determination toward one another, as has been said many times. In what has its substance determined, therefore, are the three — and this is the proceeded; whereas Being could not fittingly be said to remain — it, which does not even proceed, and in which nothing is determined; so that neither is remaining in it as something determined. In another way it is called unmoved: as wholly undifferentiated, and unified, and abiding in the nature that is before all things and without procession. And in the same way, neither does what is called life have remaining or procession or reversion viewed in differentiation, but those which are still dawning from beneath in the being-differentiated. The three, then, seem to be together with one another: in the unified, undifferentiated according to union; in the differentiated, according to a certain determination and counter-division already projected; and in the middle, plainly, the in-between — the being in a manner and not being in a manner, determined or undetermined. That, then, in the proceeded the three are present in this way — as differentiated according to form — is evident from these things.³⁹⁰
[84] But what — is Being not reverted toward itself, and self-subsistent, itself proceeding from itself and remaining in itself? Or rather: it appears to us to be such — to us who are partitioned about its single simplicity — while it is itself, wholly, none of these things; it has been allotted the one communion of the three, and this, moreover, gathered up within the whole communion of all things. For what exists according to some reversion, or procession, or remaining, must be in some particular manner; but That only is, simply; for each of those is not simply, but a substance of such-and-such a kind — remaining, perhaps, or proceeding, or reverting — and, to say it whole, determined. Whereby it is plain that in the proceeded are substance and life and knowledge, as counter-distinguished by division toward one another; while the middle nature is not yet any of these — neither substance, nor life, nor knowledge — but, by now, a certain birth-pang of these, and an advance; and in what is called Being, not even a dawning.³⁹¹ But what is the proceeded? Always the third, and whatever comes after the third? Or sometimes also the second — even if not the second from Being, which we call life, but, say, the second intellect? Or rather: after the first intellect, and the first differentiation that shone forth in it, the seconds also, in succession, are ever differentiated from the things before them — participating the differentiation already projected above; and there are things which are seen also in the being-differentiated, in a certain manner, toward the things before them and the things after them, by analogy — as, in the Chaldaean triads, the Power.³⁹²
[84] Upon all these we shall examine the first thing inquired: what is the necessity of the antithesis of the three toward one another — whether of remaining and procession and reversion, or of substance and life and intellect, or of the unified and the being-differentiated and the differentiated? Perhaps, indeed, it is finer to make the counter-division thus: undifferentiated, being-differentiated, differentiated; or again: one, multiplied, and the mean of both — that which has slackened from the one, or has projected an appearance of multitude; for these stand diametrically, the one and multitude in antithesis, and in the middle of both that other. This triad, then, has been divided with likely reason; and the one before it is furnished both by the sensibles lying before all eyes — of which some, we say, only are; others also live; others also know — and by the definition of the animal, which marks it off as a substance living and knowing. The animal, accordingly, is out of the three; knowledge being removed, it becomes living substance only; and life too being left aside, it is established as substance alone.³⁹³ But leaving the things themselves, if you will, let us survey our own conceptions, which we have concerning them: what do we say to be signifies? what to live? what to know? This last stretches toward another; for knowing subsists according to the desire toward the knowable; while being is by itself, and of itself, and only itself, without any doubling; and living is, artlessly, the middle: still in itself and toward itself, insofar as the living lives; yet already, in a manner, being roused up from itself, and being differentiated toward itself, and as it were over-seething its own substance — not yet, however, stretched out toward another; wherefore it is not yet carried into activity and passion, as holding much to substance. For life is the up-standing of substance; wherefore it seemed to be motion, or the cause of motion; and differentiation, or the in-being-differentiated, or the cause of such differentiation; but it is none of these; for neither is substance rest, or the cause of rest, nor gathering, or the cause of gathering; nor is intellect knowledge, nor the cause of knowledge alone; for these are forms, and determined toward one another — for life and substance, as forms, are determined; whereas intellect is all things — the first intellect — and a whole cosmos, by now ordered, and sphered, by its proper circumscription and its proper differentiation.³⁹⁴ But the nature before it, which we call life from the eidetic life that resembles its middleness, is not yet ordered; for it is not yet differentiated, nor circumscribed — since circumscription too is a kind of differentiation; but it shows these from beneath, as flowing upon them from Being; and it is nothing other than only flowing — neither having remained above, nor having proceeded below. And before this is the wholly-complete subsistence of Being — so wholly-complete as not even to admit of the flowing, nor of the forth-pouring into the middle.³⁹⁵
[84] Justly, then, has this triad been counter-divided toward itself, according to the sequence of the determined conceptions. For substance discloses only this: what each thing is — and one would view knowledge too in this way, as itself a kind of subsistence, and life, and intellect; the good, then, the beautiful, the just — everything insofar as it is substance — belongs to that first. And the living of each thing — of each substance — its life is its seething: everywhere both up-standing, and strengthening itself from itself toward the outward activity — if this too can avail for the indication of what we mean. And when it is interwoven with another form, and stretches toward another, other activities and properties are seen within it — and indeed knowledge among them. Wherefore, relative to substance, life holds the rank of power, and knowledge of activity; and yet there is also a cognitive power, and a substance likewise, as also a vital one. With the by-itself, then, substance has co-subsisted; with the toward-another, knowledge; and with the middle — neither stretched toward another, nor at rest by itself — that which, from this very seeking and seething, is called life.³⁹⁶ And how is intellect third? If it is substantiated according to knowledge, then intelligizing is knowing — since knowledge was set in antithesis toward life, as has been said. And if intelligizing, and intellection, signify a return toward Being, as was said before, and the return is a reversion, or a differentiation, it is plain in what way intellect is third, after life and substance: for she is uncircumscribed, while intellect is circumscribed, and life holds the middle disposition; likewise intellect is differentiated, having become many instead of one and unified; substance is single-form and undifferentiated; and life holds the middle disposition of these as well.³⁹⁷ It remains to add this: in what way have remaining and procession and reversion been counter-divided toward one another? The same thing, if we take it, will have these three activities: either it keeps its quiet; or it changes some change; or it desires again the quiet. For the body, too, either is healthy according to nature, or is being led away into the contrary-to-nature, or is being led back up into the according-to-nature. And if we take what is divided three ways relative to the same one thing, we shall say that it either is together with it, or departs from it, or returns to it.³⁹⁸

## Chapter 85 — Many, Parts, and Elements: Forms That Strive to Be Themselves; Parts in the One Mutual Inter-Holding; Elements Pressing into Union; the First Substance Has No Elder Elements · pp. 243–249

[85] Upon these things it must now be inquired, concerning the intelligible — that which we have called the wholly unified — whether it has within itself any differentiation, and an order of first and middle and last plenitude: whether as the philosophers say, of substance and life and intellect; or as the theologians, who multiply the intelligible principles, each school in its own way; or as the Chaldaeans, who celebrate the paternal triads. But if we are to settle these things, we must first push our argument back, in due measure, into the inquiry concerning the many and multitude; for in this way it will perhaps appear whether multitude befits that intelligible, or not; and in what way it does, and in what way it does not, according to the juster account.³⁹⁹ Those things, then, are clearly seen to be many, and are so called by all, which have stood apart from one another, and each of which has come to be by itself, in its proper circumscription, wishing only to be what it is and is called — as we say the forms strive to be. But the parts also are called many; for one part of anything cannot by nature be — two at the least; the parts, then, are many; but they differ in this: that they do not wish to be by themselves, nor their own, but altogether one another's, and the whole's; and according to the one mutual inter-holding they subsist within the whole — having begun their differentiation according to the partition, yet not having flown apart into proper circumscriptions, but still con-substanced by the inclining-together toward one another and toward the whole; as appears most of all in those parts which are called like-parted. And in a third sense the elements are called many; for not even can one element alone fill out the elementated, but two at the least.⁴⁰⁰
[85] What then is the difference between parts and elements? One is this: that the parts consist of the same elements as the whole; for the parts are of the elementated — as these four elements are the elements of sinew, and indeed of each of its parts; whereas the elements are simpler even than each part — as fire, say, and earth are simpler even than what seems the least of parts, the sinew. Another: that the parts preserve their proper partition, according to which they subsisted — or, if they do not preserve it, they would not even be parts; whereas the elements do not abide any standing-apart whatsoever, but are poured together into a blending, and press into union, and have their being elements in just this: in nowhere showing forth their proper partition, and much less their circumscription. And a third difference between them: that the elements are not of the same nature as the elementated, except insofar as they are called its elements; I mean, for example, that the elements of our body are not, according to the form of the blend, bones, if you like, and flesh; rather they are elements of bones and of fleshes, whenever they become commensurate, and are made proper to this form; in themselves, however, they are of another subsistence. And so too with substance: if there be any elements of her, they would not be certain substances; for the elementated was substance, and the element would not be the elementated. The extremes, then, are: what has been circumscribed into its proper subsistence, and what has been blended together into the one common union of all; and the meanness of both is the parts, and the partition of these — of things already in a manner standing apart, but not yet being circumscribed.⁴⁰¹
[85] But if these things stand thus apart by nature, how are these four elements still certain forms? And how would the so-called genera of Being not be forms — and yet they are called both elements of substance, and genera; and they belong to Being for this reason, that substance has been blended together out of them. And if someone shall say that these are forms and not elements, what then would the elements truly be? For what could we find simpler than the genera of Being? Yet they seem, all the same, to be forms as well, preserving their proper circumscriptions; for in substance there are both motion and rest, manifestly, and each member of each of the other antitheses. And how are head and hands and feet parts of man? And how is the whole composed of whole parts — of sun, I mean, and moon and the rest, of which each is a whole form? And our own parts have been circumscribed, in a manner, by certain eidetic differences — as many of them as are unlike-parted.⁴⁰² To these things it must be said that the lower always participate the higher; so that the forms are also parts and elements; and the parts, in turn, are also elements — not, however, conversely in every case. For among the forms, some are simpler than others, and the simple become elements of the composite.⁴⁰³
[85] Further: whatever within the whole are unlike parts, are at once forms and parts: forms, because unlike; parts, because they are not by nature able to be by themselves, but within the whole — such as our parts called organic; and such as, in the heaven, hemispheres and quarters and certain different zones; and further, poles and centers and axes and circles, marked off by certain demiurgic cuts, yet unable to be by themselves. And in souls, the reason-principles happen to be parts of this kind, and all the causes and participations of the different forms are of such a nature; while the existences are as of the self-complete — save that of these too there come to be gatherings, as out of elements, and wholenesses, as out of parts, as has been said before.⁴⁰⁴ In this way, then, some things are forms and parts; and forms and at once elements are all those forms that are blended together into the undifferentiated constitution of one form — such as the composites among the animals, which show forth the composition whole through whole: mules, and ostriches, and all such; for these have been constituted out of different forms, as out of elements poured together into some one form. In the same manner we shall see parts as well; but parts alone, in this strict sense, are those which jut forward from the gathered nature, and yet have not stood apart, each circumscribed, complete, itself from itself; for such, confessedly, are the like-parted: having partitioned the wholeness, yet remaining all the same in the same form, and for this reason sharing one name with the whole and with one another; and there is, further, what is just now jutting forth into the unlike-parted, and yet remains within the whole, and within the common naming of the same nature — the very thing that the ordered animal has undergone in each of the forms: for it is still animal, and a part and measure of animal; but already, in a manner, the one is human and the other equine — not only by the commensurability toward each (for this the like-parted also underwent), but by the projection, and the inclination, toward man and toward horse. And parts as forms are such as lie on either side of the forms that are circumscribed each according to itself: either toward the worse, as our organic parts; or toward the better, as the parts of the cosmos; for these latter are rather the whole's, even if each has been eager to be its own; while the former cannot subsist by themselves and upon themselves, through the incompleteness of their proper nature.⁴⁰⁵ And there would also be parts that become elements — namely, such as fill out the wholeness that is called the wholeness from parts. For that the wholeness is filled out from parts — if not every wholeness, yet this one at least — is evident; and that it is as from elements, is shown by the one form being brought to completion out of many that vanish into the one of the many, and no longer preserve their partition in the form-giving of the whole. And I think also that the forms, viewed in the genus as in a whole, are viewed as parts — for they are not yet circumscribed there in their proper circumscriptions; and, being parts, they become elements of the genus. For the gathering of the many animals — a gathering of this kind — is the one animal, or has its subsistence in the one animal. And perhaps like to the foregoing is also this: that the genera of Being, even if they seem in a manner to be forms, are rather parts of the whole blending; yet for this very reason they settle also into the elemental nature, according to the one substance which they all constitute. These matters may be worked out more finely hereafter.⁴⁰⁶
[85] But which of the forms, or which of the parts, can become elements, and which cannot, must be said. For not all, as it seems — for instance, the last of the forms; for if these too were elements, there will be something even after them, composed out of them. And this too must be sought: whether the elements are in every way of a superior and simpler nature, retiring back toward the subsistence of the more composite things? It seems indeed to stand so in most cases — yet not in all. For our body is gathered together out of pre-existing things; and the man and the horse — rational mortal animal, and irrational mortal animal, let us say — out of the more whole-like; and the soul is blended from substance and life and knowledge, which pre-exist; but the whole body of the All is out of the four elements — which, however, no longer pre-subsist; nor is the first substance out of elements elder in nature. For before her, the elements are nowhere; for the elementated always wishes to be better than its proper elements; and the elements are not even by themselves, but always in the elementated, and with one another, as the parts are with the whole and with one another; since the elementated even uses its own elements as matter — being itself like a form supervening upon them.⁴⁰⁷ If, then, these things stand so, the first elementated would not be out of elements elder than its own nature and ranked before it, but out of elements first shining forth within it — more incomplete than the whole form, and for this reason conceived as simpler; though perhaps, in truth, not even simpler, but only more incomplete and more partial; for so stand the parts here, and the forms as well; for the more whole-like seems more composite, because more embracing; but it is not so — rather, it is both simpler and better.⁴⁰⁸

## Chapter 86 — The One Slackened into the Subsistence of the Many; the Threefold One; Life Seething and Boiling Up — Whole and Parts before All Forms; the Elements of the First Substance · pp. 249–255

[86] What then is the so-called simplicity of the elements, and relative to what composition? Or rather, the elementated is double: the one as the supervening form — which is, in real truth, both simpler and better; the other as the mixture and blend of the concurring elements — which is presupposed as one composite matter; relative to this latter, then, the elements are simple, and not relative to the common property that gives the mixture its form. Substance, accordingly, is the former kind of nature; while the substance according to the mixture is substance in potency; and each of the elements is a part of the matter; these, then, are not yet substance, but substance-like nevertheless, and near to substance, though more incomplete.⁴⁰⁹ What then — is even the first substance from matter and form? And whence did the matter subsist, if not from the things prior in nature? For the matter here with us comes from the elder principles, as they say. There must, then, be There also the participations from the elders, taken up in the rank of matter and of elements. Or rather — concerning the participations I defer the busy inquiry till later; but, the elements being viewed in some multitude and some determination, substance — being before all substantial determination — could not be second to her own elements. Subsisting first, therefore, she shone forth, together with herself and within herself, her proper elements — as the wholeness its parts, and as this cosmos its own elements within itself; and I mean not the matter (though perhaps that as well), but the elements of the form — such as the four, whatever they are and however one may determine them: whether wholeness projected them as four parts, or whether the visible and the tangible, and the means of these — being everywhere, and seen in all things — these too were differentiated off from the one and single-form constitution of the cosmos.⁴¹⁰ For every one is, by its own nature, before its proper multitude; and from it the multitude as it were grows out, according to the partition of that one into these; for — so to speak — the One is slackened into the subsistence of the many: that one not being used up into these, but furnishing room to these also for their subsistence; and even if the one be inseparable from the many, such is its nature. And if the many are threefold — either as forms, or as parts, or as elements — assuredly the one also would be triple, and for each multitude there is its proper one: the eidetic gathering, one form before the partition; the whole before the parts; the elementated before the elements; and the differences of the one go forth in proportion. For the one of the forms is a many-formed one; the one of the parts appears, indeed, to be many-parted, insofar as the whole stretches alongside all the parts by its embrace — yet what is before the parts is impartible, even if it should preside within the parts; for it gives the parts also room for the subsistence that is partitioned within it; while the elementated is more complete: it has been squeezed together into union, and it con-fuses the elements and unites them toward itself, and does not allow them, in truth, to be ranked after itself, but compels them to make sail toward its own proper subsistence. Wherefore, being many by nature, all of them nevertheless become one; and the mixture is not one thing and the elementated another — as we just now distinguished them for clarity's sake, turning the matter many ways. The elementated, rather, is one and many — but the many squeezed together by the one, and not permitted to be simply many, but unified, and drunk down by the one, and standing in the undetermined of the one; for thus the elements everywhere appear to stand, both toward one another and toward the elementated; and these are not the matter of that — for neither are the parts matter of the whole, nor the forms of the all, if all be said instead of whole — but only analogous to matter; and as the multitude of each form stands toward its one — out of which the whole form is constituted, one and many — so too the elementated is one and many: the many, however, blended together through the dominance of the one. Whereas if this one should relax its own simplicity, and be as it were mastered by the many that have risen in faction against it — or, to speak more truly, that have imitated it, each according to its own circumscription — then the many are established as forms instead of elements, and the one has become somehow many-colored and variegated; and instead of elementated and elements, or blend and blended, there is a monad and numbers — the one in the forms being one and many, the both-together.⁴¹¹
[86] The parts and the whole must be viewed in the middle manner: a certain relaxation having come about — and for this reason the parts having subsisted according to the partition that was dared — yet an inclining-together having come about as well: of the one toward the parts, by its taking-up of the partition and the distribution; and of the parts toward the one, by their taking-up of the one, and their partible reception of it; and the thing is established as a mean of the whole's and the parts' peculiar manners. Wherefore upon these the doubling, and their single relation, are both manifest; while at the extremes, even if both exist, they hold them more faintly: in the eidetic one-and-multitude, the single relation and joint-appearance is less apparent, because they do not much incline together, nor are they, nor are they said to be, one another's; while in the elements and the elementated, not even the doubling is clear — because the multitude of the elements does not show itself forth determined within the one; for their multitude appears rather by inference, through the con-fusion, if it be lawful so to speak, of the elemental properties. And what wonder, if the first elementated, substance, works the undetermined into her elements — seeing that even the forms, when they are blended in the rank of elements toward others, as we said before, are themselves also compounded toward one blend; even if each somehow escapes the blending, and shows forth its proper activities now and then, and in some manner. For things that are forms cannot be made wholly one; wherefore the visible and the tangible are each everywhere, wherever the other is — and yet the one remains one thing and the other another; and in soul, the substantial and the vital and the cognitive are everywhere throughout the soul — yet these too are determined in some manner. And such, in intellect, are the genera of Being; for these too are elements of that substance — not of the super-eidetic and simple substance, but of the eidetic; for these too are certain forms — though more elemental than the others, and simpler, and for this reason common to all forms, and to the one eidetic nature that is before the many forms; whence in this nature too their properties somehow show through. But not even these are yet forms, insofar as they are taken as elements; nor have they yet become parts.⁴¹²
[86] For there is, even in the eidetic cosmos, first what stands as eidetic substance — a certain single-form gathering of the forms; then a certain partition of her, and the wholeness that gathers the partition — itself also an eidetic nature of whole and parts; and upon this, according to the differentiated of the eidetic subsistence, the forms themselves stood apart, and that which gathers the forms — the many-formed one, as has been said: a monad, and the number fastened upon the monad. Before the elemental and gathered eidetic substance, accordingly, there is the subsistence — in real truth — of the whole and the parts, seen in the being-differentiated; the first substance, and really being substance, which for this reason we call life: as already swelling into dis-stance, and being stirred into differentiation, and — as the name signifies — seething, and boiling up; not yet, however, poured out into the subsistence of forms, but viewed in the seething and the seething-up; whence also we hymn her as whole and parts, before the whole eidetic nature: because, remaining, she is moved; and, unified, she nevertheless suffers something of being-differentiated — being, by the unified and remaining, the whole; and by the being-differentiated and moving, the parts. Wherefore the whole and the parts are one nature, because one is the nature still being differentiated, and already being so: the latter, as no longer wholly unified; the former, as not yet completely differentiated. One, then, is the meanness, which we call by two names — whole and parts — viewed according to the both-together. And before even her is substance: a unified nature, simply, and undifferentiated — yet not as the one, but as the unified; and this is out of many and with many; so that the first elementated also is out of elements — she is it; for the simply substance is she, through whom also the particular substance is everywhere the particular elementated.⁴¹³ For what is everywhere gathered we call substance — as the being-differentiated, life; and the differentiated, form; even if each of these be the last of its kind, for instance the bodily: substance is the con-blend of the four elements; the stirring of this blend, roused toward the differentiation of its proper activities, is a certain life of it — for it is a motion, and a preparation toward the eidetic activity, and a subsistence before the activity; and the figure that has stood apart is the form. And if every substance is gathered according to a wasting — or, if you will let me say it, a joint-perishing — of the elements, then assuredly the first and simply substance also is a gathering of elements; and her elements are the most fully, and most properly, elements of all: not blended together by a con-fusion of their proper circumscriptions, like the elements here — as Aristotle also says; nor united only at their own summit, letting the rest go into differentiation — as we said the forms are blended together, becoming elements of the eidetic substance, wherefore they also show forth, somehow, their proper determination within her; but as having nothing determined, nothing eidetic, nothing con-fused by any force — but being, whole through whole, simply elements, by nature such, of the substance that is properly unified and stands according to union. Not the forms, then, nor the genera of Being, are her elements; for these too are certain forms.⁴¹⁴
[86] What then are they? For beyond these we have nothing else to name; nor, indeed, are the simply-parts these things; for the parts too are super-eidetic; what then the parts also are, must be sought. Or rather: they are the genera of Being — but not subsisting eidetically, in the way they are named by us, and conceived; for all our conceivings and namings are eidetic — I forbear to say that they are not even intellectual and true, but one must be content if they happen to be even psychic; yet nevertheless our names and thoughts are of the forms. From the things thus brought forward, then, one must render up the eidetic, and what is determined by circumscriptions of properties; and we leave them only the partition; for we call the forms also parts — but they would not be both forms and parts There. Parts, then — qua parts — are the genera of Being; they, then, are what are called the as-it-were parts; or rather, not these — not the ones that have taken on the eidetic in addition to the partial — but those before these, being such as these are. They are parts, then: but parts only, and simply parts; so that the so-called genera of Being subsisted as parts before being made proper by circumscriptions. And the elements, accordingly, in the like manner: stripping from them the necessity of the partition, we shall posit them as those very natures growing together toward one another, and being united into one blend — and in this respect seen as elements. These, then, are elements according to existence; while the parts become elements according to participation; for they too have something that grows together into the subsistence of the whole; for the whole is a connate growth of the part-wise summits, blended into one — the whole — according to which summits the parts become elements. Wherefore also the oft-raised perplexity — how the wholeness is from the parts, and how the parts are after her and from her, being parted off — yet parts according to existence, because each has its being in the partition; while the forms, circumscribed according to existence, become the others by participation: parts, more proximately, by the inclining toward the one, and by a certain departure from determination; elements, higher up, by the union, and the riddance not only of determination but of partition. The same things, then, are the genera of Being — subsisting in three ways, differently and differently.⁴¹⁵
[86] Have then the genera of Being alone received this triple nature? Or, simply, all things that are forms — even the last of the forms — are ever contained in the firsts; but different ones are differentiated at different stages, some earlier, some later: because some have circumscriptions more whole-like, consorting with more of the undivided; others more partial, consorting with more of the divisive. Nevertheless, all that is differentiated below also exists above, gatheredly; for whence are the differentiated, if all were not gathered above? And procession is nothing other than the differentiation of the gathering — not all at once, assuredly, but little by little, different things shining forth at different stages, the more whole-like before the more partial.⁴¹⁶ For why ever should all things be in intellect, differentiatedly, and yet not all in substance, unitedly? For always the unified is before the differentiated; so that also the all unified is before the all differentiated. And why should only the genera of Being be gathered There — being elements, as they say, of substance? Or limit and the unlimited alone — for the philosophers say this as well? In that case the other forms would not pre-exist There, in the unified-before-all; and so That would not be the principle of all things, but only of the everywhere-couplings of limit and unlimited, or of the extended completions and mixtures of what is called Being. But if the summit of each form is a gathering of the whole multitude that belongs to that form, how is not the one principle of all things, likewise, a gathering of the whole multitude of all that grows out from her, and is differentiated upon her? Why then — if all things are elements in substance, and all parts in the middle rank, just as all are forms in the third and differentiated, the intellect — do we nevertheless call some of the forms elements, such as the genera of Being, and others from-elements, such as animal and plant and the more composite of the forms? For why should not these too be elements? For the animal is an element of man, and man of the land-dwelling man.⁴¹⁷

## Chapter 87 — Subaltern Forms, Elements and Elementated at Once; the Individuals: the Same Form Set Whole in Many Matters; Socrates Not Other than Plato by Form; the Double Generation · pp. 255–259

[87] Perhaps, then, even the last of the forms becomes an element in the individuals — itself also, with others, filling out the particular man? Or it must be said: that all things that are forms should be also parts and elements is no wonder; but of the forms, some are more whole-like and simpler, and for this reason better-natured toward the blending — as having circumscriptions neither deep nor manifold, but just now dawning from beneath, and not yet rolled up together into many; whence they are easily united, and as it were con-fused toward one another; but by as much as the procession happens to descend further — deepening, and being built up with circumscriptions and partitions — by so much the harder do the forms contribute to the blend of an elementated, no longer making the union exact, but as it were cleaving it toward differentiation. Whence the things nearest the unified nature appear to be elements rather than forms; the farthest, forms rather than elements; and the middles stand at the mean of the extremes, of composition and of simplicity. The genera of Being, then, are rather elements; the last of the composites rather forms — man, and horse, and, to speak generally, what are called the most specific of the forms; while the middles, which are also called subaltern, hold the rank of elements toward the things that come from them, and of elementated toward the things before them: the same things, then, are equally elementated and elements.⁴¹⁸
[87] Are then the most specific forms, in any manner, elements of the individuals? Not, surely, of other forms; for then they would not be most specific, and last of the forms; but surely not of the individuals either; for the common must be present together with other differences; and what would be the individual differences of each — the accidents? But accidents do not fill out a substance. Or perhaps these differences too are substantial? Then they will show themselves as first, if indeed they are proper to the individual; so that they will have proper ideas, individual as they are; or there will be some form which comes to be, whole, and perishes — a form neither monadic nor embracing of individuals.⁴¹⁹ Perhaps, then, the manner of the differentiation is double: the one dividing the One into many — into whole forms — by form-making differences; the other stamping the same whole upon many matters; wherefore the individual is the more properly called atom, because it is whole everywhere, having no single differentiating variation. Is then the difference of the individuals due to the matter alone? And what difference of forms could there be beside the matter? Or beside her there is none. Yet if she were endowed with form, then, beside what is in her, some differing form might arise — as the likeness of Socrates in stone differs from the one in bronze; for the form con-substanced with matter is somehow co-altered along with its substrate. But if she is formless, and differs in potency, the difference comes about according to the in-potency and the in-actuality — except that no eidetic difference is added on her account. But let these things be dismissed for the present.⁴²⁰
[87] This, however, I say: that in many substrates nature has set the same form whole — the same, received in many places, without difference. What then — is not one individual other than another individual? Or rather, only insofar as it is here and there; while the form is nevertheless the same; so that if one should take away the matter, the whole form would have appeared one. Not other, then, according to the form; not other, then, by otherness — if by matter; for otherness too is a form. Or they say other in number; but number too is a certain form, and undifferent on either side; and the otherness of the two monads is likewise undifferent. How then is the whole form predicated of all, while that of Socrates is no longer? Or rather: it has been narrowed not insofar as it is form, but insofar as it is a particular; for man is predicated alike, according to the subsistence of the form; but it differs by the a-certain-one and by the universal. The particular, then, toward the particular, is undifferent; for each of the two is a what. Socrates, then, is not other than Plato — for all the same attributes are rendered, conversely, of each.⁴²¹ But why, man being one, is the one universal and the other individual? For not in vain did the one participate the whole, and the other the particular — or the individual, whatever it is. It must be said: the universal is the reason-principle from which there is, in the individuals, one participation common to all — what we call the common form in the many, which is predicated of all together, taken as common; while what is in each of the individuals is the same both with the common, and with the each-of-each — in its property, and in the whole and entire nature of the form; for there is nothing of it that is not everywhere, and eidetic in each; but, being the same in all respects, it has been partitioned in its subsistence, and stands apart — itself dis-spanned from itself into determination; as body stands apart from itself into a kind of continuous bulk, while the form is everywhere the same and undifferent.⁴²²
[87] For nature seems to have gone all the way through, from the firsts to the lasts, along the diameter, and to have arrived from the opposite at the opposite; in many places this may be seen, and it comes to pass in what we have been saying: at the top, each form is one only, simply — for that there be two first is impossible, as Plato shows; while at the last extremities the individuals are many the same — many images of one and the same, not differing in form, yet many for all that, the one form being generative, everywhere, of the same things. And perhaps the generation is double: the one according to the form-making differences of the divided forms; the other according to the different scatterings of the same — whether by continuity, as with bodies and qualities, or by partition, as with monads, and men, and horses, and all such forms; and each suffers, or works, the undifferent multiplication of the many individuals. And not only the most specific of the forms do so, but also the differences within them, and the genera seen upon them; for there is in me an individual animal, and an individual rational, and mortal; and plainly the generation of these is undifferent; and this is the individual constituted by differences; and many other things suffer the same — for instance the genera of Being; and every nature proceeds, down to the individuals; and all procession is eidetic. But it must be examined hereafter, concerning the elder principles, whether they too make some procession; and concerning the things that seem to proceed, in what manner they make the procession.⁴²³ What we said at the beginning, then: the most specific forms are not present as elements in the individuals, as though in compounds of them; rather, the whole elementated structures themselves are, in many places, the same — just as the blend of the one body, being an elementated, is both whole in the part, and, in this part, the whole compound of the four elements, standing apart in many places. Concerning this, I do not know whether anything further is worth drawing out.⁴²⁴

## Chapter 88 — Elements and Parts Co-Proceed with Their One; All Things Both Pre-Exist and Do Not; the Double Procession of Forms — Parmenides the Great on Part and Whole; the Titanic Differentiation; One Chorus with Its Leader · pp. 259–265

[88] Running back up to the perplexity from the beginning, let us see whether the elements are not, in subsistence, lower than the elementated — insofar as they are elements — and yet, in the nature of their property, superior: as the animal, before man, is common and whole-like, but in man is an element of him, and more partial. Do then the synonymous properties pre-exist each of the elements in this manner? Or would it not be even in this way? For the elements, and the parts, and the forms stand toward one another in a certain division; but the division is different in different places: as the triad is out of three monads, and the tetrad out of four — not that, out of those three and another added to them, as it might seem, but the division is proper to each of the monads; so that even the monads of the numbers lesser in quantity are more whole-like. For of the whole monadic form, the division into two is one thing, that into three another, and that into four another; so that of animal, too, the differentiation into two is one — if one should say the one part is rational and the other irrational; but if, taking the rational animal — not the whole animal — one should divide it in its turn, as it might chance, by the immortal and the mortal, he will make three elements of man: animal, rational, mortal — counter-divided by the mortal according to a third rank, and no longer the same, either in form, with the former ones — neither the rational, nor the animal; and this triad of elements shone forth first in man, and was differentiated off from him, as being properly his own.⁴²⁵
[88] What then — are not the seconds always gathered up in the firsts, and the more partial in the more whole-like — so that the three elements of man, too, are in animal, let us say? Or rather: there too the elements are gathered together with the whole; for man also is There, in the gathering; for the seconds are always in their priors — primarily the wholes in the wholes, and, together with the wholes, the parts also in them; and likewise the elements, and the forms, and, to speak universally, the multitudes in their proper monads. Just so substance also is contained in the unified, being undifferentiated from her proper henad; for so too the henad is contained, undifferentiated from substance; and so the elements of either are themselves also taken up together There, undifferentiated from one another; wherefore There they are neither elements nor an elementated; for there is no determination at all. And so the parts also are pre-taken in the elements — but according to the elemental gathering; and so the forms in the parts — but without circumscriptions, according to the partition alone. So that, in this manner, the elements of the cosmic body too are impartibly in the hypercosmic light, whatever it is and however great; and the elements of the human body are gathered up, undifferentiatedly, in the sublunar cosmos; for those elements are common to all animals and plants and metals, all pre-taken in one gathering; and below, the proper ones are differentiated in each thing — the elements of each. Either, then, these pre-exist — and I say these, because not according to this differentiation, nor according to this form-giving; all alike, then, both do not pre-exist, and again seem to pre-exist — to one who views the matter more in the gross, and views the gathered and more whole-like manner of the form-giving.⁴²⁶
[88] But one must mark this: that the elements everywhere proceed together with their one elementated, and co-exist with its existence; and the parts, likewise, are everywhere together with their proper wholeness; whereas the forms, not inclining together in this way toward their proper one, but being wholly form-given by circumscriptions, and striving to be upon themselves, justly made for themselves a double procession: the one as the parts —
[88] when the form also takes up the rank of parts; for so stand the forms in intellect: they fill out the multiplied aspect of it, as the reason-principles of soul fill out the many-formedness of soul, and those of nature the multitude of nature. And there would be, even of the one bodily form, such a many-colored multitude, answering by analogy to the many-formedness of nature and of soul and of intellect. Such things we called unlike-parted parts, by-named from the whole form — for they are human, and equine; just as the reason-principles are natural, and psychic, and yet each reason-principle is not soul, nor nature — nor is each a man, or a horse, as it were a head, and a hand, or a foot — yet completing into the whole man, and each into its whole: so that the part is neither the same as the whole, nor other, but in a certain respect and manner — as Parmenides the great requires. Such forms, then, both are, and proceed, together with the common and one, just like the parts and the elements; but another procession of theirs comes about when each is separated, self-completely, from the whole and from its counter-divided fellows — a procession that seems, indeed, to be more complete, but in truth belongs to the needier ones: to those that have relaxed the con-spiration, and the inclining-together toward the one and toward one another, and for this reason have proceeded scattered, so far as may be.⁴²⁷
[88] At any rate the reason-principle in the soul — and likewise the one in nature — is better than this apparent man; and the reason-principle of the human soul, in the more whole-like soul, is better than the psychic substance that subsists by itself. There is, then, also such a procession of forms — subsisting not as a swarm, but, as it were, autonomous. But since the titanic differentiation did not wholly prevail over them, these too keep some ordering toward one another: the figure of a chorus filling its scheme, or of an army-camp, or — to speak generally — of some whole cosmos which one would say consists of wholes; but that is parts and whole; so that it is better to say: a monad, and a number wound off from the monad — a chain flowing down from its proper principle, changing over, by descent of forms, with their proper differences. For so, perhaps, the cosmos also stands: one, and then many after the one; and if all together are one — yet as one chorus with its leader. But how these things stand we shall examine again, when we make the discourse about all procession, inquiring after that of the first principles — whether it is, or is not.⁴²⁸
[88] For now let us gather this together: the elements proceed always with their substance, and with one another; the parts, with the whole and with one another; and of the forms, those that have come to be in the rank of elements subsist with their proper elementated, and those in the rank of parts, these too with the whole; while those that, in the eidetic procession, have subsisted as forms, by themselves and upon themselves — these are the ones that proceed scattered, autonomous; each, like a number, depending from its proper monad — the more whole-like from a more whole-like one, the more partial also from a more partial. Yet not even these are wholly autonomous, nor only differentiated from one another and from their proper monad; for each participates the communion that is as of parts; and the monad participates that of the whole nature; whence the same things seem also to be parts of the single-form cosmos — this, according to the partitioned aspect; but according to the whole union of the eidetic summits — as of straight lines grown together in the center — according to this they become, as it were, elements of their one common substance.⁴²⁹

## Chapter 89 — The Simply Many, Multitude of the Simply One; the Unlimited Multitude of the Parmenides; the One Many — Fount of Founts, Seed of the Gods, Cosmic Aiōn; the First and Simply God · pp. 265–272

[89] Again, then, let us say from the beginning: the many, everywhere, are either elements only, or parts, or forms; and of the forms, some are unified into an eidetic substance — which we also call eidetic elements; others are viewed in partition — which we call eidetic parts: the first, as in the case of the four elements of our body; the second, as in the case of its parts, and of the like-parted; for these too are parts, and eidetic, even though they have the same form, partitioned — and still more so the unlike-parted; and others are each upon themselves — as a man and another man, and sun and moon. And again, by a third remove, these last being taken in three ways: at the summits, the elemental nature is conceived; according to the filling-out of the one, and the inclining-together toward it, whole and parts; and according to the released circumscription of each, the peculiar-mannered form — as a number from a monad, and a chain from a principle, and a filling-out of a self-complete from self-completes, shows itself forth; and further than this, nothing proceeds. For the further would be the complete dis-spanning of all things — un-kindred, and altogether torn asunder — in which disorder also will supervene, all things being no longer ordered toward one; and this affection does arise in the All, yet it is led back again into one, and ordered toward the one.⁴³⁰ But the discourse concerning processions, as I said before, let it be deferred for the present; since this too must be deferred to that discourse: whether each multitude is double — for instance, of the forms, the one connate with intellect, as a multitude of intellect; the other, the multitude of the many intellects after the one intellect; for of souls also there is one multitude, that of the many souls after the one soul, and another, the multitude of the psychic reason-principles in the one soul — to which corresponds, we shall say, the multitude of the forms divided within intellect; and it must be sought, likewise, of the parts and of the elements, whether the one multitude is constituted within, and the other without. Let these things too be dismissed for the present.⁴³¹
[89] But since the many are said either as elements, or as parts, or as forms, it is clear that to be many is not, for them, the same as to be forms, or parts, or elements; each of these, then, is a multitude, and a particular multitude; but that which is only multitude — the simply many — what would they be, and of what, and where subsisting? Before the triply-divided many, surely, and before the three manys; so also before the elements — and therefore before the elementated as well; for this is connate, and of the same rank, with its own elements. Of what, then? As the elements are of the elementated, the many are of what? Of the One — as the parts of the whole? For the one is not so related to them, as some one of the many, but as the before-the-many, and as it were a monad of the many, and one-the-all; being all of the one, then, the many are — themselves also completing into the subsistence of such a one, as the parts into that of the whole, the elements into that of the elementated; for we do not say that the one and the many are two substances — no more than the elementated and the elements, or the whole and the parts, or this one monad and the number of forms within it — but, according to the both-together, one and many; so that the simply one, too, must be conceived as many of this kind — as each form is one and many.⁴³² What, then, are the many? Monads? But the monads are forms; and the many are before the forms. Parts, then? But the many are before the elements also; and the elements before the parts. Are the many, then, elements? But the elements are blended with one another toward the mixed substance of the elementated; whereas the many wish to be the multitude of the One. Do they then not blend with one another — or rather, do the many stand apart from one another more than the elements? This, surely, has no account; yet neither do they fail to blend; rather, being still more impartible than the elements, and more unitary, instead of being blended they are unified; and instead of making the mixed, they make the One; for the many were of the one, and not of substance. Are they, then, determined from one another, or continuous with one another? Or rather: the continuous and the determined are among the forms, and are truly forms; so that not even of the parts is it true to say either of the two; for the parts are seen in the being-differentiated of the forms, not in the having-been-differentiated; and much more do the elements escape the continuous and the determined — yet these things still attempt to differ from one another in some manner; for one of the elements contributes one thing and another another, and still more the parts, and most of all the forms; whereas the simply many do not wish to bring in many differences; for then they would be many differing things, and not simply many; but they are nothing else than only many. Wherefore, whatever of them one may take — even if all together — he will see nothing other than many; for theirs is neither the other-and-other, nor the together, nor the all; for these are differences, and differing properties; but only many, and only multitude — a multitude, however, that is not its own, nor by itself; for neither are the elements, nor the parts, nor the many forms, themselves of themselves; for no multitude is self-constituting, but is always multiplied about some one — either a monad, or a whole, or a mixed; just so the simply many, too, are multiplied about the simply one; and the multiplication is of the one, as the partition is of the whole — being, as it were, an affection of it, and a procession within itself, and constituting its all-complete nature; whence also whatever is taken is straightway many; and the many are everywhere together with the one.⁴³³
[89] And perhaps this is the unlimited multitude hymned in the Parmenides — unlimited for this reason: that it has no limit which is not multitude, but is everywhere many — even without the everywhere; rather, many-where; and not even the many-where as some other thing, by relation, but the many only. And perhaps this is the One Many, from which the negations of the first hypothesis begin — that which also first rules all the determinations that are in any way differentiated; whence it is also called One Many, as having gathered up, according to its own many, the all-bearing cause of the things that proceed from it according to any partition whatsoever; whence the children of the Chaldaeans celebrate it as fount of founts; and Orpheus, as mixed, bearing the seed of the gods; and the Phoenicians, as cosmic Aiōn — as having gathered all things in itself.⁴³⁴
[89] But these titles we are accustomed to apply to the limit of the intelligibles; and the intelligible is one and being, the both-together; whereas this is One Many, and not One Being. And Plato showed the One Being to be unlimited multitude — but not the One alone. Yet the argument seeks, nevertheless, also this One Many, simply so called, and not One Being. For the one that has been determined off from substance, and rides upon substance, is itself also a unitary substance — as life is double, the one unitary, the other being-differentiated; and intellect is double, the one a henad, the other a substantial form. But the simply one — where would it be — that which is principle of the double processions, both of the unitary ones and of those called, in whatever way, substantial? Perhaps what we call One Being, and unified, as being before both, would itself be the simply one; for it too was one, in greater measure; or rather the simple one, even if it is before both; for the counter-divided members are neither being nor one; yet it is one in another manner — the manner before the division and the counter-division; and indeed simply, because it is not substance, nor life, nor intellect. And how could it still be the limit of the unified? For that is not simply unified which is not first unified; and if it is something unified, it will also be something one — if indeed it is one according to the before-both, which was the unified. In general, the argument seeks a simply one, which is only one, and not one-being; for the simply intellect is the first intellect, and the simple life the first life, and the simply substance the first substance. The first henad, then, must also be not the substantial one — for neither the vital, nor the intellectual — but the simply henad: qua henad only, and not some particular thing's one.⁴³⁵
[89] But perhaps the third element of the intelligible must be ranked within the intelligible, and must be made its limit; and between this and the unitary substance one must take the simply One, according to the first and simply god — if, as they say, one and god are the same — since the things before this it is not right even to call gods; and this is the One Many; whereas the unified, even though before both, was shown by the Parmenides to be One Being Many, and in this way unlimited multitude — because the differentiated belongs to the One Being. But to call this latter One Many is now in another manner: as the principle contains the things that come from the principle, and as the monad is called number; for it is through this that the procession thence takes place according to determination — because the simply One is many; and this was the source from which each of the things that proceed, according to the multitude wound up together within itself, begets from itself the multitude without.⁴³⁶ Either, then, one must in this way posit the simply one as proceeding from the particular unified — as the simply substance from the substantial henad; or that One Being must be made — if it be lawful so to speak — double-faced; for it is hymned both as limit of the intelligibles, and as fount of the intellectuals; so that, insofar as it is fount of the things proceeding after it, it is One Many, by its relation toward what comes after it — loosening the gathering of both into the subsistence of the simply one; but insofar as it is limit of the intelligible, in this respect it is something unified, and One Being — many not simply, but One Many simply. And one might adduce, for either hypothesis, testimonies from the theologies: from the Chaldaean and the Orphic, confirming the second; and from the Egyptian, and that of the Phoenicians, the former. The truth of the matter the gods themselves would know; for us, let the perplexities concerning these things stand thus far; for perhaps hereafter we shall make some inquiry into them as well.⁴³⁷
[89] Perhaps, then, the simply one — which is all things as one, both the unitary and the substantial — is before the unified; and the simply unified comes after it, riding upon the simply being and the simply substance, in which is gathered up every substance, both the one called unitary and the substantial one counter-divided against it — as in either of these there is some substance, the one unitary, the other substantial; whereas that simply substance is before the determination, holding in the same both the unitary and what is called substantial; wherefore one must suppose the simply substance itself, after which the particular substance is determined — here called unitary, there substantial; or better to call this latter unified, and mixed, as being what is truly opposed to the unitary; and if this should prevail, all things will be in harmony with one another — both the conclusions of the arguments, and the doctrine of the theologians; and of these matters there shall be speech a little later as well.⁴³⁸ But let us run back up to the question from the beginning: the multitude of the doubly-determined substance is either elements, or parts, or forms — to speak more commonly, of substance either unitary or unified; whereas of the substance before both — the unified and one and simply substance — there are the simply many: what Plato calls the unlimited, and artlessly undetermined, multitude — since no otherness has yet shone forth. How then are they many, if they have nowhere stood apart? Or rather: as the one is There according to the unified, so also the many — being, as it were, an outpouring, and as it were a relaxation, of the unified; such are the many of the unified that is before both. And if these belong to the unified, and not to the one, one must know that what is before the simply being also — the simply one according to the both-together — has the simply many; for the first principle is the many of the simply one — as it is called the Power of the Father. Simply one, then, is the prior of the two principles; simply many, the second; and the simply substance third, according to the undetermined substance; and below there sprouts off the double file of henads and of substances; and the differentiation of the many — in truth, however it may come about — begins from the otherness that has shone forth, the many being differentiated whether as elements, or as parts, or as forms.⁴³⁹ In the unified, before these, there is multitude — but, as in the unified, the one and the multitude have run together into the same. For as the one did not stand apart from being, so neither was the multitude differentiated into many; but it remained bound together with the one in the unified nature — which would be called neither one nor many, but only the both-together, as unified before both. Yet nevertheless we lead even these up from the things below, by analogy — these not being There, but being, as it were, unknowns analogous to these knowns; wherefore we call the summit of the unified mixed, and constituted from elements; the middle, whole, and from parts; and the third, a monad, and eidetic number together with the monad; and, speaking generally, the third intellect, the second life, and the first Being — from the things differentiated below indicating the wholly-complete and entire subsistence of the undifferentiated.⁴⁴⁰

## Chapter 90 — Does the Unified Itself Proceed? Like Working Darkness into Light; the Gods and the Theologians Have Hymned Intelligible Triads; Athena from Athena, Athena from Zeus — Every God a Summit · pp. 272–277

[90] These things, then, having been thus determined for us beforehand, come, let us set in motion the discourse concerning procession — inquiring whether the unified proceeds, whether in itself or from itself; as we do seem to say that there is in it a summit, and a middle, and a last: the one as it were substance, the other as it were life, the other as it were intellect — or however else one might carry the metaphor of the names upward from below. For one might reasonably raise difficulties, turning to either side. If it is so unified as to subsist immediately after the One, and about the One — wherefore not even into one and being did any determination arise in it — what device could implant in it any differentiation whatsoever? The first of all differentiations, as it seems, is that of the one and being, since the connate growth and union of these is the first of unions; the rest are differentiated upon it, either according to the one — as the unitary number — or according to being — as the substantial. There must first appear, then, an otherness of the two monads, in order that the numbers too may be divided along with their proper monads; but where the monad is one before the two — or rather not even a monad, if the monad is determined relative to its proper number — but one nature, whole through whole unified and undifferentiated: what differentiation could there be here, into first and middle and last? It is like working darkness into the light, and a moving thing into the unmoved which is only unmoved, and the temporal into the eternal — to work any differentiation whatever into the first undifferentiated and unified.⁴⁴¹ Further: if the differentiated is after the unified, and the being-differentiated proceeds from the undifferentiated and after it, then neither of the things that come from it would be within it; but first and middle and last are constituted either in the having-been-differentiated or in the being-differentiated; neither, then, would these justly be There — I forbear to say that beginning and middle and end show themselves many removes down from that order, in the limit of the differentiating nature, as the Parmenides has it — before which pre-exists the subsistence of the whole and the parts, and elder than this it declares number. But if number is not yet There, in the unified, neither is a triad; and if no triad, neither these three: first, and middle, and last.⁴⁴²
[90] But assuredly the gods, and the theologians, have hymned to us intelligible triads, and processions of divine principles, proceeding from the one principle of wholes. And further, the argument itself demands besides that There also some procession arise — even if, as far as may be, a unified one. For first: if you shall say that that nature is unified, being after the One — then, since it happens to be also with the many, it must somehow be multiplied as well. And if the one holds the procession back, the multitude rouses it up, and works it out. And if it is one being — because before substance and one, and because it is before either life, the unitary and the substantial, and likewise before either intellect — then the both-together intellect, a unified intellect, and a unified life, as also a unified substance: where would these be, if not in the unified all-world-order? Triply, then, even That has been world-ordered. But indeed from it proceed substance and life and intellect — this multitude coming to be outward; and surely it did not bring forth the different things according to the whole of itself. For the outer multitude is by nature begotten according to the inner — whether by cause or by existence, whether differentiated or unified. For let the inner multitude be unified — yet answering by analogy to the differentiated; for even if one should say that the many come from the one, and yet that in the one there are no many — one must know that the many of the one are, if it be lawful so to speak, the inner multitude. And if not this, yet that at least is easy to concede: that in the middle of the one, and of the multitude determined in whatever way, there must be the unified and still undifferentiated multitude. Such are the difficulties one might raise, on both sides, about the inner multitude in the intelligible.⁴⁴³
[90] And likewise might one raise difficulties about the outer. For either the produced multitude is like-formed to its producer — as from the one unified, many unified things: as intellects from intellect, and souls from soul; or unlike-formed — as soul from intellect, or intellect from life, or life from substance; and so, then, from the unified: substance and life and intellect. But if the latter, the unified does not itself proceed, nor does that nature suffer the procession; rather, other things proceed from it; for from the One also come the many, and the sayable things from the Unsayable; yet the nature of the One does not go forth and become many, nor does that of the Unsayable become sayable. But if the former, what differentiation could there be of the unified nature? It is like saying that the many proceed from the one like-formedly; such, too, is it to say the differentiated from the unified. And for whose sake, indeed, would it proceed unlike-formedly? For if the same form is preserved, so to speak, the end of the subsistence will be the same for firsts and middles and lasts; for perhaps it does not even proceed at all by the mere lowering of the same property — unless some difference also be added, varying the proceeding things somehow in form; for neither has it any good, that the same should be lowered, unvaryingly, in many places; nor is it possible for the same to be differentiated from itself — for why should it, if no difference and otherness be added? For not even in the case of the individuals, which differ in number only, is it easy to accept that the procession into them comes about without some form-making difference — much less in the case of commons and propers. Therefore every star, and every animal, is a common form, and is varied in form.⁴⁴⁴ But if the procession is such that the proceeding things have at once both something common and something proper — as man and horse are each both animal and varied — how, from the animal, which is undifferent, does the different proceed? And how is what is by nature undifferent cut into many animals — and that, the like-formed side of the procession? And still more impassable is the argument when said of the unified; for this property is destructive of all differentiation, like-formed and unlike-formed alike; so that by it is destroyed also the inner multitude that was said to be differentiated. For intellect, being a form, can perhaps be differentiated into many forms, and the whole into many parts, and the mixed into elements; but the unified — how could it be differentiated into the procession within itself? Not unlike-formedly; for whence, in the like and the same — and, to speak more greatly, the unified — nature, should come the variation by form, or by properties? In what way, then, varied? Nor yet like-formedly; for the unified wishes to be nothing other than only what it is called — unified; so that, insofar as it is begotten, it would not be differentiated; it is not, then, differentiated like-formedly. And if also inward, according to the both-together — as unified life from unified substance — both absurdities will follow at once, just as each followed severally upon the like-formed and the unlike-formed procession.⁴⁴⁵
[90] And in general this very thing too must now, perhaps, be sought: whether the procession is double, as the philosophers say — the one like-formed, as Athena from Athena; the other unlike-formed, as Athena from Zeus — or whether one nature of all procession proceeds according to the both-together. For neither would the proper proceed without something common — nor would it even subsist; nor does the common proceed, undifferent, without the proper. For Athena from Athena: a second from a first, a more partial from a more whole-like, a heavenly from a super-heavenly, as it may chance; nor do these alone vary her in form, but also a certain Athenaic peculiarity of manner, according to which every Athena is first according to her own proper nature — seeing that even of the human souls each is varied in form from every other; much more greatly, then, will the many Athenas differ from one another in form: since every god is a summit, according to his own nature. Thus the procession called like-formed shows itself to be also unlike-formed. But again, Athena from Zeus: god from god, and intellect from intellect, and demiurgic from demiurgic, and intellect-making, as it may chance, from intellect-making;
[90] so that, being unlike-formed, it is by nature also like-formed.⁴⁴⁶
[90] Perhaps, then, everywhere every procession always comes to be as the both-together — unless it should appear that here the like dominates, and there the unlike. But this very thing too must be sought: why is the one like-formed, and the other unlike-formed — whether apart, or the both-together? For perhaps all are like-formed; or all unlike-formed. I mean this: from Zeus, we say, proceed both Zeus and Athena, and another and another — and the many would not have been begotten from one, unless the one were all of them; for always the more whole-like gathers up the more partial in itself, as the animal the many animals — man and horse and ox; for these very things the animal was, all together; and the forms that went forth apart from one another are all forms of the animal. And if Zeus from Zeus is like-formed, still he proceeds not in like manner with the others. If one attends to the names, one might well be perplexed, seeing the two processions counter-divided; but if one should consider that the partial Zeus — the second, and the third, that has proceeded — is not the same in form with the prior (for the one was all the proceeded, while the other is one of the proceeded), he will see that every procession — even the one in which all come from one — is a partition of the existence of the whole Zeus; so that each is a part of the producer, and synonymous with him: with the whole, as whole, none is the same; according to the part, in respect of which he proceeds, every one is. And if the whole produces, and the produced are not, taken as wholes, the same form — Zeus whole, and the part of Zeus, such as the second Zeus, and Athena — it is clear, again, that all are begotten unlike-formed, and other from other in form; and the communion with Zeus reaches as far as the name.⁴⁴⁷ And besides: even if there is a difference of the processions, what is the cause of the difference? Why, from the same, is the one like-formed and the other unlike-formed? What is the allotment of this begetting, or of that? Is it that the like-formed is accomplished according to the partition of his own proper existence, while the unlike-formed is accomplished according to the pre-taken cause of the alien one? Or rather, first: the cause is an existence of the nature that has pre-taken it — for instance, the cause of Athena, in Zeus, is something elder belonging to Zeus; either it is con-substanced with Zeus himself — and Zeus would not be without it, which is the more reverent and the truer thing to say — so that the unlike-formed procession also is accomplished according to a partition of the existence; and second: the partition of the existence will be present within Zeus, the more partial things having proceeded from him — as, for instance, the like-formed chain from him, the one called Dian; and the chain begotten from him is surely not in him according to existence, but according to cause, relative to the chain produced; and according to existence, relative to the producer of the chain. And indeed this too deserves attention: perhaps the same thing must be called the existence of one thing, and the cause of another; and there is no need to double the nature of each thing into its own so-called existence and the pre-taking of the cause of the seconds. And the same we shall say about participation: insofar as the animal in man is from elsewhere, in this respect it is participation; insofar as it fills out the man, in this respect it is an existence of the man.⁴⁴⁸

## Chapter 91 — How from One Come Many? The Containing Cosmoi; from Being or from Not-Being; the All-Bearing Simplicity; the Second Principle — Paternal Power, a Loosing and Unlimitedness of the One · pp. 277–282

[91] Still higher up, one might reasonably inquire how from one thing many proceed. Why does not, from one, only one proceed? And why do the many not come from many? As it is, we say the many gods are from Zeus; but perhaps the many proceed from the things already many contained in him — whether one should wish to say according to existence, or according to cause, or even according to participation; so that many come from many. What then would proceed from one — a whole from a whole? For the produced is always more partial than the producer. Or rather: in the production called like-formed, the whole chain has proceeded all together, as from one — the whole; and in the unlike-formed, the whole chorus of the begotten, all together, as one entire, has proceeded from one — the whole. And perhaps one might say that the whole Demiurge proceeded from the whole Kronos — as one entire cosmos from one entire cosmos: the demiurgic from the titanic.⁴⁴⁹ Is then Zeus of equal standing with Kronos — the contained cosmos with the containing? And surely, among the bodily enclosures, the container exceeds the contained; so that it will be analogous among the bodiless: the Kronian will contain the Dian, and the Ouranian the Kronian, and the Nyktian this, and this again the simply one cosmos, world-ordered before all. Not even in this way, then, does a whole truly proceed from a whole; for Kronos would contain not the Demiurge only, but the excess as well; so that even such a procession is according to part; so that every productive cause partitions the procession from the many within her; and thus we shall be compelled, everywhere, to set the inner multitude above the outer. Since, then, all things depend from one, even this one — which we call the simply one — will have multitude in itself; for otherwise the many would not have proceeded from it; and the argument is persuaded of the unlimited.⁴⁵⁰
[91] And further, according to another manner of perplexity — something both ancient and newer: either the procession is from being — and how could that proceed which already is, and is before? — or from not-being — and what among beings could come to be from what in no way is? For there is no matter There, that from its in-potency the in-actuality might proceed; and yet nothing would be begotten in actuality from the in-potency; for the former is better than the latter, and the begotten is always needier than the begetter. Neither, then, could anything proceed from being — that which already is — nor from not-being: neither in potency, nor in actuality. Thus we say that life proceeds from substance, and intellect from life, and soul from intellect, and every bodiform form from soul. Then the seconds will be in the firsts — or they will not be, in actuality; and the latter will make the procession impossible, while the former will make it, besides, superfluous.⁴⁵¹ And if one should say that they are there according to cause — we ask what ever the according-to-cause is: is it that the proceeded is the same with the producer? In form, or in number? In number is impossible; for the caused, as we say, is one thing, and the cause another; nor yet in form; for the form is everywhere one, and first; since not even this man here is the same in form with that one There: the one is an image, the other the paradigm; and the one is in matter, the other in intellect; wherefore the one in soul is a mean, other than either of the extremes. But if the same neither in form nor in number, then the cause of the begotten, in the begetter, would be nothing other than the begetter itself. And again: why is one thing the cause of another? It is like saying that not-being is the cause of being; for the begetter is itself also other than the begotten; how then is other generative of other — whether of itself, or according to another within itself?⁴⁵² And the argument will infer an absurdity also for the things that have proceeded into matter from intellect. For nothing must be first growing up in matter; all must come from There; neither, then, is the iconic first in matter, nor the generated, nor the enmattered, nor what is dis-tended in this way and swollen; for these too are forms, differing from their opposites; neither, then, do these proceed from There — for they do not pre-exist There; and what pre-exists There cannot proceed into matter — such as the eternal and ungenerated things.⁴⁵³
[91] And apart from these things: from the unified, we say, the differentiated has proceeded; but these come to be according to union and differentiation — the unified, and the differentiated; and union and differentiation are shone forth together; and, universally, the opposites by one procession — the differentiated members in the differentiated. But where union is, there is the unified; and where differentiation, there what has suffered it, the differentiated; in the differentiated, then, is each of the two — both the unified and the differentiated; not, then, before the differentiated is that unified from which the differentiated proceeds. And if union is in the unified, and where she is, there is also differentiation — then the differentiated also will be in the unified. And it is still worth inquiry, what it is that has made the differentiated, instead of the unified, and after it; for how could the unified be a cause of differentiation? It is like making the contrary generative of the contrary. And if the descent differentiated, what is it that has made the descent itself? For surely not, in turn, did the excess make the descent.⁴⁵⁴
[91] And the manner of the perplexity is the same which is accustomed to be rehearsed, again and again, about the one and the many: how from one are many begotten? It is like saying that the cold proceeds from the hot. Shall we then say to this what the philosophers say — that the proceeding becomes needier than the producer; insofar, then, as the begotten steps out of the one, so far it is not one; so that it is many, of necessity? But first: the needier does not vary the form, nor the nature, of the thing; for the higher beautiful is beautiful, and the lowered also — yet each of the two is beautiful; so that each is also one, even if the one produces and the other is produced. There is, then, also a proper procession of the one — as of one proceeding into one. Second: the many will have proceeded only by accident — if it is not insofar as it is many that it is begotten, but, insofar as it is begotten, it is many. And third, the perplexity remains: why is the generation from the contrary to the contrary?⁴⁵⁵ Perhaps, then, it is better to say that the One is not only one, as the name shows forth, but all things, according to the one simplicity that is before all — as we say many times; wherefore it is cause of all things according to this its all-bearing simplicity: not insofar as it is one as set against the many — for it pre-exists all antithesis — but insofar as it is principle of all things, and all things; and as principle of all it so produces the things after itself: all things, as being alone; and the many, as being one; and the beings, as being supersubstantial — and yet being also the beings. For in what does it differ, that the demiurgic intellect, having pre-taken all things in himself paradigmatically, produces all things from himself iconically — and that the one principle of wholes, being simply all the things that come from her, before the things that come from her, undifferentiatedly and according to one unmultiplied nature, produces all the many from herself? The perplexity was: how, from one, the many? But now, from the principle of all, all things have shown themselves forth — because the principle also was all things, before all things.⁴⁵⁶
[91] And if the things that have proceeded are also the one that is out of all, and all things not according to the multitude of the all, one must well know that the principle also is double: the one according to the simply One that is hymned; the other according to the all — if indeed we say that she is as before all. And this latter we have long been celebrating as the many of the One — as it were its unlimited power, according to which, or together with which, That is all things, and generative of all; wherefore this principle is invoked, even by the gods, as Paternal Power. And since the first principles have grown together — and in such wise that the second is in the prior, and has proceeded from her, in her — for this reason, of the things that proceed from thence, each one, both severally and all together, is one and many at once; and the many are from the one, in the one — having proceeded, and being everywhere second to the one.⁴⁵⁷ Shall we then say that even in matter, after the one, are its many — and that the last of all things is not the one, but the many? As then the many will also be before all things, and the one in this way second? Or rather: the many are everywhere in the one, as things encircled by the one as by a circle; so that the one is everywhere first, and last. This, then, by a digression of the argument, stands so. But as to the original question: the many are produced by the one, because this one is called one as being simple — since it is also many, and the all, and yet greater than the all, insofar as it is one; while the many, and the all, are the second principle — being a loosing, and an unlimitedness, of the one: she who is generative of all. To seek, then, how the one produces, is the part of those ignorant of the simplicity of the one; for not yet There have existence and power and activity been counter-divided, but all is only according to the one; while the second principle first shows from beneath the generative, and what makes for the unlimited toward multitude, and the power unfolding outside the one; wherefore she has been deemed worthy of the second names; and there is nothing perplexing in the many proceeding from her — she being many, and the simply many that is before all.⁴⁵⁸ And we shall make the same defense also on behalf of the unified; for this is at once also multiplied; so that, being all things according to the unified, it is fittingly generative of all things, as a unified principle of all. But how were the things from her differentiated — she being unified? How, from the one, were the many differentiated? For this was the perplexity from the beginning. Or rather: the principle, being all things, was also procession, and descent, and differentiation; for each of these too is one of the all. As, then, she produces substance and life and intellect, so to speak, so together with these she co-begets the descent, and the differentiation, and the procession, and all that holds of otherness; for otherness too is differentiated together with the others; so also differentiation with the things differentiated, and procession with the things proceeding, and descent with the things descending. Not by accident, then, does anything go forth into differentiation: the generating cause both differentiates, and co-produces the differentiation itself.⁴⁵⁹

## Chapter 92 — The Hierarchy of Unions: the One Form in Which All Forms Are Gathered; the Most Proper Union of the One Being, Exceptionally Hymned as the Unified; Trans-Thinking the One Summit of All Concepts · pp. 282–283

[92] Toward the second from the end we shall say: there is the union of the same rank as differentiation — and things of the same rank are together; and there is the union which is the one com-paction of the same matter of the antithesis, as with dyads; and elder than this, again, is the union that gathers together all such unions, or monads — being itself a monad of all the monads, and of the whole single-form number itself: being the one form, in which all the forms are gathered up. And before this one must conceive the union of the whole simply, in which the simply parts are embraced; and before this, again, the union of the elementated — being a gathering of all the elements, being the unified substance, as con-being with this union: the unitary; of which we have shown one union before both, the most proper, that of the One Being — which we exceptionally hymn as the Unified. In this, then, are all things; so that even differentiation is in it according to union, like the rest; and from this proceeds the being-differentiated, and upon this the differentiated.⁴⁶⁰ Whence, then, did it become unified, if not through union — as differentiated through differentiation? But these two are shone forth together. Or does it subsist by dominance — above, union; below, differentiation? Then above there is also the differentiation; so that even That is differentiated, though in lesser measure. And indeed, where the one of two opposites rules, there is also the other: where sameness, there also otherness; and where rest, there also motion; for the two are shone forth together. There is, then, another signified sense of that union, and of that differentiation — these too being opposed in a manner, yet not as things of the same rank, but as cause and caused.⁴⁶¹ Or better to say: all things we conceive and name as determined — union and differentiation along with the rest — and from these we give indication also concerning the undetermined. We do not, then, give the unified its form according to union, nor the whole differentiated according to the part-wise differentiation; for intellect is unified and differentiated at once; and what, within intellect, part is to part, this the whole intellect is — as differentiated — toward substance as unified; or, to speak more properly, toward the both-together, one and being, the unified before both. We make use of the names of the determined things — whether by themselves, or according to interweaving — wishing to indicate something concerning the wholly undetermined: of which we have neither an articulated concept nor a name, because of the great partition of our thinking; for we must gather all our concepts together into one, and trans-think the one summit of all concepts, if we are ever to lay hold of some trace of that gathered nature.⁴⁶²

## Chapter 93 — Images and Paradigms: First as Such Here, as Forms Last of All; the Impartible Swollen; Being from Being and Not-Being from Not-Being; Dionysus from Zeus — All Things Numbered from the One, the Unlimited from the Second · pp. 283–287

[93] And indeed, toward the third of the aporiai, this one thing must first be determined, concerning the images and the paradigms: the argument which says that the genera must pre-exist in the ungenerated things requires that all the forms, and the properties, begin from intellect and the eternals; then proceed into soul, and the middle substance; then also into matter, at the last; for the enmattered are not self-sufficient, nor first, nor truthful in their eidetic existence — being, as they are, con-kneaded with not-being and with the formless; not, however, that the first things are con-kneaded and enmattered, but only that the con-kneaded are not the first forms; so that the swollen, too, and the dis-stanced, insofar as they are forms, have those pre-existing, and those first; but as generated, and enmattered — and such as we see them to be — they are first, and alone, as such, here; while as forms — which they are said to be — they are last of all things. Who, then, will claim that, even as last, these forms are first? Rather, as forms only, they shone forth first There; and the opposites rule equally There — sameness and otherness, motion and rest, one and many; all the antitheses alike — but in the one place ungeneratedly, all of them, and eternally, which is the same as to say impartibly; and in the other, generatedly and temporally, which is the same as to say partibly.⁴⁶³ And the partible and the impartible would not be said as certain forms; for each of the two would be at home on either side; but in another manner: we name the whole from some part, not having a name significant of the commonness. For neither, when we call the all cosmos, do we call it this from the common nature that embraces all things, but from one property — its being ordered; for the chorus, too, is named from dancing only, and the army from campaigning; and man, from looking up at what he has seen; and horse, from rushing with its feet; for each thing, being one and many, has been called from one of the many that are within it. Is then the whole not a common name, as it is a common thing? Or rather, all names are such — even the whole: it has been named from what gathers the parts; for it is called holon because it is, as it were, in a heap and in plenty; what is seen massed together has been called whole. Thus, then, partible is the whole-and-all that is enmattered; and impartible the whole-and-all that is ungenerated — neither of the two according to the form, but according to the said manner of indication. Wherefore all the forms are both in intellect and in matter; and the same form is impartible and partible, insofar as they are forms; but here according to existence, and there according to participation; and here first, and there last; and yet these too — the first, I mean, and the last, and the existence and the participation — are as forms on either side.⁴⁶⁴
[93] Since, then, some are paradigms and others images — are these too forms, and on either side? And how could they not be? If indeed the image is a likeness, and the likeness an accomplishment of likeness; and likeness is on either side; and the paradigm is an archetype of likeness; and There one thing is likened to another, and here likewise; for Socrates, too, is a paradigm of his own image. The properties, then, are on either side; but if we call image that which is only image — such as the enmattered form — then the iconic would not be in intellect; and if paradigm that which is an ungenerated and eternal form, and what accords with the first existence — then the nature of paradigm would not be here. So then the swollen also, as a form There, is an impartible swollen; while here it is a swollen which is a form indeed, yet partible nevertheless — a swollen as partible. The property, accordingly, is common to either side; but the first and the last subsistence is proper to either side — that of the generated, and that of the ungenerated; that of the enmattered, and that of the immaterial; that of the temporal, and that of the eternal; and these not as the properties, but as begotten and begetter, and as existence and participation — and however one may be able to determine generation and substance: not as common properties, but as proper subsistences, being above, and proceeding to what is below.⁴⁶⁵
[93] This, then, I determine thus; and another point we shall determine in the same way, concerning everything produced and producing — as the whole other-moved cosmos proceeding from the self-moved, and the self-moved from the unmoved: all things that are in the first unmovedly, are in the second self-movedly, and in the third other-movedly; so that beings proceed from beings, and from things in activity; and nothing absurd follows; for the producer and the produced are not simply the same, nor in the same way, but thus the same, and thus not; for the other-moved beautiful is from the self-moved, and the self-moved from the unmoved; so that you might even say: being from being, and not-being from not-being. For there is a way in which it is the same, and a way in which it is not; and this holds for the procession that seems to be like-formed; for beautiful comes from beautiful. But if the beautiful also comes from the Good, or the other-moved itself from the self-moved, that comes from the unmoved as from what, in one way, is, and in another way is not: being according to cause, and not being according to existence; for by nature the one is cause, and the other caused — and this latter is pre-taken in that, in a certain manner which the argument will state as it goes forward. And likewise all things are in the unified, and all in the differentiated; and these proceed from those: beings from beings, in the one way of taking each, and not-beings, in the other way of taking each, varied; or, if you wish to say it so: beings from not-beings, and not-beings from beings. For in activity all things are in all; and again, in activity, nothing is anywhere: in this way nothing, in that way all things; and the perplexity has no place — neither the one that derives the in-activity from what is not in potency, nor the one that derives being from not-being; for nothing There has anything in potency, nor is it not-being in the way we mean when we raise the perplexity; but because the manner of the subsistence is other, in this respect it is not-being; and because things are by nature begotten, others out of others, in this respect in potency.⁴⁶⁶
[93] Further, then, to the fourth from the last: to those climbing up from the lasts of all things, it will appear easily dissolved, according to the like manner of method. For that many proceed from one is no wonder, if the one be generative of all things, or of many — whether according to its own all-bearing simplicity, or according to the multitude embraced within it in whatever manner. For all things were, as we said, even the one — not in potency, but in activity; yet not determined, like this cosmos, or any cosmos at all; nor unified, according to the unified; but one only — all things according to the one; and according to the unified, all things — but by undifferentiated union; and the differentiated is all things — but now in a certain determination. These things standing so, it makes no difference to say that many come from one — a one of such a kind, and so constituted — and that many, again, come from many: from the things subsisting according to the one, or standing together according to the unified, or standing apart according to the being-differentiated and the differentiated. And you could say this more clearly, if you should say that the second principle proceeds from the first, as one-many from one; and from her, the unified — at once also multiplied; and from this, little by little, the subsistence of the many, being differentiated off into multitude; so that nothing is wonderful: both that from one partless principle one whole multiplied order proceeds — as from the one cause all things together, even as one all-great cosmos — and that from many the many proceed: from the things subsisting according to one, the things not subsisting according to one. For the same thing — thus one, and thus many — one might both see and say.⁴⁶⁷
[93] Either, then, one proceeds from one — as Dionysus from Zeus; or many from one — as from Zeus the many gods; or one from many — as when the soul is said to proceed from all the things before her, and always the begotten from all the elder causes; or many from many — as we say the sensibles from the intelligibles. But nevertheless each of the two is everywhere — the one and the multitude — even if in the one place the multitude is according to the one, and in the other the one according to the multitude; and surely each is also, by itself, both one and multitude. We shall not, then, go on to infinity, seeking always, before the many one, the unmultiplied one; for this very thing — the simply one — is cause of all the many; for, being one, it is nevertheless all things, because it is before all things; yet not some one of the all, nor one made out of all, but really one — and one in this way: as all things together, according to the very One. And the second principle is herself also all things — but according to her being the many; for she was the many of that one; since every multitude subsists about the one, as every power about its proper substance. As from many, then — the all — we go up to this principle; and as from one — of the all — to the One. And in what way is each of the two of all things? The one, as the all together; the many, as the all insofar as many. And perhaps: all things, as already numbered, proceed from the One; and many, as still unlimited and undetermined and not yet at their end, from the second principle. Let so much be said about this perplexity as well.⁴⁶⁸

## Chapter 94 — Whole Cosmoi from Whole Cosmoi — Nothing Sterile Remains Above; All Things Are, but Intelligibly, Says the Oracle; the Successors of the Paternal Kingships; Dionysus According to the Whole; the Sevenfold Demiurge, Twice-Beyond, Among the Chaldaeans · pp. 287–291

[94] Toward the things said next in order, higher up than what has been discussed, we say this one thing before all: that if a cosmos proceeds from a cosmos, whole from whole — as the demiurgic from the titanic, or the titanic from the connective, or the intellectual from the intelligible — then the whole prior goes forth into the second, such as it proceeds, and nothing exalted remains above, in the prior; or else, on this showing, the remainder will be sterile, and wholly without procession; so that, in this manner at least, the former will not exceed the latter by being something There which is not also here. For the contrary supposition lies ready to hand: that something shines forth in the seconds which is not yet of a nature to be differentiated in the firsts. But neither is this true; for it is There too — gathered — the very thing that is being differentiated in this one; or else whence is it differentiated? And how do we say that all things are everywhere, even if differently and differently? And when we say that the things below are more than those above, we speak according to differentiation; since There the same things are gathered.⁴⁶⁹ How then do we say, elsewhere, that each shines forth according to its existence? Where each thing furnishes to all its timely activity, there, surely, it differentiates its proper nature from the others; and this is what is called the first existence of each — the existence of each, first differentiated off from the other properties. Or rather, this too is true; for not everywhere are all things in the same way, but here unified, there being-differentiated; yet all things are, nevertheless, in every cosmos — in the intelligible: for all things are, but intelligibly, says the Oracle; and in the sensible; and, plainly, in the means.⁴⁷⁰
[94] How then do we always say that the higher cosmos is more whole-like than the one beneath it — and that this is contained, while that contains — if there is no excess of that over this, all things being in either, and all things of necessity equal to all? Or rather: even if equal in multitude, the one can contain the other by magnitude — and the one, sometimes, the many; as the sphere of the fixed stars contains all the spheres that follow; and the Kronian will contain the Dian, even if it be equal to it in the multitude of its forms — by its embrace, and its aspect, and, as it were, by the majesty of its nature. And next one must consider this: that since the higher always give subsistence to, and beget, all the things after themselves, it will follow that more are begotten from those than from these; thus the intelligible cosmos produces all those after itself together — the intellectual, the hypercosmic, the encosmic; the intellectual, only the two; and the hypercosmic, one only, the sensible — or into however many more cosmoi one may cut the proceeding things. The intelligible, then, is most whole-like, because embracing of all; and the sensible — or at any rate the sublunar — most partial, because it is last, and contains only its own parts; while the middles, in proportion, both contain and are contained. And in the same way, upon each chain, one would see the fore-ranked member more whole-like, and the sub-ranked more partial.⁴⁷¹
[94] Further, let us say another thing about the same matters: that if one should say the whole demiurgic cosmos proceeded from the titanic, the accounts just now stated about the cosmoi will fit; but if one should derive Zeus from Kronos, we know that Zeus is begotten from Kronos together with many others — both among the Greeks and among the barbarians; as Kronos, again, from Ouranos together with others; and again, from Zeus, Dionysus. And if some, dividing the whole father among themselves, each take him by parts, while others have proceeded single-form from the whole — wherefore these latter are established as successors of the paternal kingships — this in no way shatters the truth of the account. For Zeus — let us say — having brought forth from himself the many gods by parts, upon this whole-complete partition brought forth the partitive wholeness, and the many gods ranked beneath her. Or did not Zeus beget even the Titans, in his own world-order, according to the Orphic tradition? So too Kronos, after many a generation before, brings forth at the last the whole one who leads off the other kingship; and the like account is handed down of Ouranos: that he gives subsistence to Kronos last, after the other Ouranids; and for this reason one must say that the produced counter-exceed one another: those that are in the father, and beside the father, being nevertheless more partial; while those that step out of the paternal property — set beside the more common nature — are wholes, and keep, toward the things begotten from themselves, the analogy of their own begetters; for the seconds answer in proportion to the wholes; yet the second kings do not stand at an equal counter-position to the first. So much, then, from the accounts.⁴⁷²
[94] Further, upon these things, let us say this, toward the inquiries lying before us: that the begetter — Zeus, for instance — both produces one from himself, and produces also many; but each of the two either according to the whole, or according to something of those within him: by himself, as one; the many, again, all together, according to the so-many and so-many differentiated within him; and each severally, according to some one of those within him. Thus, then, one comes from one, because according to the many embraced in him; the chorus of the many, again, according to the differentiated whole plenitude of himself; and Dionysus according to the whole alone; so that at these things one would not reasonably wonder; for from one comes one — both the whole according to the whole, and each part according to a part — and many from one, but as from one multiplied: the chorus, according to the whole; and the several many, according to the several many within him. But how is the one procession like-formed, and the other unlike-formed? Because Zeus, according to his own property, produces a certain like-formed chain; while according to the cause pre-taken within him, he produces Dionysus, and the other hetero-named gods.⁴⁷³
[94] What then — does he not beget Dionysus according to the whole of himself, and the many gods according to his own parts? But both the whole and the parts, at once, are his; why then is not the procession of both like-formed — as having come to be according to the existence, and, through this, synonymous? Yet it is not; for the many gods are not Zeuses; nor is Dionysus these things, though he is one. And what, indeed, is the existence according to which the chain proceeds from Zeus synonymously? Not according to the whole; for it stands counter-divided against the chains proceeding from his other parts; nor according to all the parts together, through the same cause; and if it too proceeds according to some one of the things contained in him, how does it alone share the name with the whole? And the perplexity would be interwoven fourfold. For if the produced be produced according to the whole: sometimes it is synonymous with the producer — as the sevenfold-proceeding whole Demiurge among the Chaldaeans; for each of them is hymned as twice-beyond, and has gathered up in himself all things, the very things the first also has, even if he is more partial by the descent of his rank; and sometimes it is hetero-named, like Dionysus. Or if it be produced according to some part: again, sometimes the production is synonymous — as the chain, if so it chance, of Zeus, from the whole Zeus; and sometimes hetero-named — Athena, from Zeus.⁴⁷⁴

## Chapter 95 — The Double Partition of the Producer, by Depth and by Breadth; the Heliac, Apolloniac, and Asclepiac Founts; the Aphrodisiac Intellect and the Intellect of Dikē; the Elders of the Perplexities — Existence and Cause · pp. 291–293

[95] Perhaps, then, the partition of each producer is double — and that of the things produced: the one by depth, belonging to the whole chain that flows off according to descent; the other by breadth, belonging to the forms contained within it, or to its unlike-parted parts. For the partition pre-taken in it by depth is like-parted, wherefore also synonymous; while the other is unlike-formed, whence the generation according to it is hetero-named. For the first and the second Zeus proceed from the all-complete one according to the whole of him — wherefore each shares his name; while the fount that is set over divinations proceeds according to some one of the unlike parts. And likewise each of the so-called partial founts, of which each leads off a proper like-formed chain, through the like-parted partition, by depth, in its turn. And if, within some one of these, there should be contained some unlike-parted fount by breadth — as in the heliac fount the Apolloniac, and in this the Asclepiac — assuredly the begetting of these also is unlike-formed.⁴⁷⁵
[95] And in the philosophic manner: from the simply intellect proceeds the like-formed begetting by depth, everywhere co-introducing the whole embrace of the forms by breadth. But if intellect produces soul, or nature, or body, it will produce unlike-formedly — according to something of what is contained within it. So that even if it produce according to the beautiful, or the good, or the just, even so the procession is unlike-formed. What then is the begotten beautiful, or just? Either an intellect, or a soul; or in one of these; or in each. Why then are soul, and intellect, and body, each a thing by itself, and each self-complete, while the beautiful, and the just, and each of the genera, are not such? For what is the allotment? And why did matter go forth to meet all the forms, and received all — while each of the others did not receive all? Or rather, first: the simpler of the forms — those holding the rank of elements — having grown together with one another always, refuse the separated subsistence by themselves; for they have their nature, unified with one another, more complete than the dis-stance that has been differentiated into self-completeness. And second: the beautiful, and rest, and motion, made their procession simply into all things; the beautiful, for instance, has made room for itself in every form; wherefore it has also gone forth along every procession.⁴⁷⁶
[95] And third: the simply intellect, according to each form of those contained within it, begets first an intellect, then a soul, then also a certain enmattered nature, given its form by that very form according to which it proceeds — so that one might say: by the beautiful, the aphrodisiac intellect; by the just, the intellect of Dikē; by the good, the intellect of the good daimon, so to speak; and according to another of the forms, another intellect, standing there. For perhaps the whole depth is partitioned, and the whole breadth — varied by the dominance, in each case, of ever some one form; and one must suppose that the breadth, too, has its proper order: a first within it, and a middle, and a last, being differentiated — namely, the genera; then the more whole-like forms that come from these; then the more partial, down to the most partial — which, for all their great composition, seem to be self-complete, and to subsist upon themselves; and these, again, are deepened in yet another manner; for after the intellectual subsistence comes the psychic, and after this the nature-like; whence this procession also is unlike-formed, because it belongs to breadth — and to its procession — the breadth itself being deepened into the begetting of the lower unlike-formed things. But these matters, perhaps, exceed the measure.⁴⁷⁷
[95] And perhaps, having gone round a great circuit, we have accomplished nothing; for we seem to be saying again the thesis from the beginning: that some things proceed according to the existence, like-formedly; and others according to the pre-taken cause, unlike-formedly. What, then, is the cause? And how is another nature pre-taken in another? For why is the existence of one thing not the cause of another? For we have now come to the very elders of the perplexities.⁴⁷⁸ And I say, first, that the existence of the begetter is one thing, and the cause of the begotten another — above all, of the unlike-formed. For if what the in-potency is, in the world below, beside the existence — as Aristotle showed clearly — then assuredly the according-to-cause, also, is something other beside the existence.⁴⁷⁹ Further: if there is only the existence of the begetter, and it begets from itself and by itself, how will it ever beget anything unlike-formed, when nothing else is mixed within it beside itself? For begetting by its very being, it will give subsistence to the begotten by transmission of its proper nature; there must, then, be pre-taken some cause, also, of the unlike-formed — according to which, being something else, it will beget something else.⁴⁸⁰ Further again: if simply other is generative of other, without any pre-taken cause, why does not any chance thing proceed from any chance thing — since each has some existence, the one, on this showing, without a cause?⁴⁸¹

## Chapter 96 — Cause as Existence Inclined toward Otherness; the Unfolding of the Producer's Gathering; the Twice-Beyond Demiurges; Whole and Partial Founts; All Drunk Down in the Summit of the Intelligible; No Paradigms of Individuals — the Light of the Sun; Each Thing Proceeds Remaining · pp. 293–303

[96] These, then, are the considerations that persuaded the ancient philosophers to derive all the things produced from what pre-exists according to cause. But the argument is a strange one, if a man says that the cause is pre-taken, being in something whose existence it is not. For first: whence was this cause itself begotten? If from another cause, we shall go on to infinity; and if from the existence — how is the cause unlike-formed to it, and the cause of an unlike-formed offspring? Next: if it is by its being that a thing begets, and the being of each thing is its proper existence, plainly the unlike-formed also is begotten from the proper existence; so that what is called the cause was, after all, a part of the existence. And indeed the first of the earlier arguments serves well for the contrary conclusion: for the in-potency present in a thing is a part of its existence; since its form is said to be by nature toward another, and to be in potency — as the bronze is a statue in potency; for the bronze is by nature easily moulded, and the easily-moulded is, as it were, a part of the bronze's nature. But if existence and cause are the same, how is the one generation like-formed, and the other unlike-formed? Or rather: so much as proceeds according to the existence simply, like-formed; and so much as proceeds not simply, but according to the existence that has inclined toward the generation of another, unlike-formed? For perhaps the cause is nothing else than existence inclined toward otherness, and become, for this reason, other-making; while the existence that remains upon itself is same-making. And yet even the like-formed would not be begotten, if the simple existence should not incline; for it is as inclined that the begetter is cause of the begotten. What difference, then, is left to the cause — if every cause is an inclination of the begetter toward the begotten?⁴⁸²
[96] Perhaps, then, it is better to call existence threefold: the one according to the like-parted partition; another according to the unlike-parted partition; and another according to breadth. For all the things that proceed from it are embraced in the producer according to one gathering — which there is no necessity to posit as its existence. For as many things as each is, so many does it project from itself; and the things produced are, all of them, an unfolding of the producer's gathering — as every number is a forth-stepping of the monad; for it is in this way that we call the one whole-like, and the others more partial: all those that distribute among themselves, by parts, the embrace of the whole. For how is it not necessary that the simply animal embrace all the things that are animals — not only according to depth, such as the heavenly, the aerial, the watery, and the chthonic animal, but also according to breadth, such as man, and ox, and horse? So too the existence of intellect embraces not only the depth gathered within it, but also the many-formed breadth of the forms — just as in the Dian intellect, and in Zeus the god himself, all things are according to existence: both those that proceed whole-completely, according to the gathered depth — who go forth complete, and synonymous with the whole, as the twice-beyond demiurges among the theurgists — and those that proceed by part, distributing the whole's distribution, stepping out of the begetting nature, and becoming hetero-named toward her: begotten from her, indeed, but according to something of the things that fill out her existence, and not according to the whole of her. Thus the unlike-formed also proceeds from the existence — from the existence that has been divided, and according to some one of the things divided within it.⁴⁸³
[96] But the chain of Zeus — how does it proceed from Zeus, being one of the many founts that flow off from him? Or rather: every synonymy is produced from its producer taken as whole; and for this reason it is synonymous with the whole, even if it leans somewhat aside, through being more partial; for every Zeus is father of all the gods, even if it has proceeded rather according to some one of the gods within him. For the twice-beyond is everywhere whole; but if he too be called Zeus, then one also of the partial founts within him is a Zeus — as another is a Helios, and another an Athena; for the partial chain of each god flows off from some partial fount. Thus, if there should be a fount called the fount of Zeus, homonymous with the whole, she too will produce from herself a partial chain.⁴⁸⁴ Perhaps, however, the whole fount is not named Zeus, but the partial one alone — or else the reverse; and if the name is common, let it be homonymy; for the nature of either is different: the one belongs to the whole founts, and sends off from herself a fountal chain only; while the other belongs to the partial, and proceeds into arches and archangels, and into azonic gods and zones — as is the law of the procession of the partial founts that are hymned; for already, upon other founts, whole-like and partial, the homonymy has been observed — even if a certain kinship of nature also be seen, itself furnishing the homonymy — as in the case of the iynges, and the connectives, and the teletarchs, and the archic ones. For every arch flows off from a partial fount.⁴⁸⁵
[96] Therefore each archic fount also is said to flow off from the crown — as the archic soul and the archic virtue flow from the partial founts at the girdle. And in the same way Iamblichus counts a partial fount of the Implacables in among the partial founts, as the whole one among the wholes. What wonder, then, if one should posit a partial demiurgic fount, other than the whole one — and yet embracing of all — such as they make the fount that is set over divinations, from which a proper partial chain flows off; and should carry the name of Zeus upon either, and that of the Demiurge as well: but in the one place, as counter-divided against the telesiurgic, and the guarding, and the purifying, and the other partial properties of the partial founts; in the other, calling demiurgic the whole that is embracing of all the causes engaged about matter. Such, then, are the defenses I hold up on behalf of these things.⁴⁸⁶
[96] And this must be concluded from the whole of it: that the things partitioned in the procession from one are pre-taken, wholly, in the one, according to gathering: as each chain is in its proper partial fount, as in the only thing thoroughly numbered; and as the fountal chain — the whole chain of the hebdomad — is in the whole fount; nay, the entire number of the partial founts is in their proper whole fount; for the whole-complete partition of the many parts partitioned inwardly in each fount is pre-taken before the partial founts that subsist outwardly, about the whole founts. For the cosmos that lies about the parts answers in proportion to those parts of the divine figure which are ordered by it: the girdle answers to the girded flanks of the goddess; the crown, to the temples and the forehead of the divine head. And again, this partition of the parts according to breadth belongs to the goddess, and comes from the out-flowing hebdomad — a number pre-taken in the monad according to depth, united together in the impartible and whole; and indeed the whole hebdomad of the first founts is gathered up in the triads of the elder founts; and the triads, again, in the one fount of founts; so that every partition after her — whether fountal, or more partial still — is gathered in her, single-form. And if in her the many are gathered — from which both the many founts are divided off, and the other multitudes are differentiated elsewhere — then assuredly all is drunk down in the summit of the intelligible, and the very appearance of multitude by the union.⁴⁸⁷
[96] This, then, must be believed on the strength of what has been said; and this besides: that everywhere the outer multitude, differentiated in the things begotten, grows out from the multitude gathered inwardly in the begetters; so that, conversely also, it is true to say: if many are in the begetter, assuredly these pass over into what is proximately begotten; and again, if in the begotten many are differentiated outwardly, assuredly in the proximate begetter the many show themselves forth beforehand; and the cause is that the generative power pre-exists in the begetter, and that everything which is seen in the begotten is pre-sketched, in some manner, in the begetting cause — according to that cause's own existence and gathering.⁴⁸⁸ And third, following upon these: all the seconds are always pre-taken in their priors, and the more partial in the more whole-like — the like-formed having their pre-taking according to depth, and the unlike-formed according to breadth.⁴⁸⁹
[96] And fourth: all things are partitioned into their proper ranks and existences; yet none the less all things are in all — but properly in each: here undifferentiated, here being-differentiated, here differentiated; and of these, again: here as elements in the elementated, here as parts in a whole, here as forms — and a number of forms — in a monad. And the outer multitude proceeds in analogy with the inner: here as a number from a monad — the many intellects from the one intellect; here as parts from a whole — as the many lives from the one life; here as elements from the elementated — as from the one substance the many substances; wherefore these last have grown together with one another as far as may be, and are unified in a manner undifferentiated; while the lives are differentiated more, and stand toward one another as parts of a whole; and the numbers — the intellects — have been differentiated into self-complete circumscriptions; whence it is the more familiar thing, that there are many intellects after the one and from the one; while that there are many self-complete lives, before the intellects, is not so familiar; and substances least of all, because of their great and elemental union. Yet even if it is not evident, one must nevertheless of necessity agree that there are both many lives and many substances — if indeed substance is an elementated, and a mixed out of elements; while life subsists according to the being-differentiated, and is a whole, and out of parts; and intellect is a form out of forms.⁴⁹⁰ Each, then, is one and many; and every inner multitude, as has been said, is generative of the outer; there must accordingly proceed, after the one substance, the many substances — each given its form according to some one dominating element among the many; and after the one life, the many lives must flow off, each mastered by some other property among the parts; just as, after the one intellect, the many intellects have proceeded, each mastered by some other among the many forms; for always the inner multitude is generative of the outer. Or rather, it should be put thus: the whole begets also the whole — the second whole; and the parts, by themselves, beget the parts in the second; and the whole, according to each of its parts, begets a certain more partial whole. And so too with the elementated and the elements, and with the monad and the entire number: the monad begets the monadic one of each number, and the multitude in the monad begets the multitude everywhere; the monad, indeed, according to the number within herself, begets both the whole number at once, and each number severally — each given its form according to one form, having gathered up within itself a whole multitude proper to itself.⁴⁹¹
[96] Further, then, let us gather this in addition: that all things are gathered in the priors — as many as are differentiated over and above in the laters; wherefore all things are both in the intelligible, and in the intellectual world-order, and in the middle one; nay, in each of the lower as far as the sensible — but properly in each: in all other respects, by however much one might mark off what is proper to each; and indeed also according to the more and the less; or rather, according to the peculiar manner, in each place, of the union and of the differentiation; since they will differ from one another also by the containing and the being contained.⁴⁹² What then? Is the procession of the seconds from the firsts not a begetting, but a shining-forth only, and a differentiation — as we say — of things determined and gathered above? Or rather: we call differentiation that which sets each thing according to its own existence — an existence which previously was not its property; for it had not yet been differentiated into a property, within the whole gathering; it was, at any rate, an existence of another — of that which, according to it, existed whole-naturedly; so that it is the same thing to say that the seconds are differentiated from the priors, and that they are begotten from them.⁴⁹³
[96] Are then all things gathered up in what is before them — as many as are differentiated afterward? For on this showing even the individuals of the forms will be gathered There; for the differentiation brought these forth, too, from the firsts. But this is most absurd; for either the causes of the individuals will abandon even the gathering — when the individual no longer is, or when it is not yet; and there will be something not always, in the eternal; or else the cause will be there in vain, always, the things caused not being always; and it is for this reason that we do not even make paradigms of the individuals; so that neither must we make the pre-gatherings of such things. And yet these too are assuredly begotten from the priors — though not according to any necessity that the begotten be pre-gathered in the begetter. Or rather: those things that make by their very being, and project their proper offspring from their own substance — these are the things that have pre-taken the gatherings of their begotten; while all that mould the forms outwardly, by their outward-going activities — as in the case of the artefacts — these have no longer pre-taken them. And in this way the individuals of the forms also come to be — by the outwardly extended activities of the moving causes.⁴⁹⁴ Whence, then, does such form-giving proceed, if it moulds outwardly — and whence does it mould, if it has not pre-taken the moulding of the thing? Or rather: it gives form to its own activities, for the moulding; and there comes to be a pre-taking of the forms not in the substances, but in the activities that stand now thus, and now otherwise. And whence are the activities given their form? From the universally pre-taken forms come the individual activities that are deployed on each occasion — being changed, and moulded now in this way and now in that, and figured; and, to say it as a whole, being given form, they become the accomplishers of the individuals; and this is the pre-taking of the individuals: the pre-taking taken up in the participated activities — itself re-fashioned, as the activities stand now in one way, and now in another.⁴⁹⁵
[96] Either, then, these matters must be determined in this way; or — if some argument should compel us to hold that the unmoved also is cause of the things that are moved: for instance, that intellect is demiurge of the individuals that come to be and perish, and, in general, the first substance, and indeed the one principle of wholes (for what would not proceed from thence? and how should the principles that preside over all not be causes of all? and what, among the seconds, is not embraced by the firsts?) — if, then, a man should be persuaded of this, as I for my part am persuaded, what shall we say to the perplexity? That the unmoved cause has gathered up, in its own unmovedness, even these — and these in the common manner of the nature that begets these also forever, as of an ever-flowing nature: the cause is all-bearing, and simply subsistence-making, of all the things that are begotten to infinity. As, then, of all such things at once — and, to speak more plainly, of the individuals that are ever recurring — it has pre-taken one cause: not the proper cause of me, nor of you; and yet a cause of me also, and of you, and of those that once were before, and of those that shall be once again; in this way, then, the individuals are gathered in that cause; and in this way they are differentiated from it — as the light of the sun both remains eternal in its own commonness, and is portioned out individually to each, because it has one cause, illuminating, of all individual eyes. Let so much be said of this perplexity also.⁴⁹⁶
[96] But this also must be added to what has been determined: that everywhere the things in each place — whether gathered or differentiated — are existence; so that the Athena in Zeus is an existence of Zeus; while she who has leapt up from his summit is, surely, Athena herself; and again, the participation in another — such as the Athena in the Korē — is an existence of the Korē. And if the philosophers say that each thing is threefold — according to cause, as Athena somehow existing in Zeus; according to existence, as she who is by herself; according to participation, as she who has come to be in the Korē — they say well; except that all must be determined as existences: the one, of Zeus, because she fills out the differentiated existence of Zeus; the one, her own, by herself; and the one, of the Korē, because she too fills out the Korē's multitude.⁴⁹⁷ And one might see the same more dialectically: the so-called genera of Being everywhere fill out the subsistence woven together from its causes — but substance as unified, life as being-differentiated, and intellect as differentiated; and the simply intellect according to the equal-balanced differentiation, while the more partial intellect is always according to the differentiation that leans toward these or those — of the genera, or of the parts, or of the forms — according to dominance. And, more logically: the simply man is in animal, according to the whole-natured single existence of animal, embracing of all animals; but there is also, after animal, the existence of man by himself; and in the third place, in the land-dwelling man — and in me, the individual — the simply man is present as an element, as animal is in man; according to existence, then, this also. For even if it is given in from above — and in this respect is participation — yet the very seating of it, in that into which it is given, becomes a part of the existence. So much on these matters also.⁴⁹⁸
[96] Come then, let us return from the beginning to what adjoins the original perplexities. That even in the like-formed there is something unlike-formed, and in the unlike-formed something like-formed — as the perplexing argument insisted — must of necessity be agreed; but none the less the one procession is like-formed, and the other unlike-formed: insofar as every Aphrodite, and every Athena, remains somehow within the bounds of the first Athena and the first Aphrodite — even if each is varied in form, each being a more partial instance of the same property; according, then, to what is common and remains, the communion both of the name and of the partition persists; wherefore the whole chain of Hera proceeds as from one and toward one. But if Erōs should proceed from Aphrodite, or Athena from Zeus, the procession is unlike-formed — because Erōs has stepped out of the aphrodisian bounds, and Athena of the Dian; and yet assuredly Athena has something Dian, and Erōs something aphrodisian, insofar as they have something like-formed toward their producers; but this is preserved as one strain within differing bounds — just as, in the other case, the differing shows itself within common bounds.⁴⁹⁹
[96] Not, then, in this respect are Athena and Zeus like-formed — that both are gods, and intellects, and demiurges; for these common attributes attend even the like-formed ones, for instance the many Aphrodites; for the pandemic ones among them are demiurgic, and intellects, and all of them goddesses; and indeed Erōtes and Aphrodites are, in this way, of the same genus. The like-formed must not, then, be defined by the more common genera, but by the more proper existences — upon which the proper names also are observed. All Aphrodites, accordingly, are like-formed, with a certain otherness; while Erōtes and Aphrodites are unlike-formed, with a certain sameness.⁵⁰⁰ And there are also more generic namings, like-formed and unlike-formed: the latter, as substance from Henad, and life from substance, and intellect from life, and soul from intellect, and the bodiform from soul; and, in another manner, from the one the unified, and from this the being-differentiated, and from this the differentiated; and, as far as these, the unmoved; then the self-moved; then the other-moved; the former, as gods from god, and substances from substance, and lives from life, and intellects from intellect, and souls from soul — and, from the one natural animal, the many animals of its kind.⁵⁰¹
[96] Which then of the two would be the elder — the like-formed, or the unlike-formed? If the like is begotten before the unlike; and if the intelligible gods proceed from the simple god before the intelligible substances, and the same account holds for the others in order; and if, further, the one procession gives subsistence to a descended cosmos — as the intellectual-and-intelligible from the intelligible-and-intellectual, and so on in order — while the other makes a cosmos in the same manner, as Kronos begets the titanic world-order itself, and begets the demiurgic as descended: if these things are true, it is plain that the like-formed is elder than the unlike-formed.⁵⁰² But universally, someone might say, procession is a stepping-out from the producer; and every stepping-out carries the begotten down into the unlike-formed. This unlike-formed, however, is that which attends upon the like-formed; and perhaps one will concede this to be elder. Yet neither is this true; for even before this, the like-formed must be — that upon which the unlike-formed attends; for each thing proceeds remaining; and the remaining in the cause makes the likeness and the sameness toward it. Let the argument, then, be drawn up so far upon these matters.⁵⁰³

## Chapter 97 — Beyond These Inquiries: Does the Unified Proceed? One Intellect and One Soul; from the Demiurge the Apollonian, Areic, and Athenaic Intellects — an Intellect of Man and of Horse; Lives as Monads Becoming Determined; Substances That All But Flee Back into the Undifferentiated · pp. 303–306

[97] And next let us examine, in their turn, the things that lie beyond these investigations. For concerning the unlike-formed and the like-formed procession — what difference they have — it has been spoken before; and one must not con-fuse the processions, since either has something of the other. But concerning the unified it must now be said: whether it is receptive of any procession; and, if so, of what kind. For that there is an intellectual procession, and that many intellects go forth from the one intellect, a man will reasonably grant. Nevertheless we must inquire even into this: whether there are indeed many intellects; whether many souls. For perhaps the arguments which show that before the other-moved there must be the self-moved, and before the self-moved the unmoved, compel us to suppose one intellect before the soul — and one soul, ensouling all things, ranked after the one intellect. And if the argument shows life also to be before intellect, and substance before life, it compels us again to set one substance, and one life, in rank before the one intellect. And the same things one might say also of one henad, set in front of the one substance. Whence, then, is it plain that there are many gods, and many substances, and many lives, and many intellects, and many souls — each a number proceeding after its proper monad?⁵⁰⁴
[97] Or rather, there is one manner of demonstration — the one about which the present argument is engaged — from the inner many: these being generative, and these proceeding, the outer multitudes are forthwith multiplied, whether according to the unlike-formed procession or the like-formed — by depth, or by breadth, as was divided before. For the cause, being one and many, will beget according to the One, and according to the many, and further according to the both-together — one together with many: each single product receiving its form, by dominance, from some one of the many, while being one, and yet also being the many in this one. For thus from the simply intellect proceeds the connective intellect; and from this, the titanic; and from this again, the demiurgic. Each whole intellect is in the simply intellect; and each receives its form from some one of the many in that one — the connective form, or the titanic, or the demiurgic. And likewise with the more partial many: from the Demiurge proceed the Apollonian intellect, and the Areic, and the Athenaic; and, still more partially, it holds good that according to each form there is begotten a certain whole intellect, standing upon itself, given its form according to this form — as it might be, according to man, and according to horse; for thus, of necessity, from the inner multitude of the forms an outer multitude of intellects is produced. And it is plain that from the parts also, according to the parts, there arise many outer subsistences of parts.⁵⁰⁵
[97] And if the whole-and-parts is life — the first life, standing according to the being-differentiated, as we said in what went before — it is plain that those subsistences are certain whole-complete lives, having subsisted according to the inner multitude of the parts, and holding the rank of parts, both toward one another and toward the cause that brought them forth. How, then, are they wholes? And how is the wholeness a cause of wholes? For the wholeness is generative of parts, not of wholes. And how are the ranks of parts self-complete, receiving their form from things that are not self-complete? Or rather: insofar as they are lives of something, they are not yet circumscribed; for that belongs to intellect, and to all the differentiated; but these have their being in the being-differentiated; so that they have subsisted above the intellectual kind of self-completeness — being self-complete in another manner; and the first life, the one according to the whole and the parts, subsists, so to speak, according to the whole; thus they are wholes, as coming from a cause that is whole in this way; and they hold the rank of parts, because they have proceeded according to the nature of the parts, and are, as it were, a number of the life that is seen in the being-differentiated — like monads that have their being not in the having-been-determined, but in the becoming-determined.⁵⁰⁶
[97] Since the first mixed, also, produces the many mixeds after itself — the elementated, I mean, produces the elementateds — and the multitude of the elements contained within it, as has been said many times. And these are the many substances after the one substance, having proceeded from the one as — if one may truly say so — a number proceeding from a kind of monad: unified from unified, and substance from substance; holding the rank of elements, both toward one another and toward the begetting cause; self-complete through the great union of their blending, in some other manner — the uncircumscribed manner, which strives rather to be blended toward union. For such were the elements, according to whose multitude the procession of the many substances came about; for as the outer multitudes are begotten from the inner, so also do they receive their form according to the nature of those. And the substances rejoice in their blending, and all but flee back into the undifferentiated; the lives are differentiated just so far as parts are from the whole and from one another; while the intellects were the first to be circumscribed, from one another and from the whole — making their differentiated subsistence according to their proper circumscription.⁵⁰⁷

## Chapter 98 — The Simply Many Have No Proper Procession, Yet All Things Are Begotten Thence — From Hence All Things Stretch Their Rays into the Below; Orpheus's Ērikepaios, Seed of the Gods; the Hypercosmic Watchtower; Into Three the Intellect of the Father Said That All Things Be Cut · pp. 306–309

[98] What is now gathered from all this, and said toward the matter lying before us, is the following: that wherever any multitude whatsoever is contained within its proper one, a proper multitude is also begotten without — as a certain number growing out from its proper monad; for the One must everywhere be prolific; and, being one and containing many, it must be generative both of one and of many.⁵⁰⁸ Do then the simply many — not the many forms, nor the many parts, nor the many elements, but those very things which are many only, and simply many, which we proved to be elder than the other manys — do these also make an outer multitude analogous to themselves? But if those are in the intelligible, there will be a procession even of the intelligible; and this was what we have been examining from the beginning: whether the unified is differentiated into the procession from itself; and what differentiation there could be of that which has been allotted its subsistence according to total union. For the things in it are not many in such wise as to differ from one another in any way whatsoever; for not yet is there otherness among those, nor any difference, nor any determination at all. And Parmenides also makes this plain — making the apparent division like-parted, and bringing in the first otherness lower down, and establishing the first number together with this otherness and through it; reasonably: for where otherness is, there is the dyad; and where this is, the number — though not the eidetic number; for neither is the determination eidetic, nor the otherness of the kind that is opposed to sameness. Or rather, neither is there sameness There along with it; nor has there come to be the otherness that makes the parts other than one another; but only that by which the elements grew apart, and became many — not simply, but many of a certain sort: many things, namely, that are eager for their mutual blending; and the of-a-certain-sort is a difference; whence, according to the difference of the elements blended within, the begotten monad of the many substances stood apart without — even if, far from that archaic nature, the many substances that have run forth still hasten toward their mutual con-natured blending.⁵⁰⁹
[98] But those many were wholly without difference, and of no particular sort, and for this reason wholly unified — being, as it were, one prolific nature, called many in this manner; wherefore those are also an unlimited multitude; for there is no limit in it: neither the so-much — for it is unnumbered, and without quantity; nor the of-such-a-sort — for it is undifferent, and without quality; nor at all were quantity and quality differentiated There; for that simplicity is unified — the simplicity which did not endure even the relation of one and being. Whence one might rightly conceive that that multitude remains within, in the intelligible, and in no way goes forth into the subsistence of an outer multitude. A proper procession, then, there would not be of it; but since it is wholly many, all things are begotten from thence, down to the very individuals — since even the unlimitedness of the individuals is from thence, as was said before, according to the one all-bearing, unlimited-begetting power of the intelligible. For from hence all things begin to stretch their rays into the below; from hence leaps forth the generation of the manifoldly-variegated matter — and whatever else of this kind the gods declare in their oracles about that order. And Orpheus too celebrated this much-honored god, the one bearing the seed of the gods, and called him Ērikepaios; and from him he makes the whole generation of the gods proceed. So that, to speak according to breadth, There all things are pre-taken scattered, as the theologian says, according to the unified embrace — which he called the seed of all things. For the unified also was all things, undifferentiatedly; wherefore all things were differentiated off from it. And what wonder — when even the simply One had pre-taken all things, according to its unitary, all-complete simplicity? But there was no depth in the One, because neither was there a multitude differing according to breadth; for in the processions, depth belongs to what differs in breadth.⁵¹⁰ So too the unified multitude is undifferent, and only a multitude — each of the many not being divided off — by union, and not by blending; for blending belonged to differing elements, but union to undifferent many; wherefore the latter made for us the unified, and the former the elemental; wherefore the procession of the elementated went forth also outward, according to the differences of the elements blended within; while that of the unified remained, all of it, within — having in itself no difference of depth and of breadth for the outward procession; for, difference not being, it inclined all together into one and whole, and remained; and it is not possible for anything to proceed both from something and from itself, where there is no difference.⁵¹¹
[98] Even here below, all the enmattered and pericosmic things proceed from the whole Demiurge; yet he did not himself go forth into the matter, nor into the pericosmic, partible rank. Just so the intelligible god brought forth from himself all the divine world-orders, while himself remaining in his own — truly hypercosmic — watchtower; having gone forth into them only so far as to establish his own monad as queen of all. He himself, then, remains whole and impartible; and the intelligible has been co-ranked, in a manner, with the world-orders that flow forth from it; and of the most whole-like gods after him, each is either tripled in the procession, or sevenfolded, while of the more partial gods each is multiplied by other, greater numbers, and others again; but he himself is, of all the processional numbers, the truly remaining monad — or rather, being a monad, he exceeds all the monads, and the whole single-form multitude — the fountal multitude, to speak according to the theurgists. Whence also he is hymned by all as the fount of founts.⁵¹²
[98] But if the unified is wholly without difference, and without procession, how then are we able to divide the intelligible in three — into first and middle and last; or into substance and life and intellect; or into Father and Power and Intellect; or however else one may choose to speak? And if we should cast the three intelligible triads into it, the unified would be divided in many ways — since Plato also has handed down to us three ranks of the intelligible, according to the Parmenides: calling the first One Being; the middle, Whole and Parts; and the third, Unlimited Multitude. And we ourselves spoke so in what went before, confessing the undifferentiated to be in the differentiated manner of speech. And does not Orpheus too bring forth from the egg, when the cloud is burst, the much-honored Phanēs — he also establishing a procession within the intelligible?⁵¹³ Or it must be said to these things: first, that we carry these up from the things below into the intelligible, desiring to give some indication concerning it according to the analogy of the more familiar; for the one and being are differentiated outside the intelligible; and the whole and the parts Plato clearly sets in the middle of the intelligibles-and-intellectuals; and the unlimited multitude is subdivided there where differentiation also shines forth. And what wonder — when concerning the middle world-orders too we are eager to give indication from the intellectual ones; for we know all things eidetically — and perhaps, indeed, only psychically. The unified, then, is not divided — it which is not even being-divided; for it is the only and first unified. Neither, then, are there There many forms, nor parts, nor elements; wherefore neither is there procession, inward or outward, in truth; whence the triad shone forth after the intelligible. For into three, said the intellect of the Father, all things are cut — whose will nodded assent, and at once all things were cut. And perhaps for this reason the god is hymned as three-barbed: not as giving subsistence to a triad — rather as commanding the triadic division in response, but not as making it. Thus, then, stands the truly unified.⁵¹⁴

## Chapter 99 — The Triad of the Intelligible an Analogy from Below; Each Cosmos Ends into Its Successor; the Intelligible Wholly Unparticipated, Seated upon the Crown of All; Iamblichus — the Intelligible Frozen Fast About the One; the Triad There Is Not Three Monads · pp. 309–312

[99] But since it is not possible to see the unified itself, insofar as we are not one — having attempted to behold it, and being unable to gaze upon its single union — we multiplied it according to analogy, with the first multiplication of the things multiplied below; and the first multitude is the triad; wherefore we supposed That also to be triadic, by analogy; wherefore also it would proceed, like-formedly, by analogy; for the inner triad transcends the intelligible and the intellectual and the middle order, and is outwardly synonymous with them — so to hear the same names of the same things.⁵¹⁵ Either, then, it must be put thus; or, slackening something of this whole accustomed usage, one must conceive the following: that every cosmos, having proceeded in itself as far as it was of a nature to proceed, thereupon furnished the beginning of subsistence to the one after it, but did not itself descend any further — as the cosmos of the psychic substance, having proceeded to a certain point, stood still, and from there the bodily cosmos took up the succession. In this way the intellectual also ended into the psychic; and indeed the intelligible into the intellectual; and, with the intellectual taking its station, the intelligible too will stand upon itself, and the intelligible-and-intellectual will take up the succession. The nature of the intelligible does not, then, proceed outside the intelligible cosmos; for neither does that of any other cosmos proceed into the sub-stepping of another. And if the firsts of what ever sub-steps are co-ranked and gathered with the priors, as vehicles to the things before them, so the lasts are released from such connection — for not all bodies hold to proper souls, nor all souls to intellects, nor, among the others, do all the seconds hold to their priors; but nothing of the intelligible proceeds into the below; else the seconds would be strung along the one co-ordering of the riders and the things ridden; rather, the intelligible is wholly unparticipated — the cause of this being, that it is the summit of all the cosmoi; so that it is seated upon the very crown of all. And either all things are in it undifferentiatedly; or it is exalted alike above all the differentiated; or it rides alike upon all; for the wholeness suffices for all; for it is not because it has been contracted into the undifferentiated that it is least; nay, it is the greatest of all the cosmoi.⁵¹⁶
[99] And what would be the definition, and the difference, of what proceeds into a vehicle, and of what is ridden? The first ridden becomes, in turn, a vehicle of another; so that, if it should proceed so as to be ridden by the others — as intellect by soul, and soul by body — there will be vehicle upon vehicle: as the soul is for the intellect, and body for some other. Of what, then, would the intelligible be the vehicle? For in that way the first god would be participated; but everywhere the first must be unparticipated. But perhaps body is vehicle only; the intelligible, ridden only; and the means are viewed in either way.⁵¹⁷ But if this too shall be divided into participated and unparticipated — and not one participated only, but several, and participated by several: the one by substance, another by life, another by intellect, another by soul, another by body — then the things ridden must differ from one another in form: as the hypercosmic differs from the encosmic god, and from this the intellectual, and from this again the intelligible-and-intellectual. What, then, this so great difference within the unified would be, and whence, it is hard even to fashion in thought; and further: the One neither proceeded in itself nor after itself; while for what comes after the intelligible — whence does the otherness arrive, in whatever manner? Both in itself, then, and after itself, the intelligible has justly remained in the middle station: having proceeded in itself, but having made, after itself, no procession at all.⁵¹⁸
[99] And to these things this must be added: that the first ridden is the henad; and that upon which it first rides is substance; but the unified was before both — before, therefore, the carrying and the ridden; its nature, accordingly, does not admit the difference of the ridden, because it was before the one — which became the first ridden according to the very dis-stance toward being, as first toward second. And if one should also take into thought what Iamblichus says — that the intelligible subsisted about the One, and has grown together with the Good, and, by the inclination of its whole nature toward That, is as it were frozen fast — it is clear that it remains with That, both undifferentiated, and without procession toward the outside.⁵¹⁹ And if, indeed, it displayed in itself, in whatever manner, some highest appearance of sub-stepping — even this is not differentiated by number, nor by multitude, nor indeed by otherness; but, as Iamblichus says again: the triad There is not three monads, nor did it supervene upon three monads; but it is only the form itself that supervenes upon monads; or rather it must be said: not even the form; for that is not yet a form There, nor anything like an element; for none of these things is There — but only the very one of the triad, and even this undetermined toward substance — the unified before both, as we call it. How, then, could such a thing be of a nature to go forth into several subsistences?⁵²⁰
[99] What then — are the many not There? Or rather: even before the unified there are the many, after the One — yet not so-many; but that many was an unlimited-begetting henad; and her first offspring is the intelligible multitude — become a unified instead of a one — though not yet is even this a so-many; for there is not yet any determination, not yet any otherness; but where these are, there is said to subsist also the first number, immediately after the unified — not the eidetic number, but the number according to the first determination, subsisting after the first undetermined nature, according to the first differing multitude; and this was the multitude of the first elements, where determination first subsisted — one and substance being the first things determined; or rather, not even these as having been already determined, but as still being determined — above all as things that have been allotted their being at the summit of what is differentiated below. These matters, then, it will be necessary to touch upon many times hereafter.⁵²¹

## Chapter 100 — The Ascent from Things Under Sensation; the Question of the Many — Souls, Intellects, Lives, Substances; the Illuminationist Hypothesis of the Philosophers Before Iamblichus; the Double Illumination, Suspended and In-Grown; Vice and Ignorance — the Souls Self-Determining in Truth · pp. 312–317

[100] But let us take in hand another manner of arguments about the same things — from the things below, and lying under sensation, going back up to the very first of the intelligibles — if the demonstration that arises from evidences, coming about by way of analysis, might furnish us some confirmation by its own truth. And the argument seeks not concerning the monads themselves, but concerning the many that are said to be ranked under each monad, and that proceed from each.⁵²² That, then, before the other-moved is the self-moved; and before this the unmoved indeed, yet differentiated; and before this the being-differentiated; and still before this the undifferentiated. And in another manner also: that before body there must be the soul that moves the body and makes it live; and before soul, intellect — which knows all things at once, and not transitively; and before intellect, life; and before life, substance: let these things be laid down as having been demonstrated, and as agreed by all the most renowned of the philosophers.⁵²³
[100] But we inquire whether, after the one substance, there are many substances; and after the one life, many lives; and after the one intellect, many intellects; and after the soul, many souls. For perhaps someone might say that from one soul there come, into the many bodies, many illuminations; and that each body has the rational life that falls to it illumined from the one soul; and that the seeming multitude of the many souls is a multitude not of self-complete souls, but of psychic illuminations; and likewise that the multitude of intellects is the intellectual illuminations, those coming into each soul from each form of the forms determined in the one intellect. For one must of necessity agree that the illuminations are many, and differing in form — unless a man should wish to quarrel with the very principles; but that they are illuminations only, proceeding from the different reason-principles contained in the one soul, and from the forms determined in the one intellect; for it is easy to demonstrate that the multitude of the forms subsists before the multitude of the reason-principles, and that of the reason-principles before the bodiform and enmattered images; for it is plain that the true things come first — with the eternal and the unmoved. And in the same way a man might say that the many seeming lives also are vital illuminations, flowing off from the one subsisting life into all the living things; and that the many substances, in their turn, are in-givings by illumination from the one substance, proceeding into all the things that are. And why need one say much? — seeing that even the many gods were supposed to be such by almost all the philosophers before Iamblichus: saying that the supersubstantial god is one, and that the others are substantial, divinized by the illuminations from the One; and that the multitude of the supersubstantial henads is a multitude not of self-complete subsistences, but of the things illumined from the only god — divinizations given-in to the substances.⁵²⁴
[100] What I say many times over, then: the argument inquires, concerning each number that is said to be ranked under each archic monad, whether it is self-complete, or is multiplied only according to illumination. And the illumination is double: the one suspended from the illuminator, and con-being with it according to one continuity; the other growing into the illumined, and becoming its own, and subsisting in it as in a substrate. We must inquire, then, in which of the two senses a man shall suppose the illuminations, if he should accept them in place of the self-complete subsistences. And let this also be determined beforehand: that the self-complete subsistence is better than the illumination of the same rank — as the light of the sun, if it had subsisted by itself, and were not a hanging appendage of something else; and if it were a substance, and not, in a certain manner, an activity of substance; and if it stood self-sufficient upon itself, and were not con-substantiated as another's — would be agreed to be better. And it is plain, too, that the one kind of illumination is better than the other; for this one, even if it belongs to another, yet belongs to the better — to the illuminator itself; while that one belongs to the worse — for it is of the illumined; and the one is separate, the other in a substrate and inseparable; and it is clear which answers to which.⁵²⁵
[100] Further then, let this also be claimed in addition: that if something is in the worse, it will be in the better in far greater measure: thus, if the soul that is worse by nature is a self-complete substance, and not an illumination of either kind, assuredly the soul that is better by nature — better than the human — and the divine soul much more; so that, if the soul is such, then the intellect also, by the same account; and if the intellect, the life likewise; and if the life, the substance too; and if the substance, the One as well; for the self-complete, and self-sufficient, and seated upon itself would be in the superior things rather than in the needier; if, then, it is in these, it is also in those.⁵²⁶ And I mean by the substantified-by-itself-and-in-itself that which is predicated of the things whose nature it is to be so; and such are substance, and life, and intellect, and soul, and body; and we mark this off against the things that have their being in these — which we call elements, and parts, and forms, and the reason-principles in the soul; and the other such things of the body.⁵²⁷
[100] These things standing so: that the bodies are many, and stand apart from one another severally — the statement is evident even to a blind man; but as for the ensouled among them: either one soul, common to all, has reached them all; or, after the one, there are also many souls, one proper to each — each a certain self-moved substance. Now that the life of all is not one — this also is evident; for we perceive one life in one way, and another in another. The ensoulments of the severals, then, are proper to each; and these are either illuminations made proper to their substrates — descending from the peculiar-mannered reason-principles of the one soul — and coming to be in a substrate, in each of the bodies; but this is impossible: for that which itself moves itself is assuredly separate from the substrates — from the bodies that are ensouled by it. Or else the illuminations have not grown into these, nor have their being in these, but hang down from the illuminators, and belong to those — whether they be certain activities, or second substances attached to the first and flowing off from them, as the lights from the things that give light, or whatever else one might wish to call them; but in any case they will be, each of them, not their own, but as it were out-growths of one nature, or parts, or substantial reason-principles. And if this is so, what place will vice have, and ignorance, there being no longer any partial souls? These, then, will be affections of the whole soul; for if there were nothing else, beside the light of the sun, in this place here, then the being-quenched would be an affection of the solar light — if indeed even the lamp-light were that light's own; but this it is no longer lawful to say. The human souls, then, are not out-growths of the whole soul; they are therefore self-complete, and seated upon themselves, and being, in themselves, their own and not another's — which is to say, self-determining, and self-moved in truth.⁵²⁸ And if the human body has both the ensoulment rooted down within it, and, before this, the self-complete soul that breathes this ensoulment into it, and if they are ensouled somehow also by the soul of the All — assuredly the betters among the ensouled will have not only the life in a substrate, nor only the common life breathing upon them from afar, but also the proper soul of each of them; for such an ensoulment is better than the one that does not have the self-complete and proper soul. And in general: if it has the worst, according to the in-grown ensoulment, and the strongest, according to the common ensoulment of the one soul, why should it not have the one ranked in the middle of these?⁵²⁹
[100] And further, in yet another way: if our soul is a certain proper substance, and there is also the whole and one soul, being as it were the monad of souls, why not also the whole number that lies between the one and those partitioned to the last? For how was it possible for the most partial of all souls to proceed from the whole without the middle plenitudes? It is necessary, then, that each ensouled thing have been allotted a proper, self-complete soul.⁵³⁰ And if someone, speaking with precision, should say that the life-making which comes from the whole and one soul is double — the one fore-taking the proper soul, such as makes live even the soulless among the things in the All, this being worse than the peculiar-mannered and more partial life-making, such that the ensouled, taking it in addition, have become more vital; the other supervening upon this, the common life given in from the whole soul, according to which the partial things are made whole — even so, nevertheless, it is necessary either that all things be soulless, and that there be only the common life, which is an alien life, belonging to the All; or, if the ensouled also is something, that there be some proper soul of each, through which it will attain life in greater measure and more wholly; after the one soul of the All, then, there are the many self-complete souls — as may be gathered by reasoning from the appearances.⁵³¹ And if the ensouled stands toward soul as the in-intellected toward intellect, it is necessary, I think, to make the same account prevail for these also. The ensouled body, then, is a body en-souled — having not an illumination of soul only, but gathered together with a self-complete soul; for this was better for it than that; and the in-intellected is a soul in-intellected — having not the intellectual illumination only, but attached, by nature, to a proper intellect, which is better for her than to have an intellectual illumination only. For surely this better form did not subsist in the worse things, and become con-substantiated with the worse, while in the betters, and for the betters, it should not have come to be — I mean: that the ensouled body should be yoked to a self-complete soul, while the in-intellected soul should not be yoked to a self-complete intellect. For this being better, how should it not belong, in greater measure, to the betters?⁵³²

## Chapter 101 — The Same Method for Intellect and Life; the Self-Complete and the Unparticipated Life; the Triple One; the Second Ascent Through Evidences — Other-Moved, Self-Moved, Unmoved; Substance Supra-Eternal, Intellect Eternal, Life as Aiōn Itself; the One Stretched Out Alongside All · pp. 317–319

[101] But indeed the same manner of method holds also for intellect and life: for intellect confessedly lives; but this life is the intellect's own, and has subsisted in the intellect; there must, then, be before this one a self-complete life, of which intellect will participate according to attachment to her — yoked to her as to a better, as body to soul — and through which it will participate also of the unparticipated life; as the body, through its own proper soul, participates also of the soul of the one that has obtained it by lot, so to speak.⁵³³ And in the same way we shall ascend also from life to substance — both the participated and the unparticipated. And would not someone say this same thing also of the unified — it too being triple: the one according to the state that is in the substance; the other according to the participated subsistence; the other according to the unparticipated? And the same argument will demand that of the simply One also — the One before all things — there be a triple subsistence: one being the illumination come to be in another, according to which we call each thing, however it has subsisted, one; another according to the unparticipated existence; and another according to the middle one, the participated, through which the participants enjoy something also of the unparticipated. But this perplexity awaits us again hereafter.⁵³⁴
[101] And I wish, by another approach of argument, to run back up again from below upward, demonstrating through evidences that it is necessary, then, that not only the monads exist — the superior ones ever before the needier — but also the several numbers, those differentiated from their proper monads: as what I was just now saying — that many souls have come to be after the one soul, and many intellects after the one, and many lives and substances after the one life and substance; upon which the same perplexity will again be hung for us, concerning the unified and the One.⁵³⁵ That, then, it is necessary to suppose three — the other-moved, the self-moved, the unmoved — the more ancient philosophers also, I think, show sufficiently. For if the moved body is moved by another — for it is not moved by itself — then either the mover is a body, and is itself moved by another, and this to infinity; or it is moved by an unmoved; and how will this sometimes move, and sometimes not? For the other-moved is seen in change; but the unmoved could not begin change, lest it too should change; and it is supposed unmoved. If, then, these things are impossible, the self-moved will begin change — both its own, and that of the other-moved; it is necessary, then, to suppose the self-moved before the other-moved.⁵³⁶
[101] And indeed the first mover is wholly unmoved; for if this too should be moved, we shall come to infinity. And if someone should say that the self-moved is the first mover: insofar as it moves, it would be unmoved, and not self-moved; and if the same thing is at once moving and moved — insofar as moving, unmoved; insofar as moved by itself, self-moved — it will not be purely unmoved, but first of the moved, because moved not by another but by itself, and last of the movers, because it is not only moving, but also moved; and the unmixed toward the worse must be set before the mixed, as first; for if there must be, before the moved, the mover — which of necessity is unmoved — then what is at once moved cannot be the first mover; for neither is this properly the mover; for why is the same thing mover rather than moved? And why should it be said to belong to the unmoved rather than to the moved? For even if it changes itself, it is nevertheless changed; not, then, unmoved in truth. There must, then, be before the self-moved the unmoved — which again would be triple in its nature: for intellect can be wholly unmoved, or life, or substance: she as supra-eternal; intellect as eternal; and life as Aiōn itself. Or better, perhaps: to say that the one has been circumscribed by forms, and differentiated; that the other is uncircumscribed, and undifferentiated; and that the third holds itself in the middle in such wise as to be roused toward differentiation and circumscription, yet not yet to stand completely in the having-been-differentiated and circumscribed; and the order of these is plain; and before these there will be also, stretched out alongside all, the One; for one and unified are not the same; for the latter was the undifferentiated.⁵³⁷

## Chapter 102 — The Many Under Each Genus; Appearances as Evidences of the True — the Phaedrus; the Ensouled of Pythagoras and of Kylon, of Plato and of Kleon; the Soul and Its Organ, Which Indeed We Also Call the Vehicle; Ascend Now from the Self-Moved to the Unmoved; the Heavenly Revolutions and the First Unmoved · pp. 319–324

[102] These things having been recalled to this extent, let our inquiry now be set before us concerning the things under each genus — for instance, the many forms — whether some argument will compel these too, in addition to the common things. And these also must be determined beforehand, in addition to what has been said: one, that the parts are co-form-given with their proper whole, and that the activity of the part must be characterized along with the activity of the whole — for instance, the opinative part is not the same in form in the divine soul, and in the daimonic, and in the human; but the one is itself also human, the other daimonic, the other divine; and likewise each reason-principle in each; and the self-moved, accordingly, is other and other in form; so that the apparent self-moved also is different in form — that which comes down from the one soul and from the other.⁵³⁸ Conversely, then, it must also be said that the appearances, being different in form, proceed from true things differing in form; so that the many apparent forms are evidences of the many true forms — since indeed the common apparent is demonstrative of the common true. If, then, we make the apparent self-moved in the other-moved, taken simply, an evidence of the true self-moved — as is shown more completely in the Phaedrus — then, if the forms of the appearances be many, many also will be the forms of the true; for each appearance becomes an evidence of its own proper true one, as each image, differing in whole form, is evidence of its proper paradigm. If, then, each ensouled thing is an apparent self-moved, and each is not the same in form, it is clear that the truly self-moved things also will be many forms: many, therefore, are the souls.⁵³⁹
[102] But perhaps, as the many paradigms are in the one intellect, so the many souls are the many psychic reason-principles, determined according to form in the one whole and single-form soul? But the parts of that soul are all divine, and parts of an all-complete nature, so that they too are all-complete in their part; for each is whole-like, and in very truth cosmic; whereas not every ensouled thing renders such activities, nor is such in its nature; rather, one is divine, another daimonic, another human; and one is the ensouled body of Pythagoras, another of Kylon; and one, if it so chance, of Plato, another of Kleon. It is necessary, then, that the properly self-moved souls also be other and other, with the same forms as their ensouled — and differing even more greatly than the apparent self-moveds differ. Many, therefore, are the souls after the one whole soul.⁵⁴⁰
[102] But perhaps they are not co-ranked with the ensouled bodies — being substances separate by themselves, and illumining from afar the ensoulments according to which the bodies become ensouled? Yet even if a man should suppose what is said to be true, it would be nothing against the present point; for that each ensouled thing has a proper soul — the one furnishing to it its differing apparent self-motion — this is what the argument wished to show: whether from afar, or from near, or in whatever place and manner it should accomplish this. Next: some activities of the ensouled are inseparable and animal-like; but others are of the soul herself — whether fighting against the ensouled, or ordering it and setting it in array, or withdrawing from it headlong, or not even seeming to be present, through the greatness of the separation. And these things are manifest in our own case; in the daimonic kinds less so, because of their invisibility — and yet many indeed have met with such; while in the divine it is harder to differentiate the activities of the ensouled, and those of the souls, and further those of the gods themselves, from whom the souls are hung. Yet one might nevertheless easily gather the same conclusions concerning these also; for our soul uses the ensouled as an organ — as she makes plain when at times she does not use it; and the divine soul would not move her own ensouled in that bound manner, even if she moves it always — having ever projected the separable apart from it. If, then, from each soul the ensouled is hung as an organ, it is clear that there con-exists with it, as the user with the organ, the rational soul of each — seen according to its co-ordering toward its proper organ — which indeed we also call the vehicle. Many souls, then, lead the many ensouled: souls differing in form from one another, as the ensouled differ in form from one another — the truly self-moved souls of the apparent self-moveds.⁵⁴¹
[102] Ascend now from the self-moved to the unmoved, as you have ascended from the other-moved to the self-moved. For there is also a certain apparent unmoved — as, among the heavenly revolutions, the circling ever according to the same things and in the same manner: let it come from soul; for this too is a kind of change. But the in-the-same-manner, and the always, and all such characters, both are, and are spoken, according to the unchanging; wherefore in this respect the circular motion imitates intellect, as Plotinus says — or rather, as Plato himself, in the Laws, projected it as an image of the motion of intellect: the apparent unmoved of the true unmoved. For it is apparent in very truth, because in it the always has been blended together with the at-some-time — for it is always at this or that moment that it moves — and the in-the-same-manner with the now-thus-and-now-otherwise; for the in-the-same-manner, too, lay within the change according to number; so that, universally, the moved is blended with the unmoved. And if you should behold the image of intellect in the circular motion of souls also, you will see there too, analogously, the moved con-kneaded with the unmoved.⁵⁴²
[102] But perhaps someone might say that such an unmoved is an in-giving and image not of the intellectual unmoved, but of the psychic — of which the unchanging in body also is one; I mean the unchanging according to substance; for there is indeed something unchangeable according to the substantial both in the bodily forms and in the souls; for they are immortal, and admit neither addition nor any subtraction, nor change at all. For their substance is either eternal, as the philosophers for the most part will have it; or generated indeed, yet wholly unchanging; for one must agree that there is also a certain generation of this kind, and that not everything unchanging is in every way eternal; for the substance and subsistence, say, of the sun, though everlasting and unchanging, would not be eternal. For how could the body be eternal — standing apart, one part in one place and another in another, and dispersed abroad? For the eternal is impartible both according to place and according to time.⁵⁴³
[102] These things, then, are true, and are demonstrated by us elsewhere with greater precision. Yet the apparent unmoved does not lead us up only to this; it leads to the first unmoved; for even if it leads more proximately to that other, yet not on that account to the first and true as well; for we did not posit that unmoved — counter-dividing it against the self-moved and the other-moved — which, being generated, is unchanging; but that which is truly eternal, or even supra-eternal. For this was the truly and primarily unmoved; since the generated, even if it be unchanging, is other-moved. And this is the apparent unmoved in the other-moved; and in the self-moved, again, there is an apparent unmoved; for as the true other-moved is an apparent self-moved, so also the true self-moved is an apparent unmoved. For the substance of the soul is at once mover and self-moved; and insofar as it is moved, how is it eternal? And being at once mover and moved, it would not be properly unmoved — for the only-unmoved is not at the same time also moved. For the moved is significant of something generated; wherefore the self-moved is also interpreted as self-generated: for it is becoming — but by itself; and in this it differs from the other-moved; and its unmovedness is not true, but apparent, blended into the moved — as the apparent self-moved is at once also other-moved. As, then, the self-moved in the activities of the ensouled led us proximately to the substantial, apparent self-motion, and properly to the true one, so also that which, within the changes, holds ever according to the same things and in the same manner leads us proximately to its proper substance — which is itself an apparent unmovedness, even if more assimilated to the unmoved — while properly and truly it will lead up to the first unmoved.⁵⁴⁴ If, then, the self-moved is, the unmoved is before it; and if there are many self-moveds, differing in form from one another, each will carry us up, like-formedly, to its proper unmoved.⁵⁴⁵
[102] But perhaps someone might say that many forms are gathered together in one unmoved, as the paradigms in the one intellect; and that there are not, therefore, many intellects after the one, having proceeded from it. Or rather: it is not the same thing to speak of the heliac or the selenian part of the one intellect, and of the heliac or the selenian intellect; for neither is the apparent unmoved of the whole soul the same as the heliac or selenian one taken apart within a part of her, and as that of the heliac or selenian soul by herself; for neither is my own psychic apparent unmoved the same as the one pre-taken in the whole soul according to the cause of my soul. Since, then, they differ in form — my soul, if it so chance, from the pre-taking of it in the whole, my soul being viewed There as a part; and the soul of Kronos from the Kronian psychic cause pre-taken in the whole soul — it is plain that, as their apparent unmoveds also will differ from one another according to form, so the truly unmoved things, differing in form, will have us ascend, in the evidentiary manner, to causes differing in form. Not the same unmoved, then, will shine forth from the pre-taking of the soul of Kronos in the whole, and from the very soul of Kronos: from the latter we ascend to a Kronian proper unmoved intellect; from the former, to a part in the whole intellect — and this also Kronian. From there being many self-complete souls, then, after the one — even the one that has proceeded from her — it follows that there are many self-complete intellects after the one, having proceeded from it. Wherefore one must also inquire whether, answering to every apparent unmoved, we shall posit a true one as well. In that way there will be even a proper, self-complete intellect of my own soul. And why not? — someone might say — if indeed answering to each ensouled thing — that is, to each apparent self-moved — there is a certain proper, self-complete soul. But let this remain awaiting us, inquired into thus far.⁵⁴⁶

## Chapter 103 — Intellects Co-Ranked with Souls as with Organs and Vehicles; the Heliac and Selenian Intellects; the Gods Called Encosmic, Sensible, and Enmattered from the Henads' Own Properties — What Would Not Be an Offspring of God and of One?; the Ascent Not from Every Appearance · pp. 324–327

[103] Now let us examine these things further in their turn: whether the argument shows not only many intellects simply, but also intellects co-ranked with the many souls, as with organs or as with vehicles. That the heliac apparent unmoved demonstrates to us a heliac self-complete intellect, and every selenian one, in its turn, a selenian — is evident. And if the one is a partial heliac intellect, and the other a selenian — the one giving in the apparent unmoved to the soul of the moon, the other to the soul of the sun, and, through the one and the other soul, giving to the natural forms what falls to them, and to these a trace or image of the unmoved — then each will be co-ranked according to kinship: the one with the soul of the sun, the other with that of the moon; and the one will use the other as an organ toward the perfecting of the third things; and it is plain which with which. This manner of demonstration, then, leads us up not to the unparticipated many intellects, as we showed just now, but — quite the contrary — to the participated. For from the ensouled we were led up, by proportion, to the souls co-ranked with these and participated by them; and how indeed was it likely that, ascending from the things given in, we should not come, upon these, to the givers? And the ensoulment is given in to the natural forms by the attached souls, those proximately mounted upon them; and the in-intellected to the souls, by the intellects yoked to them, of like manner and like form with them; for the likeness of their properties, and the symmetry of the equal measures of the partition from the wholes, join the participated to the participated.⁵⁴⁷
[103] Is then the unparticipated one, while the many are everywhere participated? Or rather, the philosophers recognize souls also that are hypercosmic, before the encosmic; and, above the hypercosmic and participated ones, the intellectual and unparticipated intellects.⁵⁴⁸ What, then, is the ascent from below to the unparticipated multitude? Is the manner of the method the same? Let only this be determined beforehand: that as the deity riding upon the intellect has pre-taken the property of intellect, and is a unitary intellect, so also the intellect riding upon the soul will have pre-taken the property of the soul, and would be an intellectual soul: intellect by subsistence, soul by the property. For such a henad also — the first one, presiding over these — projected the psychic peculiarity, and is a unitary soul, by the same account; for we call the god riding upon substance a unitary substance, according to subsistence; and a unitary life, the one riding upon life; so that also a nature, or a whole form both natural and bodiform, or a form simply enmattered, or a form encosmic — and the one riding upon such an animal would justly be a soul, and the intellect of this soul; and before all of them is the henad.⁵⁴⁹
[103] Of course we call the last gods, in a certain manner, gods encosmic, and gods sensible and enmattered: not, as the philosophers seem to say, as if the god were form-given from the lasts; for nothing is characterized, or named, from the worse, in justice; but because everywhere the henads, projecting their properties before them, give these in shares to their proper vehicles; so that the gods have come to be first — encosmic, and enmattered, and sensible, and bodily — in the unitary manner; then, after them, the intellects, in the intellectual manner; and after the intellects, the souls, in the self-moved manner; whereupon this very kind of form itself also went forth and was begotten — no longer according to property only, but now also according to the last subsistence — which we hold to be other-moved body, immediately graspable even by sensation. For this is what has long been noised abroad, even before the philosophers, and is here shown: each such name is, as it were, a property — a goodness coming from gods. For what would not be an offspring of god, and of one? Let this, then, really stand determined by us — showing itself useful both toward what has gone before and toward what is to come.⁵⁵⁰
[103] If, then, one must run back up from the apparent self-moved to the true self-moved, whether will the true one be that which is blended together with the property of the other-moved, and which is self-moved according to subsistence; or that which is such in both ways — self-moved in property and in subsistence alike, and similar to itself, and nothing else? Or rather, the transition is to either: but nearer, because more con-generic, to the participated; further, because truer, to the unparticipated. In this way, then, we shall ascend also from the apparent unmoved: first, to the intellect that is self-moved according to property alone, but unmoved according to subsistence; and second, to the one that is wholly unmoved, and truly such; and this is the unparticipated intellect. And it is plain that there is such a multitude of intellects, and a multitude of souls; for as the participated are many, so also the unparticipated must be many. For each participated property will have its own purified counterpart in its proper unparticipated one — more truly, and wholly of such a kind as the true, taken from the apparent, wishes to be.⁵⁵¹
[103] But the ascent is not from every appearance, though the ascent to the unparticipated holds in any case; for surely we shall not come from the human soul to an unparticipated soul — so that there should be a soul of Plato, if it so chance, both hypercosmic and unparticipated; nor from the daimonic intellect to an unparticipated intellect. For every daimon is encosmic; so that neither shall we posit a hypercosmic soul answering to each daimon; for neither would every encosmic god have been previously hypercosmic; nor has every hypercosmic god pre-subsisted as already intellectual also; for neither would every intellectual one be intelligible-and-intellectual. Or, on that showing, we shall make all things everywhere determined — and the entire multitude of the gods differentiated at once in the intelligible; I mean the multitude of the whole properties, and that of the partial; and then it would no longer be true that the things above, compared with the things below, are gathered in quantity while exceeding in the quality of their worth. If, however, anyone raises difficulties against the stated argument, and demands that we determine from which things there is an ascent to the superior, and from which there is not — this too has been raised as a difficulty before, and we shall resolve the difficulty again hereafter, as far as may be possible.⁵⁵²

## Chapter 104 — The Unparticipated Multitude Before the Participated; the Supra-Eidetic Life; Henads That Have Kindled Intellect from Themselves; Plato's Two Columns; Whether the One Above the Unified Proceeds — a Nature Wholly Without Difference, Not Only One, but Not Even Anything · pp. 327–330

[104] For now I take the argument to demand only this much: why there is also an unparticipated multitude before the participated ones — both souls and intellects — seeing that the simply unparticipated must be joined to the multitude of the participated both as one set against multitude, and as unparticipated against participated; for the middle term would be that which is unparticipated indeed, and yet a multitude. And if there is a first participated, and the first participated leads a proper multitude, then the first unparticipated also will lead a multitude of its own; for every number is like-formed to its proper monad. In this way, then, we shall divide the unmoved also in three. For since intellect is something differentiated and circumscribed — both itself and the things within it — yet not utterly dispersed, but somehow gathered together, having its being in being-differentiated; and, to speak more plainly: since, being intellect, it has life, and this life is somehow intellectual, and not only unmixed life — there must, before the life that is in another, and blended together with another property, the eidetic, be the supra-eidetic life: life only, subsisting by herself, substantified in the being-differentiated alone — nay rather, herself projecting the being-differentiated.⁵⁵³
[104] Again: since life too has substance, and this substance is vital — being differentiated, and not simply unified, rather than substance simply — there must before her also be the truly substance: substance only, and completely unified. And it is plain that not only the monads stand thus in rank toward one another, but the multitudes also; and that the ascent is not only to the participated — climbing from the many intellects to the multitude of participated lives — but also from these to the unparticipated multitude. And likewise in the case of the substances; for the same account will fit them all. Accordingly, someone might say the same of the others too: that nothing prevents bringing the same necessity of the argument to bear upon the unified as well. There will be, then, before the participated many, many unparticipated henads; and those of them that have proceeded into substance are substantial; and those into life, vital; and indeed those that have kindled intellect from themselves, intellectual. It is necessary, then, that before the substantial gods there be many unparticipated gods — and not one only; and that there be also one, before the many: the simply god.⁵⁵⁴
[104] Who, then, would this be? And which are the unparticipated after him? For they must be unitary and substantial; yet not such as we call those before one and substance — the undifferentiated ones, unified according to the One Being of Plato. For those were not henads standing according to the One alone, counter-divided against Being according to the first otherness that appeared. For this otherness, it seems, having separated the one from substance, must set the simply One in front of all things; then the many unparticipated henads; and after these, next in order, the ones participated by substances, and lives, and intellects, and souls, and bodiform natural forms. But Plato, after the undifferentiated One Being, set against each other the two columns — of the participated henads, and of the participated substances — and, to speak generally, of the subsistences. And universally: if it is true to say that from the simply One a double multitude is produced — as from the simply substance, and the simply life, and the simply intellect, and, if you will, the simply soul — the one unparticipated, the other participated — how would a man not say, in justice, what is indeed plain: that from the simply unified too a double multitude of unifieds will show itself — the one unparticipated, and not co-stretched alongside the participants as far as the encosmic animals; the other participated, reaching down to these, just as each of the wholes does; so that there comes to be a procession of the unified also, outward, according to the inner many, the outer proceeding in two ways.⁵⁵⁵
[104] But if it is lawful, in raising difficulties, to reason the same things also about the simply One — the One above the unified — perhaps the same perplexities would arise about that as well. For why is there not also, belonging to the One above the unified, a proper procession above the unified — the one unparticipated, the other participated by the unified? Or rather: not yet, There, have the participating and the participated been differentiated; nor the participated and the unparticipated; nor the many and the one; for that nature was one only; and the second principle was called many as being one nature — cause of the things differentiated in every manner, being, of herself, a power of the One, differentiative and prolific. Such a nature, then, is not of a kind to endure the processions, of whatever sort, that come about by differentiation from one; for it wishes to be one only — even the all-various one — and before all things; from which such things appear, coming to be as seconds or thirds. And further: where all things are one, surely no difference could subsist there — not even one; there will not, then, be the one simply, and the unparticipated one, and the participated one; for these will be differences of the One's nature — which is wholly and altogether without difference. It is not, then, receptive of procession — not in any manner whatsoever: neither according to appearance, nor according to the analogy of remaining and proceeding and reverting, nor of begetter and begotten; for these too are certain differences. Further: since that nature is before all things, it is also the principle of all; it would not endure to be any of the things that proceed from it; none of these, then, would the archic nature of all things endure. And these belong to all things — indeed to the things that have already subsisted according to some differentiation. Not one of these, then, will it so much as indicate — it which we say is not only one, but not even anything at all.⁵⁵⁶ Further: if it has its being in being exalted above all things, and in being the common principle of all, how is that nature still common — if indeed it is proper, as a monad of the unparticipated multitude proceeding from itself? And how is its nature un-co-ranked — if indeed it has a participated multitude? For everything of that kind is co-ranked with the things that participate it.⁵⁵⁷

## Chapter 105 — The Unified Refuses All Procession — All Things Drunk Down into the One Union of All; Iamblichus and the One Great Intuition; the Hidden Cosmos, the Hypercosmic Abyss, the Common Birth-Pang of All Births; the Titanic Rending of Our Conceptions and the Daring of the Triad · pp. 330–335

[105] About the first cause, indeed, why prolong the matter — seeing that it has nothing else in common with all the others save this alone: that it is exalted above all, and is cause of all — and does not even have the title cause as something determined apart from the one. But why should the unified not proceed, producing from itself a double multitude, unparticipated and participated? Or rather, the unparticipated we concede; for the intelligible is many; for we continue beholding it as triadic — that I may not also triple this triad into an ennead. It needed, then, that the participated also proceed, after the unparticipated. Or is it perhaps truer to say that not even the unparticipated proceeds? For not only does the One refuse the differentiated multitude, but the unified also — inclining together, whole, toward the One, and, as it were, given its form according to the nature of That, and willing nowhere and in no wise to subsist apart from it; for it is in this that the first unified has its being. As, then, the first in each kind must be the most true — for what could there be before it, before the very being of the kind? — so this also: assuredly it is most truly unified. In no way, then, does the unified admit any differentiation whatsoever; nor, therefore, procession — nor any such thing at all; for such it would be, in all justice, as its seeming elements also would justly be supposed to be.⁵⁵⁸
[105] For the unified — to speak from below, from the things after it and proceeding from it — is one being, simple, fore-ranked of both the one and the being. If, then, it makes these processions from itself — it which is not even either of the two, but before both — how should it not be superior even to the processional principle? And this principle is the one that differentiates the One and the Being from each other; for this differentiation showed itself first. And — to behold it from above, from the two principles — it is one and many at once, according to participation, as those were according to cause. But the One, and the many, do not proceed; for neither do the many; for it is a cause of processions, yet not itself proceeding; for neither is it many in the sense of a many in multitude, but as a One of such a kind — as it were an out-stretching of the One; wherefore it is hymned both as the power of it, and as its all-bearing, and as cause of all; for, taken as one, it is not even cause of all, but only before all. As, then, the unified proceeds from two principles of this kind — insofar as it has something of the One, unified; insofar as it shows forth something also of the many: not having remained one, but having become unified instead of one, and not each of those two — and in this way giving the manifold to appear — this came from the second principle; but not as something differentiated in any way. Such, then, being this unified, how should it be differentiated into any procession — whether in itself or from itself, whether unparticipated or participated? Or whence shall it have such differences, when nothing There stands by itself? Let there be, then, neither difference, nor otherness, nor differentiation, nor procession, nor descent, nor excess; neither begetter nor begotten; nor anything whatsoever differentiated toward another, or being-differentiated, or remaining in itself, or determined in whatever other manner such things are determined: for the nature of the unified has drunk down all things into the one union of all — as, if it be lawful to say, the One itself has drunk down all into the one simplicity of all.⁵⁵⁹
[105] That the truth stands thus, I am persuaded beyond everything; and so is Iamblichus — in many places insistent — compelling us to press our many intuitions together, as into one centre; and to make the circumference a centre; and so to approach the unified and intelligible — unifiedly, and intelligibly, with one great intuition, itself undifferentiated and intelligible. But since it is no easy thing for one who is a man to project such an intuition — above all while still dwelling upon the earth — and since we nevertheless desire, in whatever way, to behold even the things There, hidden in the depth There, and as it were con-fused, relative at least to our apprehension: having attempted, then, to compress that nature thus, as best we are able — though it is not yet gathered according to the one intuition which we called the centre of all intuitions — we split it, first, in two, about its dis-stanced union, seeing it now as unified, now as multiplied; though it is not so; for the unified of it is not one thing, and the multiplied another; rather, both of these are folded together according to the unified. Yet even so we are content to think, and to name: at one time calling it the multiplied — not the one itself; at another, again, hymning it as unified — as what has not suffered the one. But that nature is one; which, being unable to seize as one, we conceive in two ways: either as one and not one; or as neither one nor not one; or as one and many.⁵⁶⁰
[105] What then — do we speak falsely about it? Or rather: in the differentiation we speak falsely; but in the union even of these terms we speak truly — and yet we cannot, as yet, meet with this truth. Then, seeing all the cosmoi proceeding from the truly hypercosmic abyss, we have called that abyss a hidden cosmos — having gathered up in itself all the cosmoi — as being a cosmos of all the cosmoi; or rather their undifferentiated birth-pang: not yet enduring the cosmic form, and yet simply fore-travailing it. For there is — if it be lawful to say — of the cause of all, and before all things, one birth-pang, common and undifferentiated, of all the whole births that come from it, and of every birth, fore-ranked of the intelligibles; which indeed we call also the unified: the borderland of the cosmoi, as many as there are, and of the plenitudes contained within them — and, from above, of the one exalted simplicity.⁵⁶¹
[105] Since, then, we conceived the truly hypercosmic abyss to be a cosmos at least to this extent, for this very reason an order also came running in together with this conception of ours — of firsts, and middles, and lasts — though there is no differentiation, not even of this kind, There, from any quarter; for not even in all the cosmoi after it is such a thing present; but from the limit of the intelligibles-and-intellectuals this differentiation first shows itself forth, as is said in the Parmenides. And let the triadic procession be seen, in some other manner, even in the priors; but in the intelligible even this cannot appear; rather, conceive even of this a birth-pang — the division in three that is spoken of There — and, if anything is more uniform still than the birth-pang, conceive it as it were seminally; for the seed is more partless than the birth-pang; or even beyond the seminal analogy; for it is beyond everything that is differentiated in any way whatsoever. Wishing, then, to lay hold of this — the truly undetermined, abysmal embrace of all things — we were ourselves partitioned, and partitioned about it; and fearing the rending of our conceptions — dreadful, and titanic in very truth: a rending not about some partible intellect, but, unholily and most rashly, about that which is in every way altogether impartible — we gladly caught hold of the triad, having run the risk of being dragged down into the last partition; and, contenting ourselves with this fall, we dared to predicate of the intelligible the threefold division — wishing to give rest to our conceptions, which can no longer be gathered together any further, and yet cannot be released from the contemplation of the intelligible, through longing for the archaic causes of the whole of nature.⁵⁶²
[105] Nevertheless, purifying these conceptions, and gathering them together as far as may be: first, we do not attempt to ascend thither from chance things, but from the things that have proceeded from There — substance, and life, and intellect. And second, not from the separated properties — as from the composite, or from the unitary — but from the one before the separation, the one before both. For as we said that the unified, simply, is before one and being, so also the life that comes from those is neither composite nor simple, but unified, before both. For thus the life too which we call intelligible is a unified life, before the unitary life and the as-it-were mixed. And thus also the intelligible intellect is neither the unitary one, nor the one counter-divided toward it as vehicle toward ridden — the substantial and composite toward the unitary and simple; but it is the one before both, and before the differentiation. Wherefore the separated intellect is each of the two — the one unitary, the other substantial (for let what is opposed to the monad, according to the Parmenides, be called, more commonly, substance); but the intelligible intellect is neither of the two simply: it is intellect simply; for that is the first intellect, from which were differentiated both the first unitary and the first substantial intellect — each being first, yet each, nevertheless, relative to something; while that one was first simply. And so too the simply life, relative to either separated one — the one separated into the unitary and the substantial — is life simply, and first. And substance, in the same manner, before either particular one, is substance simply; for according to the both-together, the one before either assuredly is; and not these only, but also the things within these, and the things differentiated from these, are all gathered up There according to the both-together: for all things are, but intelligibly, says the Oracle. Why, then, is it not also divided into all things, analogously? Or because, in truth, it is not divided even into these; yet all things are There, in the undifferentiated manner; and if something must needs shine forth There, the firsts would shine forth rather. And these would be ready, for the analogy at least: whatever things are most generic, and most simple, and most divine, and first among the things proceeding from the intelligible; for they would not have shone forth first, unless There also, in the birth-pang, they had been projected before the others — not according to any greater differentiation of themselves from one another (for they are unified most of all things), but according to their own highest perfection, a perfection in a certain manner intelligible, and for this reason sufficing to con-subsist with the intelligible, and to shine forth along with it — and not to be hidden beneath the coruscation of That, nor con-fused by the union of That — inasmuch as they themselves are substantified in being all-but unified, and, through their likeness toward it, suffer from the intelligible nothing that would gather them away.⁵⁶³
[105] And third upon these we bring a further purification of our conceptions, when we behold substance There, and life, and intellect: it does not stand with differentiation, as these names would suggest, but according to the one nature of the unified, projecting itself toward itself alone, according to the seeming descent. For, being one, it is everywhere itself, as Parmenides presents it — intelligible through and through, and undifferentiated; and, as in a whole that is undifferentiated, the whole was constituted out of a first bound, and a middle, and a last, of the same nature — just as if a man, beholding the nature that is in a substrate body, should see the one part separable, the other inseparable, and the third the middle of both, and yet confess the nature to be one. For the intelligible intellect would be so called not because it thinks, but because it is cause of the one that thinks. And indeed, if it thinks, the thinking too is, as it were, causal; and the life likewise: below is the life properly so called — the one according to subsistence, the composite; the other pre-taken according to property, the unitary; but the intelligible life is according to neither; for it is before both — but as the birth-pang of these. And so too it must be said of substance: that according to cause, or birth-pang, or union it possesses substance undifferentiated — this also pre-existing. The division itself, then, is an appearance of the division of the things begotten from There; while the very existence of the intelligible is the unified, and the undifferentiated, and everything of that kind. But of these things a little later also.⁵⁶⁴

## Chapter 106 — The Intelligible Cannot Make the Outward Procession, Which Does Not Even Proceed Inwardly; the Inner Multitude Only Multitude — of the Race of the Unlimited, the Much, and the Chaos-Like; Flee Headlong: Not Intellect but As-It-Were Intellect, Not Procession but As-It-Were Procession · pp. 335–336

[106] But let us return to the point from the beginning: that the intelligible cannot make the outward procession — it which does not even proceed inwardly; so that it is of a nature to bring forth neither a participated multitude nor an unparticipated one — being single-form, and undifferentiated. Neither, then, is the inner multitude a multitude of forms, or of parts, or of elements — it which is not even a multitude in this way, as a multitude of certain things, but only multitude; nor is it the same as a multitude of things divided, and simply composed out of certain things; it is not of such-and-such things, but of unified things — things of that famous race: of the unlimited, and the much, and the chaos-like; wherefore it has also been called an unlimited multitude, as in the Parmenides — as if he had said also that its one form is a limited one. For as it changed over from the first principle — having become unified instead of one — so it varied also from the second: unlimited instead of unlimitedness, and one form instead of the manifold one — having become a multitude. For as it became unified from the One, so it became multiplied from the simply many;⁵⁶⁵ and its one-and-many it has gathered up into one nature: a nature gathered out of the two principles, and having gathered within itself the whole procession of the things after it and subsisting from it — above all according to their most generic differentiation, which has appeared as substance, and life, and intellect; of which, wishing to see the gathering There, we see, in place of that, the differentiation that comes from There.⁵⁶⁶ One must therefore not dwell upon it, but flee headlong — positing That not intellect, but as-it-were intellect; nor life, but as-it-were life; nor substance, but as-it-were substance; nor procession at all, but as-it-were procession.⁵⁶⁷

## Chapter 107 — Monad and Cosmos the Same There — the Truly Hypercosmic Abyss; the Differentiation That Refuted Itself; the Fragments of Gold; Plato's False Hypothesis and What It Accomplished; As-It-Were Forms, As-It-Were Parts, As-It-Were Elements; the Same Rides Upon All and Is Exalted Above All · pp. 336–339

[107] And perhaps the procession that is imagined in whatever manner must be gathered into one — being the same within and without. For the intelligible and unified, according to its one nature, is both a monad — if it is fitting to call the uncircumscribed union of the intelligible a monad — and would in turn be a cosmos, if one must name the unified a cosmos — and, in real truth, the hypercosmic abyss. For it is not as in the case of intellect and life and substance, where the first substance is one thing, and the multitude differentiated from it another. There the both-together is called a substantial cosmos; and life is one, and many after the one — and the cosmos is at once the one life and the many; and intellect likewise — the first, and those partitioned from the first; and the intellectual cosmos is the one together with the many. Not so does that nature stand, the unified: rather, its multitude being con-sown within it, and not having stood apart into monad and number, the same has been established as at once monad and number; so that it would be the same thing — at once the whole cosmos, all and whole; not differentiated into whole and all, but these also as one; and the same would be one — what seems to be a multitude both within and without; and since the inner belongs to the monad, the inner and the outer are the same; for monad and cosmos are the same There. And in the same way, forms and parts and elements are the same There; for whole, and all, and the blend of the elements are the same; for none of these has been determined off There, nor anything else at all — but the One Being alone, and this unified.⁵⁶⁸
[107] But where Parmenides treats it as undifferentiated — one and being — he means it to be one name only, and one showing; where as being-differentiated, he says that the one and the being are its parts; and where as differentiated, an unlimited multitude — even if, always, the one runs together with the other. For the differentiation of the unified came to be into a one-ment, according to its own limit; so that not even the differentiation that showed itself There was able to undo the nature of the unified; rather, having made the attempt, it refuted itself in the argument as being no differentiation; for it unified rather than differentiated — or rather, it unified the more part, rather than differentiated it. At any rate, it showed the fragments of the unified to be unified — so that they are not fragments; neither, then, is it a differentiation — of which no work at all appeared in the intelligible, save the confirmation of the union. For the very things it seemed to divide, it brought back into the same union — as if a man, wishing to divide the form of gold, should find the divided parts also being no less gold; the division, then, has come to be of the quantity only, and not of the gold according to its form; but There it is of the unified only; for there is no quantity There, nor anything else beside this one nature.⁵⁶⁹
[107] But it is plain that Plato, wishing to indicate that it is indivisible, supposed a division, and found it without issue — or rather, found it to have accomplished some great thing: for it indicated the undifferentiatedness of the unified, and its remaining in the same manner even at the extremes — there where it would seem most of all to be differentiated from itself — according to the appearance pre-taken toward differentiation, or rather toward indication; and it was for this that he gave subsistence to the lying hypothesis.⁵⁷⁰
[107] Therefore the seeming fragments of the unified must not even be called forms, but as-it-were forms; nor properly parts, but as-it-were parts. And this indeed he established for us plainly, by bringing in again, somewhere below after the intelligible, the whole and the parts — after the number — making that very thing clear: that the parts and whole above were spoken of in some other manner; and by setting the multitude before the number in the unified, he is plainly conceiving this multitude as undetermined, before every determination. It is not, then, as-it-were composed out of certain things; nor yet is this multitude continuous; for the continuous comes after the determined; so that that multitude is unified — and not divided even into the first multitudes; but, as I have said many times, it is an unlimited and chaos-like multitude. Thus, then, the elements There also — as-it-were the severals differentiated from their proper monads — are even these as-it-were elements; for it has not been determined in any manner into partial and element-like differences, nor yet blended together; it has been unified before all differentiation; so that both the breadth There and the depth are wholly undifferentiated — to speak according to actuality and according to truth; but as in potency, and as according to analogy, let there be both breadth and depth, either of them gathered up equally — not into a blending, but into all-complete union.⁵⁷¹
[107] What, then, I was just now saying: the inner and the outer multitude show themselves as the same in the intelligible. As, then, no intellect could go forth outside the whole intellectual world-order — for every intellect would be contained within it — and as no soul outside the psychic — for she too would be contained in her proper world-order — so also nothing goes forth outside the intelligible world-order. Would the intelligible itself, then, be outside it? Not, then, is the participated one thing, and the unparticipated another; for these too — being two multitudes — have been gathered up into one: the simply and unified multitude, multitude however one chooses to call it. For the same both rides upon all, and is exalted above all; for the participated has not been counter-divided against the unparticipated; rather, ranked before the counter-division, it holds the power of the both-together — before both — so as, being the same, to be both participated and unparticipated. For insofar as it is above the participated, it shows itself as unparticipated; and insofar as it belongs to all, it seems also to be participated. But concerning participation, again hereafter.⁵⁷²

## Chapter 108 — The Simply One Separated from Substance by the Middle Otherness; as Many Fragments of Substance as of the One; May Some Mercy Steer the Argument into the Truth Itself; Where Shall We Place the Simply One?; Three Monads Together — the One, the Otherness, the Substance · pp. 339–341

[108] Now let us consider again concerning the simply One — I mean the one separated from substance according to the otherness that appeared in the middle — whether it must be posited, and, from it, an unparticipated multitude. For the participated is the many henads, from which are hung the many substances, so called in the more common manner; for Parmenides says that there are as many fragments of substance as of the one. But before this there must be another multitude — someone might say — the unparticipated; and the simply one before the multitude. For if the many henads are, there must necessarily be one before the many — the simply henad of that kind; for the unified is not henad only, but also substance, even if it is before both; and the One called beyond the unified is a one of such a kind as that unified is; for this is the principle of all henads and of all substances alike; whereas we are seeking a simply one which leads henads only — as we have the simply substance which leads the substances, and life likewise, being the first principle of all lives, and the simply intellect, monad of the many intellects. For if the one monad is substantial, another vital, another intellectual, each has something proper, and something common; whence, then, comes this common one in them all, if not from the common cause? And this will of necessity be supposed the simply one.⁵⁷³
[108] Further: the simply soul is hung from a particular intellect, and not from the simply intellect; and the simply intellect from a particular life, but not from the simply life; and the simply life, accordingly, from a particular substance, but not from the first. Thus, then, the simply substance also will show itself as the vehicle of a particular henad, and not of the simply one; but before the particular henad there must be the simply henad; for the unparticipated is always simply, while the participated is never simply. And if the unified, being differentiated, makes two, it ought to make the simply being and the simply one — or a particular each; for they happen to be of like rank in the union; and if we say that the one is simply, assuredly these too will be begotten simply. Persuasive, then, is the advocacy of the hypothesis; yet I do not think the matter stands so; for great also is the counter-pulling surmise; and may some Mercy, taking pity upon us, steer the onset of the argument into the truth itself.⁵⁷⁴
[108] First, then, it is better to run the risk together with Plato, who, straightway after the One Being, makes the One and Substance counter-arrayed in two columns. But perhaps, someone will say, he opposes the simply one to the simply substance, even if he yokes the particular one to her? Yet he says that substance has been minced into just as many fragments as the One. Shall we then set the simply one in front of the simply substance? Further: that unparticipated multitude, being attached besides, will not leave the fragments of substance and of the one equal in number. But the greater evidence is this: in the unified — right at the beginning of the second hypothesis — he supposes the One to participate substance, and Being to participate the one. And if, in the unified, they counter-participate each other, as appears, then assuredly, when differentiated, they will counter-participate each other also — so that the One is called substantial, and the being henized. That the foregoing, then, was not spoken according to the judgment of Plato is plain from these things.⁵⁷⁵
[108] But come, let us also attempt, from the matters themselves, to advocate the contrary argument. First, then: where shall we place the simply One?
[108] For not in the intelligible — for that was the unified; nor in the intelligible-and-intellectual — for the of-a-certain-sort substance holds that place, according to the Socrates of the Phaedrus. Wherefore Plato also seems to me to take care, many times, not saying substance simply, but the really being — and showing it to be really being — the substance counter-divided against the one. But perhaps someone might say that, just as the intellectual world-order and the psychic each contain a multitude together with the simply — both the participated and the unparticipated — so also the intelligible-and-intellectual will establish its own summit together with the simply and the unparticipated multitude. But we cannot suppose many gods before the otherness; and the otherness, together with the henad, showed forth the substance.⁵⁷⁶
[108] And if this otherness herself is to be unparticipated before the participated one, and to have an unparticipated multitude, there will be a gathering of many more gods before substance. And if we set against the One not only the simply one but also the simply many, there will be an unparticipated procession of these many also — as it were certain many manynesses after the one. And how is it not necessary to set the simply many over against the simply one? But let these many be, as it were, a power or fertility of the One — yet the things There are already ranked apart; so that the many too will be another henad, as-it-were many-making. And perhaps that much-hymned otherness is herself the principle set against the One? But she is set also against substance; for they would then say that there are three monads together: the One, the Otherness, the Substance.⁵⁷⁷

## Chapter 109 — From the Manyness as from the One; the Unitary and the Substantial in Every Rank — Each a Particular, the Both-Together Simply; All Things Wound Off from the Intelligible; the Grades of the Supersubstantial; the One Most Properly Supersubstantial of All · pp. 341–344

[109] But concerning these things it is no wayside task for an argument that seeks precision; yet this much the argument will demand: that, as from the One, so also from the Manyness there proceed many gods, both unparticipated and participated — if indeed there is a simply many. And how is there not, if there is the simply one? And how will the One beget a multitude outward, having nothing multiplied within itself, inasmuch as it is simply one? But neither are the many determined in any way within themselves, as has been shown before; that nature too is one, and itself many-making. And if someone says that the many belong to the One as the elements belong to the elementated, not even so will the one beget according to the many; for either of them is undetermined and unmultiplied, without procession both within and without — so as to speak of a like-formed procession even of a proper multitude.⁵⁷⁸
[109] Apart from these things: the one substance is composite, the other simple; and the latter is unitary, while the former is unified in a certain way, as by commixture. But if either is a substance of a certain sort, what then is either substance? The simply substance, accordingly, is the both-together before both. And life likewise: the simply life is that unified one; and intellect in the same way. Is then soul also the one unitary, the other substantial? Either is a such-and-such, and a particular. And body likewise:
[109] the unitary, which makes the encosmic god; and the substantial, hung from the bodiform one — so called by pre-taking of the bodiform property — and either is a particular; even if of these too the simply subsistence pre-exists, according to the both-together before both, in the intelligible. Or rather, no wonder: for That is all things, but intelligibly; and this according to one union; wherefore the intelligible is said, even by the philosophers, to be the simply substance; and as from the simply and before-all One all things are begotten, so from the intelligible all things are wound off. Everywhere, then, there is the one and that upon which it rides: the one of each pair a particular, and either a such-and-such; while the both-together is the simply.⁵⁷⁹
[109] And if these things are well said, the simply Being will be the unified — which is also all being; and the simply One above the unified — for it too is supposed all One. And after the simply One and the simply Being, the particular henads and the particular substances are separated, and again co-ranked with one another as carrying and ridden, or as participating and participated; while above, these too were undifferentiated, in the intelligible. What then — is that simply One, as it were, a monad of the lower many henads, and the simply Being of the substances? Or was either of them cause of all things — and not the one of henads only, and the being of substances only? For otherwise we shall need yet another substance, the one common to all things. Or must we say that the simply One is Being neither in subsistence nor in property; and posit that the simply Being is One neither in property nor in subsistence; but that, by whole existence alone, the one is One, and the other Being? Wherefore, in justice, the one must be hymned as simply One, the other as simply Being; and this is that simply one over which our conceptions hover before the many henads; and this simply Being we claim to be before every being.⁵⁸⁰
[109] After these the otherness, appearing, separated them, and gave subsistence to the such-and-such particulars after the simplys — not being of that nature, but as it were images of it. For supersubstantial is also the participated one — but as above the substance that participates it: the substance by subsistence, counter-divided against the substance that is unitary by property alone. Supersubstantial too is the unified — but above either substance, the one by property and the one by subsistence. Supersubstantial too are the One and its many — the two principles — but above the simply substance, the one before both; and through the simply one, this is also the simply supersubstantial. Nay more, the One itself: in the one sense, as above the mixed unified, we call it supersubstantial according to subsistence; in the other, as above either mixed — the one by subsistence and the one by property, which the substantial henad pre-took; for That is one before both, higher and simpler than every one that is yoked to the participating mixed; for it is not simple as against some composite, nor yet composite by property, but before both — simple and incomposite. And the One — the one principle — is most properly so of all, because it is above even the unified that is before both, taken according to the both-together; since the unified is this firstly and most of all; and second is the mixed by property; and third the mixed by subsistence — which should rather be called a commixture of elements, if indeed both it, and the unitary mixed before it, are unified; from which, as from a whole, hangs that which comes after it, and that again from its own monad; for the participant always shares the name of the participated according to each property.⁵⁸¹

## Chapter 110 — If One Must Dare to Declare It: from the Simply One Grows Out the Con-Generic Unparticipated Multitude — the Intelligible Race of the Gods, the Hidden World-Order Hymned by the Gods; the Unturned First Principle Kindled from Herself Only the Unparticipated Generation; the Triad an Indication Only of the Multitude · p. 344

[110] If, then, one must dare to declare it — at once toward a more precise indication of what we are saying concerning nature and analogy, and at once toward the satisfaction of this truly much-laboring conception of ours — I would say that from the simply One, the first cause of all things, there grows out a con-generic multitude, the unparticipated; and that most of all assimilated to it is the intelligible race of the gods, remaining in the unity of That — and for this reason unified both toward itself and toward That — the hidden world-order accompanying us in our account; in which the gods have hymned it as undifferentiated, and as hypercosmic, ranked above all cosmic good order; but that it produces a participated multitude no longer. For neither does this sensible heaven, though the supra-heavenly cosmos produces it, somehow fail to produce the multitude of the gods as participated only and beneath the moon — yet it does not produce an unparticipated one; for neither was the begetter himself the participated one.⁵⁸² The unturned first principle, accordingly, begetting, begets all things indeed; but she kindled from herself only the unparticipated generation of the gods, holding it together into one union and one nature.⁵⁸³ And in another way too it was needful that, between the principle exalted in every way and above all things, and the principle that has its out-growing multitude both unparticipated and participated, there should be the intelligible principle, to which one multitude only is yoked — the unparticipated; such as we say the race of the intelligible gods to be.⁵⁸⁴ For the intelligible is One — and beheld, again, threefold: itself remaining in itself according to the One; itself, in itself and from itself, somehow proceeding according to the triad; and its triad is not a differentiation of its substances, but an indication only of the multitude — how much, and of what kind, has been unified in the intelligible.⁵⁸⁵

## Chapter 111 — The Hypotheses of the Ancient Theologians — the Chaldaean Most Mystic of All; Three Triads from the Theurgists, Taught by the Gods Themselves; Orpheus from Chronos to First-Born Phanēs; Plato's Three Conclusions; the Theologians Hand Down the Generations of the Gods Themselves, Not of the Vehicles; the One as Father, the Many as Power, the Unified as Paternal Intellect · pp. 344–349

[111] But since we have at long last barely brought these matters to their completion, come, let us also survey the hypotheses of the ancient theologians — how one might understand them according to these philosophic conceptions we have set forth; and first the one confessed to be the most mystic of all, the Chaldaean. For this one seems, artlessly, to answer back most of all against our surmises — surmises which yearn, as far as may be, to gather the intelligible also into one union.⁵⁸⁶ For the theurgists hand down to us three triads There, taught by the gods themselves; nay, the Egyptians also, and the Phoenicians too, produce a great generation of gods in the intelligible — as a little later we shall relate. And what of the divine Orpheus? Does he not give subsistence to many gods, from Chronos down to the first-born Phanēs? And the philosopher most honored among us, Plato himself — does he not conclude three conclusions upon the One Being? Which is the same as to say: does he not hand down three intelligible divine ranks, differing from one another? So that it must be inquired how the gods, and the men near-sown of the gods, understood these things when they handed them down.⁵⁸⁷
[111] To begin, then: how have the gods delivered the intelligible triads to the theurgists? Three members, as the newer philosophers systematize it, belong to each triad: limit, the summit; the unlimited, the middle; and substance — intellect — the last; so that there are two henads, and one monad of the triad, substantial and composite. But first it is a thing to wonder at, that two henads should be participated, while that which participates is one — insofar as it has been substantified. Next: why is the limit a henad, and the unlimited, again, another henad — this one Power, that one Father — while the third, the paternal Intellect, is not himself also a third henad? For intellect too ought to begin from a henad; and life likewise, or substance also. Of course they themselves, among the intellectuals, rank the unitary intellect in front of the substantial; the same thing, then — and with far more justice — ought to have been done in the case of the intelligibles. But the theologians, whose systems they expound, hand down to us the generations and the ranks not of the vehicles, nor of the things that have proceeded from the gods, but of the gods themselves.⁵⁸⁸
[111] If, then, we hear the intelligible ranks, and the intellectual, and the hypercosmic, and the encosmic, handed down as ranks of gods, why in the world do we claim that, in the case of the intelligibles alone, the things that come from the gods are mixed in among the gods themselves? And if they say Father, or Power, we hear them as henads; but if paternal Intellect, we pass over to another kind. And yet what shall we do when the paternal Intellect is said to produce the triadic world-orderings — iynges, connectives, teletarchs — the intellectual threefold divisions, and all the cosmic ones? Shall we then derive the henads from the mixed and composite intellect, and make the superior from the worse? — as if one should derive the souls from bodies, or the intellects from souls. Or shall we suppose the iynges and the connectives and the other gods to be not unitary, but substantial? But then we shall speak against both our own selves and the gods.⁵⁸⁹ And if, in Orpheus, the first-born god, who bears the seed of all the gods, leapt forth first from the egg and ran upward — what device is there to expound the egg as Being, and yet to hymn as a god the first-born who leapt forth from being? And how does it stand to reason to suppose substances twofold, and lives likewise — or, failing that, intellects and souls: the one set unparticipated, the other participated — and yet to suppose all the henads participated; among whom, most of all, the unparticipated was fitting?⁵⁹⁰
[111] But on this showing we shall not make the triads thus; rather, each is a triad of three henads, from the last of which we shall hang the substance — as once seemed good also to our own guide, when I communicated to him these reflections concerning the third member: so that each triad too is single and unitary, the two henads before the third being unparticipated, and that last one participated. On this scheme, then — since the prior triad, as a whole, always leads the second whole — the unparticipated multitude will be scattered abroad, and not continuous with itself as it is in the other cases; for we should not find a participated soul in the middle of the unparticipated ones — as it were an encosmic among the hypercosmic — nor a participated intellect in the midst of the unparticipated, as it were a hypercosmic one among the intellectuals.⁵⁹¹ How then, after the third henad of the first triad, which is participated, shall the first henad of the second triad be ranked? For whole comes after whole: the second after the first, and indeed the third after the second. Next, the substantial intelligible also will be torn apart along with them, and will not be whole inclined together toward whole, itself toward itself, and unified — if indeed we shall not even rank the successive henads together with one another, but parted asunder by the unparticipated. And again: out of three, how do we make one triad from three monads unlike in form — some unparticipated, and some participated? It is like as if a man should make one number out of certain hypercosmic gods and certain encosmic; or out of archic ones and archangelic; or out of these and the azonic.⁵⁹²
[111] Besides these things: since the multitude of the unparticipated completes a cosmos — as with souls, as with the intellects — it is plain that, of those too, the unparticipated will fill out one world-order, and the participated another. Which, then, is the intelligible cosmos — the unparticipated one?
[111] And which will the participated number be? Of substance, presumably; yet the cosmos after the intelligible is of life, as we say. Or is the participated one the intelligible? Then what would the one before it be, the unparticipated? For the first cosmos is the intelligible, as we say. And if the both-together is the intelligible, why are not the other cosmoi also taken according to their both-together multitude — the intelligible-and-intellectual, the intellectual, the hypercosmic, the encosmic?⁵⁹³ Further: if the same property is in the henad and in the substance hung from her — and that henad is paternal Intellect — then this substance too is paternal Intellect. And if the henad fills out the triad according to this property, it is clear that the substance also fills out the same triad according to the same property; for in the other cosmoi as well, the substantial are co-ranked analogously to the unitary. How then are two monads of the triad simple, while the third is double — at once henad and substance? And apart from these things: if the paternal Intellect is a henad, and some substance is hung from him, and these are separated from each other by otherness, then the unified before both is manifest — and it will fall into the midst of the triad, and tear it apart; or else it will be before the triad — I mean even the first triad; and then we shall no longer rank the triads immediately after the one principle, as they themselves wish to say, and as the Oracles bear witness — not the newer men only, but Iamblichus also, and Porphyry; and there will appear, before these, other triads constituted according to the unified — as we shall say very shortly.⁵⁹⁴
[111] Perhaps, then, letting go of this hypothesis also, we must rather suppose the other: that the third is neither the one, nor the being, nor the one together with the being yoked to it, but the unified before both — ranked according to the paternal Intellect; and, if you will, according to the Mixed of Plato — yet intelligible, and supersubstantial; and if again you will, according to the Being of the philosophers — that Being, at least, which is undetermined toward one and being alike, and beheld before both. For That is the simply substance, as we were saying; and it would be mixed from the two principles before it; for the unified is one and not one — and, insofar as not one, multiplied. This character, then, comes to it from the second principle; while its being-unified comes from the first. Having proceeded, then, from both at once, it is com-blended and mixed. But since the principles are not determined off from one another, but subsist more excellently than according to all determination — for it is from the second that the determinative and differentiative manner flows away, and not immediately after her — the unified also was undetermined, both in itself and relative to those principles. For if unified, then also in every way undifferentiated; for these reasons, then, That must be posited neither composite, nor com-blended, nor elemented, nor from elements — save by some analogy, for the sake of clearness and of a certain indication, when our conception yearns to lay hold, most dimly, of the truth that is impracticable and truly beyond nature.⁵⁹⁵
[111] But it is simply unified, and simple altogether. For the One was supposed as the very withdrawal from all things; and the many, as the all of the One; and the unified — which a man might with good likelihood call, and surmise to be, the first one-all — as what for a while was the One; then this stood apart into its own unlimitedness, as into a kind of chaos; for it was limit alone, and the aether of all things; but the chaos, having stood together and come forth as one — as at once limited and unlimited according to one simplicity, and indicating this nature — has become a kind of one, ample on every side, in place of the ungraspable principles. This third One, then, after the second and the first, we call the unified — as unlimitedness turned back toward the limit, and as it were struck sideways; or rather, a third principle, standing as something out of both — and before both: before both of the two below, as being neither of them according to the simply; and out of both of those above, as again not according to the simply; so that it is the same toward either pair — but toward those above, as third; toward those below, the determined ones, as first. This triad, then, comes to be: the One as Father, and the many as Power, and the unified as paternal Intellect.⁵⁹⁶

## Chapter 112 — How Will He Produce the Three Triads? — Tripling the Simply One; the Powers Are Three and the Fathers Three; No Number Among Those; Which Cosmos Is the Intelligible-and-Intellectual?; the Iynges, the Connectives, and the Teletarchs Assigned to Their Orders; Time the Image of Aiōn · pp. 349–351

[112] But if someone should suppose it thus, how will he produce the three triads? For he will need to triple both the simply one and the simply many; neither of them, then, will be simply; for the simply is everywhere one. Let the unified, indeed, be threefold within its single-form character; but how the simply one is to be also threefold is difficult even to feign. Nay, even the unified — if one makes it into monads, it will be dis-spanned from itself; for the powers are three, and the fathers three.⁵⁹⁷ And apart from these things, how shall the first and the second and the third be ranked? For together with the whole first triad there will be the unified also, before the second and the third father. And how could there be any number at all among those — whether in the wholly unified, or, what is harder still, in the things before the unified? There is, then, neither monad nor triad there. And again, the number will be made of unlike-formed members — if indeed it is composed of limit and unlimited and mixed (or being), or of Father and Power and paternal Intellect.⁵⁹⁸
[112] But, to leave all these things aside: the intelligible cosmos being constituted in these, which cosmos will come after it as the intelligible-and-intellectual? And which is the intellectual? For this last must be set according to the intellect in subsistence; and the one before it, according to the life in subsistence; the intelligible, then, we shall posit according to the substance — the one we call substance by subsistence. He, then, who is according to the unified — the one before substance and life and intellect — would not be intelligible, but above the intelligible. What, then, would that one have been called? Perhaps the simply cosmos — both without difference, and gathering up the others in common. But even if a man should grant this, which would the intelligible be? Plainly, it would concern the really being substance, as Plato says — the one we called, in what went before, the summit of the intelligibles-and-intellectuals. But this was the principle of the being-differentiated; and the being-differentiated was life; of life, then, this is the principle — and not of substance, nor of the undifferentiated, which we said the intelligible to be, but of the being-differentiated, which for us was the intelligible-and-intellectual.⁵⁹⁹
[112] But even if one lets this too pass, how, we shall ask, shall we bound the intelligible-and-intellectual — and how far does it reach? For who the pure intellect is, is manifest — and that from him the intellectuals begin; it remains, then, that the connective world-order, together with the teletarchic, make up the middle. And what is the triad of the middle? The teletarchs, according to the Oracle, are comprehended together with the connectives; and the connectives themselves are three — just as, before the connectives, the iynges, occupying the intelligible substance, as has been said. And perhaps one might assign to these the intelligible — even the really being substance — because of its gathering character, and because it is gathered together most of all; and to the connectives, the intelligible-and-intellectual, even the first life; for it is the proper work of life to hold together — preserving the differentiated and eidetic subsistence, and at the same time proceeding along with its differentiation; for the continuous signifies both dis-stancing and partition, and, at once, the holding-together and union of the parts; and besides, according to the hypothesis customary with the philosophers, this manner is agreed to display the very prime of life.⁶⁰⁰ And perhaps the time that consorts with this heaven is an image of the Aiōn that consorts with that heavenly one, and measures its revolution — since this heaven also is assuredly the truest image of that heaven; and it is plain which is image of which. And for this reason, as it seems, the first intellectual intellect both differentiates himself from the Father, and partitions that one relative to himself — because life too is partitioned by the differentiation of the forms.⁶⁰¹
[112] And one to whom it pleases to say these things might say that the intelligible is beheld in the monad alone of the iyngic nature; and the intellectual tribe in the triad of the world-leaders — or, as the philosophers divide it, of the pure intellect, and the life-generating, and the demiurgic; while the middle plenitude, the intelligible-and-intellectual, is beheld fittingly in a dyad; for the dyad is vital, and rejoices in the processions that step out least far from their proper monad. And what is the middle dyad? The connective nature and the teletarchic: the latter determining the holding-together into beginning and term, and into the ranks between, of necessity; the former making continuous, and binding tight into one, the firsts and the middles and the lasts. Perhaps, then, as I said, a man might also order matters in this way, using such reasonings.⁶⁰²

## Chapter 113 — I Am Wary of Counterfeiting the Ancestral Hypothesis, Which Pleased Not Only the Most Renowned of Men but the Gods Themselves; In the Footsteps of Iamblichus's Much-Beholding Judgment; Not Linen to Linen; the Really Being Substance Beheld by the Steersman Alone; the Summit of Life Wishing to Be Substance; the Flowing and Seething That We Call Life · pp. 351–355

[113] But I am wary of counterfeiting the ancestral hypothesis — which pleased not only the most renowned among men (for no one of the philosophers, up to this day, has supposed otherwise), but the gods themselves. For Orpheus, the theologian of the Greeks, made Phanēs the first who is beheld by the gods — above all by the intellectual gods, among whom is the demiurge also; and the gods who gave out the much-honored Oracles have handed down to us these first triads as intelligible — whose hypercosmic abyss, they announce, the intellectual gods know, even in their intellection. And I should feel shame, too, before the divine Iamblichus, were I to innovate anything in these matters — a man who is the best exegete of divine realities, and above all of the intellectual.⁶⁰³
[113] It seems good to me, then, following in the footsteps of his much-beholding judgment, to suppose the intelligible cosmos to be that unified abyss — containing not the really being substance, the one determined over against the one that rides upon it, but the simply substance: neither unitary nor mixed, but only one substance, before either. If, then, any of gods, or any of men, has given the intelligible cosmos its subsistence in substance, let him be heard as speaking of this unified substance — every one agreeing with the speakers thus far, while purifying the substance up into that simply and unified and wholly undifferentiated one. For indeed all those very men who say these things supposed the intelligible in the undifferentiated union of all, and no one disputes about this; and Iamblichus is witness — who furnishes to the intelligible a second union, after the one principle of wholes; and everywhere insists that it subsists about the One; and that it is in every way not to be torn away from the One; and who deprecates every division upon it, or doubling, or dis-stancing — making many objections of this kind against the elder.⁶⁰⁴
[113] If, then, the intelligible is truly unified, what device is there to join to the intelligible world-order the substance that is determined off from the one, and consorts with otherness, and has suffered, in whatever manner, a determination of elements? This is not, as the saying goes, joining linen to linen — it is to gather together, by our discourse, a kind of poetic meeting-of-the-glens, upon the most holy spectacles, artlessly.⁶⁰⁵ Let that intelligible, then, be supposed by us now, as from the beginning, in what is wholly and altogether undifferentiated; and in the being-differentiated let the intelligible-and-intellectual stand — as was said then, so now likewise. And in it the otherness begins, and makes the first dis-stancing, of being and of one: the latter standing according to its simplicity, in which it is whatever it is; the former according to the containment of all things — a containment bereft of simplicity, at least in respect of not remaining simplicity, though participating it nevertheless. Whence also that substance is the first elemented; and in it are the first elements; and the first number is There; and further, the first determination. But these things — said many times by us, and by Plato, and by the Oracles themselves — how should they belong to the intelligible?⁶⁰⁶
[113] And if the really being substance is here, and we recognize this substance as being, one cause is the summit-character of the being-differentiated, neighboring upon the undifferentiated, and still preserving safe a gathered form of substance; and a cause also is the comparison with its contrary, which renders the com-blending of the elements better known, when set against the simplicity of that one — as being not one, but rather unified. For as this one imitates the simply One — being a one of substance, while That is all things one — so also the substance, being unified relative to this one, is an imitation of what was called the simply unified, and the all-unified: this substance having been united into substance alone — or better, perhaps, to say com-blended. And upon these things: this substance is apprehended by the substantial knowledge, as the one by the unitary knowledge, and the simply intelligible by the knowledge above either; but we, as we now are, do not use even the substantial knowledge with precision — not even so much of it as reaches to the rational and human soul — but something dimmer still than this, and at a still greater distance. With good likelihood, then, the intelligible does not strike upon us; for neither does the unitary, which is seated above substance; for to see this also belongs to divine knowledge; whence we announce the highest of the things we intellect as the intelligible, and, as substance, the really being.⁶⁰⁷ For Plato also, leading the souls up as far as this place, supposes the being substance to be in this region, and beheld by the steersman of the soul alone — unless indeed he intimates, through saying really and being substance, that it participates also another intelligible substance lying above it; as Proclus too thought fit to understand him.⁶⁰⁸
[113] As, then, the heaven is intelligible not simply, but relative to something — for this too seems good to the philosophers — so also this substance is intelligible not simply, but relative to something: holding the first place, in the account of substance, of the vital world-order. For this substance is a substance com-blended out of elements; and every blending is somehow vital, since it is also natural — whether it be by nature, or come to be afterward, even if at the first it were constituted by art. And if we said that it is proper to life to be roused toward differentiation, this substance too would be a kind of life, according to whatever determination of its elements; while the elements themselves, in turn, press on toward union, and are eager, in a certain manner, to con-fuse the determination; for the whole elemental nature is of this kind. For these reasons, then, it settles back again into substance; but, to speak more truly, it is the summit of life — wishing to be substance rather than life — just as the completion of life has been eager to be intellect rather than life. And what wonder, if the summit of life gives the semblance of substance rather? — seeing that the summit of the intellectuals also shows forth the intellectual substance, and is intelligible, as within the whole intellectual world-order.⁶⁰⁹
[113] What then — do we not also suppose in the intelligible a life, the simply life, and intellect likewise; and indeed, first There, the simply substance — so that the simply substance is not alone the intelligible, as we were just now saying? And in general: if, after the simply intellect that is There, there is the intellect by itself — the one that thinks, and is intellect in its own right; and likewise, after the simply life, the unified one, there is the life here that is by itself, counter-differentiated toward intellect; then there must also be a substance by itself, counter-divided toward life — not being the summit of life, but another kind.⁶¹⁰ Or it must be said again: the one is undifferentiated, the other being-differentiated, the third differentiated. And in this last all things have been established as differentiated — the others, and the one, and the being; for either is, as it were, a whole form — the one unitary, the other substantial; and every form has its proper circumscription, as intellect does. But in the middle all things subsisted as being-differentiated, beginning from the one and the being; wherefore nothing here is circumscribed — yet neither is it unified; rather it has suffered, as it were, a certain pouring-forth, able neither to remain, nor to be turned back into circumscription; there came to be, accordingly, a kind of flowing and seething — which we call life. But in the wholly undifferentiated, both the others, and the one of the being, are undifferentiated; whence it is wholly unmoved, having not even one seething, nor any flowing — so that it is substance only. So that, according to truth, these things have been ordered thus, and stand apart by bounds of this kind.⁶¹¹

## Chapter 114 — There Is Nevertheless, by Analogy, in Each All Things; the Very Flower of Substance; Life the Being-Differentiated Unmixed; Where the One Stands Thus Toward the Being, There the Proper Kind Subsists Simply; to Be Substance Is Just This — to Be Unified · pp. 355–357

[114] There is nevertheless, by analogy, in each all things: as, in the undifferentiated whole, the most undifferentiated; and the being-differentiated, as in That; and the differentiated, as in a nature wholly unified. Wherefore also in the whole substance there is, as substance, the very flower of substance; and life, the middle; and intellect, the third — yet simply life, and simply intellect, because in the unified alone has the being subsisted undifferentiated from the one. And again, in the whole that is being-differentiated — being such as it is — the summit is most of all substance — the substance we so call when we counter-divide it against the henad — showing forth indeed something vital also, in keeping with its being the summit of the very being-differentiated, yet being differentiated least of all, and therefore most of all displaying beforehand the nature of substance; while the middle, at its prime in the being-differentiated, is, precisely in this respect, properly and solely life: mastered neither by the undifferentiated nor by the differentiated, but being only the being-differentiated, unmixed.⁶¹² And in the differentiated whole, again: in its beginning the undifferentiated somehow shows forth — wherefore this is the intellectual substance; in its midst, the being-differentiated — wherefore the intellectual life has its nature here; and in its final bounding, the differentiated — where the intellectual intellect is at his prime, and for this reason became commensurate with the world-ordering of matter.⁶¹³
[114] These things having been thus determined many times over: if the doubter should demand an undifferentiated life — taking the one from the being — and an intellect of the same kind, he has them, in the manner in which these too are of a nature to be in the unified; yet let him know that he is overstepping the stated determinations; for neither can life possess the being which she is, unless the one be differentiated from the being; nor intellect, unless these be, before all things, differentiated. So that, by the most proper account: where the one stands thus toward the being, there the proper kind subsists, simply. If the substance is unified — and it is plain that then all the rest in them are unified also; if it is being-differentiated, life — for all things have now been moved toward differentiation; if it is differentiated, intellect — for now in him the rest also have been circumscribed. Simply, then, is this intellect; and simply this life; and simply this substance.⁶¹⁴
[114] How then did we say, in what went before, that there is in this manner a life before both, and an intellect before both — each before the differentiation of the being and the one — just as we said substance is what answers to the both-together; and again a certain substance, the separated one, as we said life and intellect are — the one displaying the one, the other the being? Or these things also hold the truth aforesaid; but now, speaking with precision, we say: substance is a nature unified, and worthy to be ranked immediately after the One; and to be substance is just this — to be unified; this, then, is the simply substance. And a certain one, and relative, is whatever is spoken after these — the vital, the intellectual, the psychic, or, if one wishes so to call it, even the enmattered substance. And life simply is the one beheld in the being-differentiated; and if there is some intellectual life, or eidetic, or psychic, or enmattered, each of these would be relative, and a certain one. Likewise, then, intellect simply is the one beheld in what is first differentiated; and the one after him, whoever he may be, is a certain one, and relative. And as the life in the differentiated order is relative, and is as in that order, so too the substance in the being-differentiated: it is as in this order, and is a relative substance. Not, then, before the one and the being is the One Being that is before both; for then the life before both would have to be before either life as well; and concerning the intellect one might raise other difficulties of the same kind.⁶¹⁵

## Chapter 115 — Substance Before Both, Intellect Out of Both, Life with Both; the Reversion of Intellect into Itself Comes with Otherness; the First Life, in Whom Is the Differentiation Eldest of All; the Animal Defined — a Substance Living and Knowing; the Unitary Also Divided in Three · pp. 357–358

[115] Perhaps, then, the doctrine of the philosophers would again be truer: that the intelligible is one leading, and being following, the latter con-unified with the former as much as may be. Or rather it must be said: if they mean it undifferentiatedly, they say the same as we; for it is in life that the being-differentiated begins; but if they mean it as the one riding, and the other ridden, then the two are assuredly differentiated from one another; and this is proper to intellect; and they themselves confess it, since they everywhere hymn, surely, the reversion of intellect into himself; and the reversion into oneself comes about together with differentiation from the others, and with otherness. If, then, substance is to differ at all from intellect, she must of necessity be also undifferentiated. And if she is undifferentiated, and intellect differentiated, then life must of necessity be the being-differentiated. It is not possible, then, for life to be before both, as substance is; for neither can a substance be out of both, taken as two differentiated, or as things being-differentiated — so as to speak simply, and properly.⁶¹⁶
[115] And perhaps the one is before both — as neither of the two, neither the one nor the being, showing forth in her by itself; and the other is out of both — as out of two that are differentiated, and only then co-ranked together; and the third is with both — as in the middle of these two states, the being-unified and the being-differentiated: still keeping something of the archaic union, yet already showing forth from beneath something of the differentiation also. And this is the first life, and the simply life — because in her is also otherness, and the differentiation that is eldest of all.⁶¹⁷ And indeed these three we are accustomed to noise abroad in the mixed and substantial realm as well — knowledge, life, substance; and again intellect, and life, and substance. And, defining the animal, we say that it is a substance living and knowing — substance being one thing, and life another, and knowledge another; and the unitary is nowhere here; nay, we divide that also in three, after the same fashion, naming a supersubstantial intellect, and a life likewise, and a substance — the substance standing on either side, in the one and in the being.⁶¹⁸

## Chapter 116 — The Ladder from the Soulless Form Upward — Nature Warming Substance into Seething; the Life That Truly Is, Poured Forth More Excellently Than Reversion; the Principles by Nature Nameless, Named from Their Parts; the Nature Remaining in the Untrodden Places, Surmised by Us from Afar · pp. 358–360

[116] How then are we now constrained, positing by our argument that substance is only the undifferentiated of one and of being? Or rather: each of these is said in many ways, and everywhere preserves the same analogy of each toward each. For the last substance — the soulless form — is unmoved by itself. But if this too should be moved naturally, a kind of life comes to be for it — nature herself; who does not allow it to remain undifferentiated, chilled fast upon itself, but warms the substance out into her own activity, rendering it a seething substance; and the more complete life, added on, made the plant; and upon this, sensation made the animal — sensation, which differentiated and articulated life into its proper bound, so that it is separated as far as may be from the others, judging by pain and pleasure toward what is its own. And another substance and life and knowledge is the self-moved: this also a kind of eidetic one, and nothing other than form, in which the being, the living, and the knowing are differentiated from one another, even if blended together in another respect; but so much as is gnostic in the soul stands differentiated, and is differentiative of its knowables according to proper bounds; while so much as is vital grows together toward union out of the differentiation, and is a kind of flowing, ever continuous toward itself; wherefore it furnishes to bodies also a certain holding-together — dimensional, and yet, in some manner or other, real.⁶¹⁹
[116] And before these is the unmoved substance of intellect, and a like life, and a knowledge holding in the same manner — these too all eidetic; for they are differentiated from one another; but to the gnostic nature this belongs by nature — wherefore this knowledge is first, and the simply: inasmuch as it form-gives intellect, and is form-given, according to the differentiated. But the life in intellect is not simply — because it is a vital form, and not the first and simply life; nor, then, is the substance there simply — far more greatly not; but as-it-were substance, and as-it-were life; while all is intellect, and all belongs to intellect. But before this is the life that truly is — being life only, and not, in addition to this, a form as well; nor circumscribed according to the reversion into herself, but poured forth more excellently than according to reversion. And elder still than she is the substance: which endures no pouring at all, neither the upward flowing nor the downward, but is most firmly compacted, altogether, in the undifferentiated; differentiated neither toward life, nor toward intellect, nor toward any other of the things that have proceeded from her; for neither is she differentiated from what comes after her; rather she stands thus toward both of these: that life is being-differentiated only, while substance, remaining in the undifferentiated, differs by this alone from the things that go forth. These things, then, have been determined somewhere before as well.⁶²⁰
[116] But now to the difficulty: whenever we behold substance and life and intellect (or knowledge), we see their eidetic peculiarities counter-divided toward one another, and we take them as three forms — just as if one should take the eidetic one, or the eidetic being, or the limit, or the unlimited: not the first principles, but certain parts taken apart, homonymous with the principles — from which we also name the principles, which are by nature nameless. Thus, I think, we conceive substance also, and life, and knowledge — all of them eidetic, and for this reason of a nature to be named, or defined. And perhaps not even the unmoved ones, but certain self-moved — or, it may chance, even other-moved and opinable ones — we think we must use to conceive and define those as well; whereas one ought not merely to name those homonymously, but rather to indicate them alongside, according to analogy — the supra-eidetic from the eidetic.⁶²¹
[116] What, then, this substance is toward this life, and this life toward this knowledge — that, in the first subsistences, is what the wholly unmoved-toward-differentiation is toward what is being moved into it, and this toward what has been moved. And what has been moved into differentiation is the simply intellect; what is being moved, the simply life; what is unmoved toward it, the simply substance. And the simply intellect and the simply form are the same; but the simply life and the eidetic life are not the same — for the simply life is supra-eidetic; and the substance is, simply, above the eidetic substance and above the vital; wherefore it is simply. So that, from what has now been divided, we are able more truly to determine each simply one, and the certain one that comes after the simply. Let no one, then, demand that the simply ones be such as certain ones characterized by the analogy, and consorting with their own truth; nor let him be led up from the readier conceptions to that manner which is more supernatural than all habituation; but let him hear, when we say substance, and life, and indeed intellect also, the true one — spoken according to indication, from the familiar — of the nature that remains in the untrodden places, and is surmised by us from afar. Yet it is true also — and a thing reaching to the summit of contemplation — to see the three in each, because each is all things: doubling the analogy upward, and using what was indicated before for the indication of others more precise.⁶²²
[116] But toward the last of the difficulties these things too are perhaps sufficient; and after this, if need be, we shall say something toward it again; and need there assuredly will be, when we inquire where the Animal-itself must be laid away; and one may surmise, even from what lies before us, that — being sated full of life, and holding the second rank after her — it will everywhere be ranked analogously to her; as being, however, the first paradigm.⁶²³

## Chapter 117 — No Number in the Intelligible — What Is the Hymned Ennead?; Not Three Monads, as Iamblichus Also Says; the One That Blossoms Upon the Forms; One, Many, All — Father, Power, Paternal Intellect; the Centre, the Flowing, and the Circumference — More Naturally a Sphere; Let Us Not Count the Intelligible on Our Fingers, but Open the One and Greatest Eye of the Soul; the One Untriaded and Unmonaded · pp. 360–366

[117] Come now, let us also re-examine the other difficulties — whether what they say is anything sound, or rotten. To begin with: we shall say that number is not in the intelligible — neither a number of like-formed members, nor of unlike-formed; for the nature of the determined is not There at all; nor that of the continuous; nor any difference, nor otherness, nor differentiation — in the simply unified, at least. What, then, is the hymned ennead in the intelligible? Does it signify only the all-complete perfection of the triad There? — which, being unable to gather together by our reasoning, we set apart in three: its everywhere-perfect; and its all-containing, which leads forth every multitude; and its generative of every triad, wherever and however subsisting; and its commanding of every procession down to the last; and the unmasterable character of its prolific power; and everything else of this kind — or rather, the unified of all such intuitions, one after-intuition; and this while wishing to conceive of that triad according to indication alone.⁶²⁴ What, then, is this triad? Not three monads — as Iamblichus also says — but not even the form. For what circumscription could there be in the unified? Is it then the one itself, which is the flower of the form? Yet not even this One — the one that is of a nature to blossom upon some one of the forms, as upon the triad, the form alone, immaterial, beheld without the monads; nor yet, surely, the one upon all the forms together — for that belongs to the differentiated one; so that neither is it the one of the being-differentiated. It would be, then, the one of the undifferentiated triad. But the triad signifies, again, the beginning of the unified, and the middle, and the end — yet these also unified.⁶²⁵
[117] Further: the one, taken simply, was not arithmetical, but made plain the one simplicity of all things; and the dyad after the one — the one called undetermined — was not a dyad set upon two monads; rather, through her was made plain the cause of the one, generative of all things; and according to both, he was a Father able to beget all things; and indeed, third from these, the unified — as it were an activity having proceeded from power; and from such a monad, then, and such a dyad, there subsisted a triad having the unified by nature: being a dyad turned back toward the one, and for this reason paternal Intellect. But in saying these things we make three. Or is the Father — being able, and begetting all things after himself — himself the whole triad? The triad, then, is a monad; and a monad that is not the principle of number, but cause of monad and of all number; nor is it in any circumscription, like a form set apart alone, but is the single-form simplicity of all things.⁶²⁶
[117] Are the three, then, the same — or other? A triad, or a monad? Or none of these, according to truth? For nothing of such things is There: not sameness, not otherness, not triad, not monad — the monad, I mean, that is set against the triad; for there is no antithesis in the intelligible. Is then the unified the very thing the one is? Or the one, what the many are? Or the many, what the unified is? I shall certainly not say so. How then are the all not three? Because they are none the less one: for the one is many, and the many all; we speak of nothing as one thing and then another. For the one is not one property, but such as all things; and the all are not all in that fashion, but as one; and the many likewise — since the one too is not-one, and the all are many that have been determined. For if earlier we said that the all signify the second principle — as being the all of the One — yet now, shifting a little, we shall say it better: that all and many are not the same; rather, the many, taking determination in addition, became all; for the many, insofar as many, are still unlimited. Therefore the Father is one; and the undetermined power of the One is many; and the Intellect of the Father is all. Further: the all were the many, determined by one according to reversion; and you see that the many stand by nature between the one and the all; and the one is simplicity only, while the all are at once the union of all things. According to the unified, then, intellect was constituted; and as in the intellectual all things are circumscribed according to form, so in the unified all things are gathered up according to one, uncircumscribedly.⁶²⁷
[117] A monad, then, is this nature — being simple, and many; for its simplicity is containing of very many things, even of unlimited ones; and further it is all, because its many have been determined by the one — since indeed they were the many of the one. Is it then a monad in its substrate, having three peculiarities? It is we who divide, being unable to comprehend one thing that gathers the three; for in this way, wishing to define the other things also, we say many in place of one — running around the elements instead of the elemented. But as, in those cases, we think fit to behold the form that is before the elements, or that supervenes upon the elements, being led up to it from the elements, so here too, far more greatly, we must let go the determined peculiarities, and lead up to one simple nature, from which the partition of these is partitioned lower down. Let the common of the three, then, be conceived — as of a triad — according to the one of the triad: not the arithmetical triad, but that whole one which we just now gave subsistence to in our discourse, the triad of the supreme principles; since the monad too was not arithmetical, but the monad of all, in which all things are pre-taken — as every number is in the monad.⁶²⁸
[117] And, to speak simply: as we use the eidetic for indication of the supra-eidetic, so also the arithmetical peculiarities, as symbols of the numberless and the altogether undetermined. And besides, for the showing forth of what we wish to say — even if we cannot say it — that other image must be taken up: that the one is the centre of all things; and the dis-stancing from the centre is the second principle, being a flowing of the centre; and the surround, the last circumference after the dis-stancing — being a kind of reversion toward the centre — is the paternal Intellect; and the whole is one circle — or, to say it more naturally, a sphere. And it is plain that it is not a form, but a nature more uniform than every form. And what more could one say of it than the very one? For it is this that form-gives that immaterial circle.⁶²⁹
[117] And, to say it once for all: let us not count the intelligible upon our fingers, nor touch it with determined conceptions; but, gathering together all our intuitions at once, and closing them — opening the one and greatest eye of the soul, by which nothing differentiated is beheld (for by it is seen not even the one itself, in real truth, but only the unified; and not even this insofar as it is set against the differentiated, but that which has gathered up this also) — with such an eye, then, looking Thither, even if from afar, and as it were from the last things, we shall nevertheless see the intelligible: that it is wholly undifferentiated, and wholly numberless. Save that, even standing so, there will be imaged in us — if one must speak thus — its simplicity, its manyness, its allness; for the intelligible is one many all, so that the one nature is traversed in three ways. And how is the nature one, if one and many? Because the many are the unlimited-in-power of the one. And how one and all? Because the all are the all-holding activity of the one. Yet neither must activity be spoken of as an out-stretching of the power toward what is outside, nor power as an out-stretching of the existence remaining within — for that, again, is to say three instead of one. For, it being one, one name suffices for the showing of those things, as we have testified many times.⁶³⁰ Are they then without difference? And whence comes this? It is easy to surmise: for we say the principles are three, and next to one another — Father, and Power, and paternal Intellect; but these, according to truth, are neither one nor three, nor one and three at once; it is by us that they must needs be shown through such names and such intuitions — by poverty of those that befit them; or rather, by eagerness for showings that in no way befit them. For as we call it one, and many, and all; and Father, and Power, and paternal Intellect; and again limit, and unlimited, and mixed; so too monad, and undetermined dyad, and the triad constituted out of both of these. And as those, so also these: purifying our conceptions, as far as may be, we disallow that they fit those realities. Let the intelligible triad, then, be called — so far as is possible — a triad in this way: as the one of the triad; and of that triad which seems to be constituted from the three first principles. Concerning that union itself, indeed, we could never be early enough in saying anything that comes near it.⁶³¹
[117] But concerning the order of the three triads: if a man, having set this stated triad according to the one of the intelligible triad — as it would come to be — should see this one also as being all-complete, and as subsisting wholly triadic to itself — the triadic being present even in each of the three monads (for in the numbers also the monads of each are not without difference toward those of the others, but those of the triad are somehow triadic, and those of the tetrad tetradic) — if a man, as I said, should suppose the monads of that all-great triad also to be of this kind, so that these too are not simply monads, but monads of a triad, of their own peculiar manner, perhaps in the one of that triad he would comprehend also the whole procession of the intelligible into three triads, not even thus departing from its proper union. And indeed, in this way, neither will the unified be before the second one — the prior — as the argument seemed to find difficult; for each monad will have the triadic in its own rank, being upon itself; for the one will appear triadic before the others, and the many second, and third upon these the unified; and the whole Father will be co-ranked with the whole intelligible through the whole Power as middle — the one through the one to the one; and again the triple with the triple through the triple; nor indeed will the unified be dis-spanned from itself into three monads; for it remains unified in the same manner, even if it should show forth the triadic within itself; and far more greatly does the one remain — unified — one holding-three; and the Power likewise, even if she should shine forth three-natured.⁶³²
[117] And how shall the one be triple? Because, being one, it nevertheless presides over the triple of the unified; for let this be a triple unified, as has been said, holding a certain tripleness; but the one turns this tripleness back toward itself, so that the one, according to the one, holds the triple as shown forth within it. And indeed the Power also — inasmuch as she is a dyad — being carried along with the one becomes one-formed; while with the unified she is co-imaged as triple. She is a dyad, then, in the middle of the one and the triad; for the unified, as third, is by nature a triad; while the things before it are such in a more supernatural manner. It is not, then, wonderful, nor hard, to conceive the one as thus triadized: not that it is numbered, or determined, but that it has pre-taken in itself the tripleness of the unified, and that it is one as the triadic in the whole triad. Or — whatever of this kind a man can conceive, let him conceive it rather than a differentiation of the one; unless indeed it be more commensurate to suppose even a certain sub-stepping from it: so that there is both one Father and three — the same being one and three-formed; or rather one, yet showing forth from beneath something triadic also; I mean not what is partitioned in three, but the impartible one of the triad.⁶³³ But if the one is triadic, how is it simply one? — for the argument earlier raised this too, with justice. Or rather: having supposed the one simply, and the many simply, and the all simply according to the unified, out of these simply monads we made, as we thought, the simply triad; so that the triadic also belongs to the one simply — insofar as the simply one has pre-taken that whole triad, and was, as it were, initiated into it, and was counted together with the other simply principles, as first principle leading the second and the third. For let the simply one be, in real truth, the numberless — and, if one must speak more plainly, the untriaded and the unmonaded; for it is not even monadic, seeing that it is not even one according to truth, but is so called according to indication alone; and such also is the simply unified; nay, the many too, in the middle of these, are such in the manner called simply — without all determination, and all addition.⁶³⁴

## Chapter 118 — Three They Must No Longer Be Called; As the Gods Speak to Egyptians, Syrians, and Greeks in Their Own Tongue, So to Men in Human Dialect; the Lightning-Flash About Our Eyes; the Discourse That Disparages Itself; the Rainbow of the Single-Colored Sun; the Triad in the Forecourt of the One in the Philebus; Pre-Appearance, Pre-Cause, Pre-Analogy · pp. 366–369

[118] Three, then, they must no longer be called — as though they had suffered the being-three, when nothing else has shown itself forth There. Save that we, conversing humanly about the most super-divine of principles, cannot otherwise either conceive or name them than thus — constrained as we are to use words concerning the realities that rise up into what is beyond the all, and beyond life, and beyond substance. Since the gods also do not teach us — at times, and some among us — such things about these matters, or about others, as they themselves intellect, nor in the manner in which they intellect; but as they converse with Egyptians, or Syrians, or Greeks, using the speech proper to each — else they would have uttered themselves to them in vain — so also, being earnest to deliver to men what is their own, they will justly use the human dialect; and this is composed not only of such-and-such verbs and nouns, but of intuitions also, answering to these and fitted upon them.⁶³⁵
[118] If, then, we even deviate from that truth — for, searching through the intelligible abyss, how great and of what kind it is, we are carried aside toward the things below and partial, drawn along with, or dragged down with, the necessity of our small-fashioned nothingness — nevertheless there is need of the carrying-aside, and of the deviation; for otherwise it is not possible, conditioned as we now are, to conceive anything about them; and we must be content, even from afar, and barely, and most dimly, somehow to touch upon them sideways, or to surmise alongside them some trace — like a lightning-flash suddenly about our eyes; and even if the lightning be roused from somewhere within, from the soul herself — being small, and not shining very much — it nevertheless becomes for us a token, by way of analogy, of that super-brilliant and super-vast one. And this much also in the present discourse must be praised: that it disparages itself, and confesses that it is abashed, and cannot look back against that light — the unified and intelligible.⁶³⁶
[118] In this way, then, we speak of the triad There: as signifying an undifferentiated multitude; and of the dyad again, in turn, as the cause of that multitude; and of the monad besides these, as the one itself, which is beyond this multitude. And this is the much-hymned intelligible triad — which, wishing to paraphrase now in one way and now in another, we escape our own notice setting it forth still more variegated in our discourses; and most of all when we make it an ennead: reckoning out its all-completeness, and its commanding of all things from the firsts to the lasts; and, in the third — which is by nature three-formed — beholding the principles before it as in a mirror, imaged triadic, shining down upon his three forms on every side: as, in a cloud holding three mirror-like dimensions, the single-form color of the sun is shown forth as the imaged, many-colored rainbow.⁶³⁷
[118] Therefore Socrates also, in the Philebus, not being able to look full against that One, made known instead — for this very reason — the triad ranked, as he says, in its forecourt: assuredly because, gazing upon the unified, he saw the triad glittering in the one ray of the henad. And in general, as with the other things, so also the triad we lead up There according to indication. And as the first principle is a monad, and the second an undetermined dyad, and the third a triad — because this last was beheld according to reversion, and the one before her according to remaining — so also the whole triad composed of these is not, as it seems, a triad of three monads; rather, there is one all-complete union, the same remaining, and proceeding, and turning back; and these not as some three, but as one before the three, having power for the three.⁶³⁸
[118] Are the Fathers, then, three — or one? Or rather neither three nor one: above every triad; so that also above the whole one which we counter-distinguish toward these, as one toward two and three. And the Power, accordingly, is neither one nor three; and the Intellects according to the unified likewise; for in the unified the one and the two and the three have not been determined; rather, as the things There are above all determination, so also above the eldest determination of all — and this is the determination of one, and of two, and of three.⁶³⁹
[118] But even if it should stand thus — as that nature does stand, according to truth — nevertheless let us lead up to it, for the sake of clearness, and of commensurateness toward men, the most august of the things that have proceeded from it and after it: such as the one, the many, the unified; the Good, the cause of all things; the limit, the unlimited, the mixed; and whatever else is of this fashion; and indeed, of the determined order, the all-complete and what subsists all-completely — the very things which the triad There holds, and the procession of the triad. And all of these, according to subsistence, have their standing after the intelligible; but according to appearance, or cause, or analogy, they are in the unified; and in what is above it, nothing other than pre-appearance, or pre-cause, or pre-analogy — as if a man should descry, in the multitude that is before all number, a certain unarticulated — nay rather, even undifferentiated — pre-subsistence of the numbers, as in the formless matter that of the forms. And at a third step upward, one ascending from the chaos will surmise that these things are pre-taken in the aether of the simplicity of all — insofar as there consorts with it, and belongs to it, both the chaos-like unlimitedness, and the unified, undifferentiated com-paction of all things.⁶⁴⁰

## Chapter 119 — Since We Dare to Number the Numberless — How the Division Must Be Made; Each Monad Divided in Three, Lest the Triads Be Scattered; the One Father Who Is Also Power and Intellect; the One Snatching the Principles into His Unspeakable Union; No Seeming Triad Is Truly a Triad — Every Determination Drunk Down in the One · pp. 369–372

[119] But since we do dare, in whatever way, both to number the numberless, and to order what is above all order, and nevertheless to world-order the truly hypercosmic abyss — come now, let us say these very things: in what direction, and in what manner, it must be done. As, then, the intelligible cosmos, and the intellectual, and the intelligible-and-intellectual upon these, happened to be divided in the first instance; and as we then divided each of these three sections in three, according to analogy with the orders that come after, carrying over from these to that one the indication of the differentiation — namely, that as great as the intellectual was in its having-been-differentiated, so great is the intelligible-and-intellectual in its being-differentiated, and as great as this last is in its having-been-differentiated, so great is the intelligible in its own undifferentiated — and in an establishment no less all-full: in this way then, as I said, beholding in that one also the everywhere-perfect, we divided it into Father and Power and Intellect, and each of these we divided further in three again. And how, then? For we divided the Father into three fathers, and the Power into three powers, and the Intellect into three intellects; and then we fitted and co-ordered each to each — the kindred to the kindred, rank answering to rank. Or will the triads in this way be scattered abroad —
[119] if each is to be constituted out of the first and the second and the third, and the first triad will not be whole, nor the second whole, nor the third whole? For each will then contain members unlike in rank, and unlike in form.⁶⁴¹
[119] And indeed, in the case of the worlds after these, it is not done so: for, the whole iyngic nature being paternal in the middle order, and the connective being of power, and the teletarchic intellectual, we do not fill up each triad out of the three; rather, we divide each nature separately in three, according to form, as far as the whole division: the iyngic into father and power and intellect; the connective into the same; and the teletarchic likewise. So too, then, let us divide each monad of the intelligible triad in three — for instance, the paternal into father and power and intellect; for this one whole is Father; insofar as he is by himself, he is father only; but insofar as the power is carried along with him, and he himself shares in common with her, in a certain manner he becomes power; and insofar as he is father of the intellect, and the intellect is his, in this respect he becomes intellect. Thus, then, even being one, he nevertheless shows forth the triad of his own simplicity. In the same manner the Power also is established as a triad — both remaining by herself, and carried along with either of the extremes. And third in order, the Intellect likewise is tripled: so much of him as has been turned back toward the Father becomes paternal within his own third triad; so much as grows together with the Power is brought to completion as intellectual power; and so much as remains upon himself, unmixed relative to his betters — that much is handed down as the intellect proper of the triad.⁶⁴²
[119] And in this way the monads of each triad are like-formed and like-ranked; and in this way also the triads can be gathered up into monads — according to the one beheld in each triad, not according to its multitude. Nay, even these three wholes — monads, as it were — will not be set apart from one another by differentiation; rather, above every monad that is united toward herself, those will be united toward one another: the simply One bracing his own first one-making power upon the principles that are continuous with him up to himself, and snatching them up into his own unspeakable union — whose excess over the union of a monad is so great that even the third from the One, the one we called the unified, even this, by its own nature, and before the unmanageable simplicity of the One, has its standing above monadic analogy. For every monad is a form; or, if not a form, then something determined; or, if not that, then at least the principle of a determined constitution; but the unified is above form, and above all determination, and above all substance beheld according to otherness; and it is not the principle of number, but simply of all things after itself; and it does not hold within itself a multitude of many numbers coiled together, but is wholly numberless and undifferentiated — this very thing alone which is called unified.⁶⁴³
[119] No triad, then, that seems to be is, in real truth, a triad; for the three do not remain determined off from one another — the unified, the many, the one; rather, the unified is poured back up into the many, according, at least, to the dominance of the power; and the power — together with that one, when it has been poured abroad into power — is folded back up into the one, letting go her own pouring, and running back up into the simplicity of the One; the one, then, has seized all things, not allowing the determination of the triad to appear, but declaring all things to be the One — just as the power, in her turn, shows even the intellect to be an unlimited chaos, flying in the undetermined of the power. And the intellect — in so far as, by himself, he falls short of the elder principles, by so much only does he appear intellect.⁶⁴⁴
[119] How then is it really a triad? For in every triad the monads are lesser than the whole of it; and yet no monad makes its own triad to vanish — on the contrary, it even helps to constitute it. But here the one is the most masterful of all, and there is nothing before it; so that neither is this whole a triad; for then the many would be before the one. Further: the one even makes the triad vanish; for in it every determination is drunk down. Wherefore in the one, even the so-called triad is one alone; and in the many, even the triad is a dyad — for it is power; while in the unified there would be a certain clear showing-forth of the triad, because it is the first to have suffered both the one and the many; and the triad too is the first number out of one and two — and this is unified-and-multiplied, monadic-and-dyadic.⁶⁴⁵

## Chapter 120 — Hyparxis, Power, Activity — the Oracles' Names for the Three, as the Great Iamblichus Also Beholds It; Do Substance and Existence Differ? — I for My Part Do Not See Such a Difference; the Father Only Father, Cause of Being but Not Himself Being; Not Even in Potency, but Having Snatched Himself Away Even from Aptitude; the First Powerless and Actless, If It Be Lawful to Say · pp. 372–375

[120] Of such things, then, let this be enough for us — for when should we cease, contending with discourse, beyond our nature, toward the intellection of the hymned intelligible triads? Let us turn our thought instead to those inquiries which busy themselves about the very nature of the monads — the paternal, the dynamic, and the one called intellectual. Is it then the case — as the middle one plainly indicates — that this one takes her stand according to power, and is beheld as principle of all powers; and the paternal as existence, of which the power also is said to be; and the intellectual as activity, proceeding from power, and being the activity of the existence? For the proportion which substance holds toward power, and power toward activity — this, one might say, the paternal peculiarity holds toward the dynamic, and the dynamic toward the intellectual. And the principles which different men have wished to indicate through different things — as the Pythagoreans through monad and dyad and triad, or Plato through the limit and the unlimited and the mixed, or we ourselves, earlier, through the one and the many and the unified — this the Oracles of the gods have indicated through existence and power and activity. The Father, at any rate, they clearly name existence; and the power they hand down by no other name either.⁶⁴⁶
[120] But if the Father is existence, and the power the middle, how should the third not both be, and be called, activity? And indeed the great Iamblichus also beholds this matter in this way; and perhaps the intellect too has been named from intellecting — that is, from activity — whatever 'to intellect' may signify: whether the knowing, or the turning back toward the Father, or the longing after him. And perhaps the Father would exist only; while the Power, besides the existing, would put forward also the being-able; and the Intellect, besides these, the activity as well. And such an indication would preserve much of the union of the first principles — if indeed, being three, they are nevertheless united toward one another thus: as power toward existence, and as the activity of the existence. And it is plain that the principles are united toward one another even more greatly than the one nature is toward herself — the nature that exists and is able and acts, being one and three-formed.⁶⁴⁷
[120] Should we then conceive them so — and, taking our start from this third peculiarity, posit the simply substance as the third, which is the unified? How could we say that the Father is sketched according to substance, if indeed substance and existence are the same? Or do they say they are not the same? — rather, existence would be said of gods, and substance of the things hung from them; for thus the philosophers are accustomed, in many places, to distinguish. But even if this were true, the being has not yet been determined off, among those, from the one; nor is the unified a being; nor, then, is the Father the one; but perhaps the Father is as the simply one, and the unified would be the simply being, spoken in another manner — and neither of the two is the one strictly, as has been said often before. And it would be possible to speak thus, if it were true that substance and existence differ.⁶⁴⁸
[120] But as it is, I for my part do not see such a difference: for to be and to exist we say of the same thing — if ever, indeed, we should say that being obtains; for with the ancients this is altogether customary. And if it be urged that being must pre-exist before everything else — before the being-able, and the acting, and the faring-well or being-well, and almost all the others; for in the genera of being also the being leads the others — if, then, for these reasons being rules, and in a certain way stands under (for after the one we conceive the being), then to exist and to be would even so be the same; save that being, as ranked before the others, and as furnishing being to the others, would on this account be called also existing. If, then, substance and existence are the same, and the simply substance is the third, what reason could there be to carry this over to the Father? And does not the paternal peculiarity itself wish to be the cause of being for another — and not to be itself, insofar as it is paternal?⁶⁴⁹
[120] The first Father, then — the simply Father — not being something else first and then father, but father only: he would not himself be; but he will be cause of being to others, and first of all to the simply being, the being before all things; so that in this way also the Father is before all existence and substance. Likewise too the paternal Power — inasmuch as she is bringing-forth of substance — would be ranked before it. Was the third, then, the paternal activity? — so that the activity too is before the substance, inasmuch as it is bringing-forth of substance, and is a paternal activity. The unified, then, is not the simply substance — if indeed it is a paternal activity, begetting the beings; unless the activity runs together with what is activated. And the paternal activity, insofar as it holds to the one and the father, is unified, according to the reversion toward that which is called the One There; but insofar as it has gathered up in itself the things that are being separated and begotten from it, in this way also the simply substance is before the determined substance, just as has been said before.⁶⁵⁰
[120] Or must it be said that the third principle answers, by analogy, to the first activity: that, having taken together the acting, the being-able, and the paternal and generative peculiarity, it has become substance simply? — for we call substance, and being, that which both acts and is able, and which has subsisted first; so that by herself she is substance, while relative to the Father she is called the activity of the Father. Or perhaps it must be beheld in that other way: the third principle is substance, and existence already in actuality and according to activity; while the second is still in potency — and it is this that the Power makes plain? For the things that are in the lower orders in a worse manner are There taken in a better; so stands, then, the in-potency toward the in-actuality. But the Father is not even in potency yet; rather, he snatched himself away even from the aptitude toward substance, in whatever manner conceived — since among the things here also, the one of matter is beyond the in-potency, though on the worse side. For the in-potency has already been pre-determined, by its aptitude toward the form.⁶⁵¹
[120] But perhaps it is more natural to say this: that existence makes plain the subsistence only — as power the being-able only, and activity the acting only; while substance is the whole, and has taken the three together; whence that which subsists but is able for nothing, or that which is able but acts nothing, we say either is not at all, or is in vain. And again, we hold it right that nothing be in vain. In the third, then, the three have run together; in the second, the two alone; in the first, the one alone — truly: whence this first is existence only, and subsistence — as it were powerless and actless, if it be lawful to say so, being conceived according to what is better than power and than activity; and the second principle is existence together with power, yet acting nothing, and being before activity — and supplying to all things what is before activity, as the first supplies what is before power; and the third, taking the acting in addition, has become substance: a nature subsisting, and being-able, and acting.⁶⁵² In this way, then, will existence differ from substance: as the being alone, by itself, from the being that is beheld together with the others; for existence is an element of substance, and has been taken up for the indication of the simplest principle — what is said in this way would have some reason.⁶⁵³

## Chapter 121 — Hyparxis, as the Name Shows — a Foundation, or as It Were a Floor, Laid Down Beforehand; Cause of All Substance but Not Yet Substance; One and Hyparxis and Father Come to the Same; the Power That Wishes to Be Only a Pouring of the One; the Eldest of All Reversions, Which Is Union Rather Than Reversion · pp. 375–377

[121] And existence seems to me to be determined most of all in this manner: as the name shows, it makes plain the first principle of each subsistence — as it were a certain foundation, or as it were a floor, laid down beforehand for the whole, and for all the building-upon. Wherefore he who gave the name also set in front the preposition of beginning, because he wished to make plain a principle pre-supposed for whatever things are said, in any way whatever, to be. And this is the simplicity before all things, to which all composition accrues; and this is, surely, the very one that lies beyond all things, pre-underlying: which is cause of all substance, but not yet substance; for every substance is composite — whether by union, or by blending, or in whatever other manner; but that was the one itself, alone. And there is need — if there is to be any composition at all — that the one and simple be pre-underlying, and pre-existing, artlessly; since without this nothing else would come forth into subsistence. The existence, then, of all substance is the one — even the first ground laid down. And if it be supposed before substance, according to its proper simplicity, it would be productive of substance; so that the existence is also, assuredly, paternal. To the same point, then, come for us one, and existence, and father.⁶⁵⁴
[121] And upon this first ground and existence there accrues a certain second supposal — being as it were a multitude of that one, and as it were a dis-stancing of it, when the one willed to be all things before all things; which indeed we call, by analogy, power — because power too was an out-stretching of substance. And upon this the third principle goes forth, gathering together, as it seems, the most complete and all-perfect form: as it were standing apart in three, and united into substance in place of existence; wherefore the paternal Intellect is made like to his own father, and has been turned back toward him — as the unified toward the one, and substance toward existence. Yet they are not the same; and the power is another thing, a middle: having stepped out from the paternal simplicity, and in this respect carried along with the one, yet not yet circumscribed into a union, but wishing to be only a pouring, and an unlimitedness, of the one; wherefore she also consorts with the father — as a one being poured with a one that remains. Whence the second principle is not yet unified, but still one — even if become, in a certain way, truly into chaos.⁶⁵⁵
[121] In what way, then, existence differs from substance, let so much be said. And it is plain that the henad, separated from substance, will everywhere be separated analogously, as existence. For if the simply one is existence, the simply unified also is substance. And if the one that is counter-divided toward the being — as hung from it according to otherness — is existence, then the being also, relative to this existence, is substance; though according to its own simplicity it too is existence; while the simply one is existence only — as also the simply many; and the first power is nothing other than the many. And now the unified also — which is a mixture of the one and the many taken simply, and for this reason is itself the simply being; and the simply being is called unified because, everywhere, that which is so called is what has suffered the one and yet nevertheless is not one — as Plato shows in the Sophist. Rightly, then, is the one the Father of the triad — because he is before the being, and begetter of the being; and the power of the Father is the many — because she is the out-stretching of the one toward the begetting of the being; and the paternal Intellect is the unified and the being, beheld according to the reversion toward the paternal one.⁶⁵⁶
[121] Not, surely, the gnostic reversion — for knowledge is not yet differentiated There; nor the vital — for neither has life been in any way differentiated among those; but the substantial: for substance is counter-divided toward these after the unified. And this substantial reversion, which is the eldest of all reversions, is not turned back into substance, but into the simply One; wherefore — this being before all things — the reversion also is surpassing of all the reversions; wherefore this is reversion simply, and not a certain reversion — such as the gnostic toward a knowable, or the appetitive toward a desirable (for this latter is rather vital); nor even as toward the being of the unified — for that would be a certain, and a relative, reversion; but the reversion toward the simplest of all, and itself simplest of all: that of the unified toward the One, of the first toward the first; and standing thus in respect of differentiation — or rather, of undifferentiated excess — that it is a union rather than a reversion.⁶⁵⁷
[121] But nevertheless the analogy will both declare it to be a reversion, and will name intellect the one who subsists according to it — because reversion is proper to intellect. And if the differentiated belongs to intellect, as was said before, then in this way also the unified is intellect — because third from the Father; however one may discourse, it will be so called according to some analogy, and an indication supernatural in its greatness. But so far as speaking in common goes, let it have been said thus.⁶⁵⁸

## Chapter 122 — The Threefold Division of the Unified — One-Being, Whole-and-Parts, Unlimited Multitude, as Plato Divided; the Many Before All Number; the Fragments in Which the Many First Appeared; the Uncarved Once-Beyond Intellect, the Both-Ways-Shining Hecate, and the Twice-Beyond Flashing with Intellectual Severings; the Father of the Fathers · pp. 377–380

[122] But the more particular manner must now be told, according to the threefold division of the unified: in which its summit is wholly undifferentiated; its middle already, in a certain way, being-differentiated — as compared with that; and its bound differentiated — so far as one may speak at all of a differentiated of the unified. For Plato also, having differentiated this into one and being, nevertheless found either of them becoming the both-together; and the middle he made a whole out of parts — out of the one and the being; and this was the property of the being-differentiated; while the summit is in every way one being — both the one of the being, and the being of the one. And should one say something further still, he will say rightly: that the summit holds the being mastered by the one; the last, conversely, the one mastered by the being; and in the middle, either is of equal weight.⁶⁵⁹
[122] Or again, as Plato has it: the first is one-being; the next, whole and parts; the third, unlimited multitude. This last, then, answers by analogy to intellect, according to the multitude already differentiated; the middle, according to the being-differentiated; and the first, according to the unified.
[122] Wherefore the summit is only one being; the middle is already beginning a certain partition; and the third has been divided into many — as intellect, we say, into the forms, so this into the many: the many which we say are many before all number; whence also the unlimited multitude — because it is numberless by nature, and before every arithmetical bound; for number does not admit the unlimited — not even according to those who assert it — but the multitude does: that of which there was an unlimited multitude, a matter, as it were, of number, needing an arithmetical limit — or rather, neither matter, nor needing a limit, but beyond the subsistence of all the numbers.⁶⁶⁰
[122] These many, then, are the many of the unified one — as the many before the unified are many according to the second principle, which, as we said, is simply of the one: those are many as one; these, many as unified. And of these there pre-exists, in the middle of the intelligible, neither the many nor the unlimited multitude, but parts and whole — the many still held fast in the one, and only beginning to be differentiated from it; whence the whole has come to be in place of one, and the parts in place of impartibles gathered up by their proper one. But when it was differentiated with the complete differentiation — as great and of such kind as was of a nature to come to be of the unified — so many and such fragments coming to be, in this third member the many appeared at once; and the whole is unlimited multitude; and this whole unlimited multitude will answer, by analogy, to intellect and to the forms in intellect; wherefore it has been hymned as the intelligible intellect of the whole intelligible.⁶⁶¹
[122] And the middle answers to the middle order — the one that obtained even the same name — in the second world-order after the intelligible; and the summit to the first elemented, com-blended from elements — being itself the unified moment of the whole unified cosmos. And again, in the third world-order, the intellectual: the uncarved intellect, the once-beyond, is likened to the summit of the unified, the wholly unified; while the both-ways-shining Hecate, appearing whole and many-parted, resembles the middle of the unified. And what, in this order, the twice-beyond intellect is — flashing with intellectual severings — that, There, is the intelligible and unified intellect: flashing, he also, if it be lawful to say it, with intelligible severings.⁶⁶²
[122] But indeed — whether there are certain such differences in the unified, or pre-appearances of differences, or pre-causes, or however one should choose to say it (for more has been said about these things before) — the unified was the paternal Intellect: insofar as he is one, whole; but insofar as he is thus divided in three, it is plain how, by the same account, we shall divide along with him both the complete Power into three powers, and the one Father into three fathers. For the one will be father of the unified moment in the unified intellect; another, of the moment beheld as whole-and-parts; another, of the one taken according to the unlimited multitude; whence this last was called, in the paternal triad, the paternal intellect; the middle one, power; and the first, the father of the fathers. Likewise the powers also will be taken in three ways, carried along with the three on either side — with the fathers, I mean, and with the paternal intellects; for the powers are always both-ways-shining, and commensurate toward either distance; nevertheless, within the triad of the powers also, the first holds paternal worth relative to the others; the middle is the power of the powers; and the third, the intellect of the first. And so again also in the unified and intellectual triad, the final bounding of the intelligible world-order: the first is father of the intellects; the middle, power; and the third, the unified intellect — even that of the unified father.⁶⁶³
[122] Let so much, now said concerning the Chaldaean triads, suffice for present purposes — we having in no way pried into the holy rite handed down by the Oracles concerning them; for the examination of those things did not yet belong to the present occasion.⁶⁶⁴

## Chapter 123 — The Traditions of the Other Theologians; the Orphic Rhapsodies — Time, Aether and Chaos, and the Egg from Which Phanēs Leaps Forth; Mētis, Ērikepaios, Phanēs; the Theogony of Hieronymus and Hellanicus — Water and Earth, the One Left Unspoken, the Winged Serpent Named Unaging Time and Heracles, with Necessity Who Is Adrasteia; Aether, Unlimited Chaos, Misty Erebos; the Egg and the First-Born God Called Zeus and Pan · pp. 380–382

[123] But since we have made mention of these things, in whatever way, for the sake of the setting-forth concerning the intelligibles, and of the thorough purification of our own conceptions — come now, let us relate alongside, in due measure, the traditions of the other theologians also concerning the intelligible world-order: if from these too we are able to take up a reverence still greater — and, so far as may be, greatest — of that surpassing union.⁶⁶⁵
[123] In these current Orphic Rhapsodies, then, the theology concerning the intelligible is this — which the philosophers also interpret: setting Time in place of the one principle of wholes; in place of the two, Aether and Chaos; and in place of the being, simply, reckoning the Egg — and making this the first triad. And to the second triad belongs either the Egg conceiving and conceived — the god — or the silvery tunic, or the cloud, because from these leaps forth Phanēs; for at different times they philosophize different things about the middle. This, then — whatever it may be — they take as the intellect; while as father and power they conceive in addition certain other things in no way belonging to Orpheus; and the third triad they take to be Mētis as intellect, Ērikepaios as power, and Phanēs himself as father.⁶⁶⁶
[123] And perhaps the middle triad must also be set according to the three-formed god, while still being conceived in the egg; for the middle, too, always images forth the both-together of the extremes — as this also is at once both egg and three-formed god. And you see that the egg is the unified; and the three-formed — and in real truth many-formed — god is the differentiated of the intelligible; while the middle is, according to the egg, still unified, but according to the god, already differentiated — and, to say the whole of it, being-differentiated. Such, then, is the customary Orphic theology.⁶⁶⁷
[123] But the theology current under Hieronymus and Hellanicus — if indeed he is not the same man — stands thus. Water was, he says, from the beginning, and mud, out of which the earth was compacted; positing these two principles first — water and earth: the latter as scatterable by nature, the former as gluing her together and holding her together; but the one before the two he leaves unspoken; for the very fact of not even speaking about it indicates its unsayable nature. And the third principle after these two was begotten of them — of water, I say, and earth — and is a serpent, having heads of a bull and of a lion grown upon it, and in the middle the face of a god, and having wings also upon the shoulders; and the same has been named Unaging Time, and Heracles. And with him consorts Necessity — being the same nature as Adrasteia also — incorporeal, stretched arm-wide through the whole cosmos, touching its bounds. This, I think, is said to be the third principle, standing according to substance; save that he gave it subsistence as male-and-female, for indication of the cause that is generative of all things.⁶⁶⁸
[123] And I take it that the theology in the Rhapsodies, letting go the two first principles — together with the one before the two, the one handed down in silence — set up its beginning from this third principle after the two, as being the first that holds anything speakable, and commensurate to the hearing of men. For this was the much-honored Unaging Time in it — the father of Aether and Chaos. And indeed, according to this theology too, this Time, the serpent, begets a triple offspring: Aether, he says, intellectual, and Chaos unlimited, and third upon these, Erebos misty. This second triad he hands down as analogous to the first — being dynamic, as that one was paternal; wherefore its third member also is misty Erebos; and the paternal, summit member is Aether — not simply, but intellectually; and the middle, of itself, unlimited Chaos.⁶⁶⁹
[123] But indeed, among these, as he says, Time begot an Egg — this tradition too making it the offspring of Time, and born among these, because from these also the third intelligible triad goes forth. What then is this triad? The Egg; and the dyad of the two natures within it, male and female, together with the multitude of the all-various seeds in the middle; and third upon these, a god without body, having golden wings upon his shoulders, who had, grown upon his flanks, heads of bulls, and upon his head a monstrous serpent, presenting the semblance of all manner of shapes of beasts. This one, then, must be taken as the intellect of the triad; and the middle kinds — the many, and the two — as the power; and the Egg itself as the paternal principle of the third triad; and the third god of this third triad this theology hymns as Prōtogonos, and calls him Zeus, the disposer of all things and of the whole cosmos — wherefore he is also called Pan. So much does this genealogy too set forth concerning the intelligible principles.⁶⁷⁰

## Chapter 124 — The Theology Recorded by Eudemus the Peripatetic — Orpheus Keeping the Whole Intelligible in Silence and Beginning from Night; Homer, in Whom Even Zeus Stands in Awe of Swift Night; Hesiod's Chaos, Earth, Tartaros, and Erōs; Acusilaus — Erebos and Night, Then Aether, Erōs, and Mētis; Epimenides — Aēr and Night, the Two Titans, and the Egg; Pherecydes the Syrian — Zas, Chronos, and Chthonia, and the Five Recesses · pp. 382–384

[124] But the theology recorded in Eudemus the Peripatetic, as being that of Orpheus, kept silence about the whole intelligible — as altogether unsayable and unknowable in the manner of discursive traversal and announcement; and it made its beginning from Night — from whom Homer also sets up his beginning, even if he has not made his genealogy continuous. For Eudemus is not to be accepted when he says that Homer begins from Okeanos and Tethys; for Homer appears to know Night also as a goddess so great that even Zeus stands in awe of her — for he dreaded, says the poet, to do things displeasing to swift Night. So let Homer too, himself, begin from Night.⁶⁷¹
[124] And Hesiod, when he relates that Chaos came to be first, seems to me to have called the incomprehensible and wholly unified nature of the intelligible Chaos, and to bring forth Earth first from thence, as a certain principle of the whole generation of the gods. Unless indeed Chaos is the second of the two principles, and Earth and Tartaros and Erōs are the triple intelligible: Erōs in place of the third, as beheld according to reversion — for Orpheus also, in the Rhapsodies, names it thus; Earth in place of the first, as being first compacted in a certain solid and substantial establishment; and Tartaros in place of the middle, as already, in a certain way, stirred aside toward differentiation.⁶⁷²
[124] And Acusilaus seems to me to suppose Chaos as the first principle, as wholly unknown; and the two after the one: Erebos the male, and the female Night — the latter in place of unlimitedness, the former in place of limit; and from these, mingled together, he says, came to be Aether and Erōs and Mētis — these three intelligible subsistences: making Aether the summit one, and Erōs the middle, according to the natural middleness of love, and Mētis the third — by now the much-honored intellect itself. And besides these he brings forth, from the same, a great number of other gods also, according to the history of Eudemus.⁶⁷³
[124] And Epimenides supposed two first principles, Aēr and Night — plainly honoring with silence the one before the two — from which Tartaros was begotten: the third principle, I take it, as a certain mixed one, com-blended out of the two. And from these came two Titans — so calling the intelligible middleness, because it stretches out toward both, the summit and the bound; and these being mingled with one another, an Egg came to be — this very thing, the intelligible animal in real truth — from which, again, another generation came forth.⁶⁷⁴
[124] And Pherecydes the Syrian says that Zas always is, and Chronos, and Chthonia — the three first principles: the one, I mean, before the two, and the two after the one; and that Chronos made, out of his own seed, fire and breath and water — the triple nature, I take it, of the intelligible; from which, divided in five recesses, a numerous generation of gods was constituted — the one called five-recessed; which is perhaps the same as to say, the five-cosmosed. But concerning these things another occasion will perhaps show itself.⁶⁷⁵
[124] Such, then, and so many — for the present — let the suppositions conveyed through Greek myths stand as taken up by us; there being many others besides.⁶⁷⁶

## Chapter 125 — The Theologies of the Barbarians — the Babylonians: Tauthe and Apasōn, the Mother of the Gods, the Only-Begotten Mōymis, and Bēlos the Demiurge; the Magi and the Areian Race: Place or Time, Ōromasdēs and Areimanios; the Sidonians: Time, Desire, and Mist; the Phoenicians of Mōchos: Oulōmos, Chousōros the Opener, and the Egg Burst into Heaven and Earth; the Egyptians: the Unknown Darkness Thrice Proclaimed, and the Three Kamēphis · pp. 384–386

[125] Of the Barbarians, the Babylonians seem to pass over the one principle of wholes in silence, and to make two, Tauthe and Apasōn — making Apasōn the husband of Tauthe, and naming her the mother of the gods; of whom was begotten an only-begotten son, Mōymis — being itself, I take it, the intelligible cosmos, brought forth from the two principles. And from the same parents another generation came forth, Lachē and Lachos. Then again a third from the same, Kissarē and Assōros — from whom came to be three, Anos and Illinos and Aos; and of Aos and Daukē was born a son, Bēlos, whom they declare to be the demiurge.⁶⁷⁷
[125] And the Magi, and the whole Areian race — as Eudemus also writes this — some call the whole intelligible and unified Place, and others Time: out of which were differentiated either a good god and an evil daimon — or light and darkness before these, as some among them say. These too, then, themselves, after the undifferentiated nature, make the twofold column of the better beings to be differentiated: of the one column Ōromasdēs is the leader; of the other, Areimanios.⁶⁷⁸
[125] And the Sidonians, according to the same writer, suppose before all things Time, and Desire, and Mist; and from Desire and Mist mingled, as two principles, came to be Aēr and Aura — making known by Aēr the unmixed summit of the intelligible, and by Aura the living pre-figuration of the intelligible, moved out of it. And again, from both of these an Egg was begotten — answering, I take it, to the intelligible intellect.⁶⁷⁹
[125] But outside of Eudemus we find the mythology of the Phoenicians according to Mōchos: Aether was the first, and Aēr — these two principles, from whom is begotten Oulōmos, the intelligible god — itself, I take it, the summit of the intelligible; from whom — coming together with himself — he says was begotten Chousōros, an opener first, and then an Egg: this latter, I take it, they call the intelligible intellect, and the opener Chousōros the intelligible power, inasmuch as it first differentiated the undifferentiated nature. Unless rather, after the two principles, the summit is the Wind, the one; and the middle the two winds, Lips and Notos — for they make these too, in a certain way, before Oulōmos — and Oulōmos himself would be the intelligible intellect; and the opener Chousōros the first order after the intelligible; and the Egg, the heaven; for it is said that, when it was burst into two, heaven and earth came to be — each of the two halves.⁶⁸⁰
[125] But of the Egyptians Eudemus relates nothing accurate. The Egyptians, however, who in our own time have become philosophers, brought forth their hidden truth, having found it in certain Egyptian discourses: that, according to them, the one principle of wholes is hymned as Unknown Darkness — and this proclaimed three times as such; and the two principles are water and sand, as Heraïscus says — or, as Asclepiades, his elder, has it, sand and water — from which, and after which, was begotten the first Kamēphis; then a second, from him; and then, from this one, the third — by whom the whole intelligible world-order is filled up. Thus far Asclepiades. But the younger Heraïscus says that the third Kamēphis — named from his father and his grandfather — is the sun: which is surely the intelligible intellect. But the precise account of these matters must be taken from those men themselves.⁶⁸¹
[125] And this also must be known concerning the Egyptians: that they are dividers, in many places, of the things that subsist according to union — since they have divided even the intelligible into the properties of many gods, as those who wish may learn by meeting with their writings: I mean the record of Heraïscus, written for Proclus the philosopher as a complete account of the doctrine of the Egyptians, and the Concord of the Egyptians with the Other Theologians, which Asclepiades began to write.⁶⁸²

## Chapter 126 — Of Participation in the First Principles and the Whole Intelligible; What the Name Signifies — the Sun Participated According to the In-Given Light; Protagoras and Lycophron, Who Sever All Things from One Another; the Argument That Destroys Even Itself; the Soul That Becomes Pythagorean or Platonic; Motion Must Stand and Rest Must Move; the Beautiful and the Just Counter-Participate — Here the Text, as Transmitted, Breaks Off · pp. 386–390

[126] Upon these things we must treat of the participation of the first principles and of the whole intelligible — that which we say is the unified: whether these are participated by all the things that are second, or are not participated; or in one way are, and in another are not. For that substance is twofold — the one participable, the other unparticipated — and life and intellect in the same manner, has been said before, and determined in due measure. Yet about these things too there must be further inquiry; and about the individuals — whence there is any subsistence of them; and whether participation reaches even to the things that come to be and perish.⁶⁸³
[126] First, then, it must be said what the name 'to participate' signifies, and what we mean by participation. Does it wish to make plain a having — but a having after another, and from another? — a having in the second place, and not first? — a having of another being, after that one, which is other than that in which it is not? — and that participation is of something whose existence it is not, as of an original and prototype? — so that the same form is itself by itself, but is participated by proceeding into another from another. And the participated is twofold: the one, that which gives; the other, the given itself — according to which the giver is participated. For according to the given, the sun in heaven is, as it were, participated — according to the light in-given by it to our eyes; yet the given itself also is participated; and we say the participant participates of either: of the one, as of what proceeds upon another, after another, and from another; of the other, as of what gives to another its own property, after itself. So much, then, concerning the name.⁶⁸⁴
[126] But that there is some such thing also among the realities — and that one thing does participate of another, and that each does not stand by itself, isolated from the others, and called only that which it is — as Protagoras attempts to suppose, and Lycophron declared outright — the argument will make plain, when moderately tested. For what, they will say, would the beautiful be, other than beautiful? And what the just, other than just? Then neither must the beautiful be called just, nor the just beautiful. And what then of saying that the beautiful is? Nay, the beautiful is not a being, but only beautiful. And the just is not — for the 'is' is proper to the being. Nothing, then, of the others is, besides the being; nor does anything else stand, besides the standing; nor is anything moved, besides the moving; everything, then, is without share of everything; and one name only must be predicated of each — that of its proper peculiarity; and they enjoin that we must not interweave, nor make a sentence, as said truly of one nature. For the man too is man only — neither animal, nor rational, nor mortal; for he is none of these things — only that very thing which is man.⁶⁸⁵
[126] Further, they say: the participant — that is, what remains — is said to participate of another; but if it remains the same, the very thing it was before, what more has it got, in that it participated of the other? And the participated itself also remained upon its own peculiarity, the very thing it was from the beginning; so that it too must be held worthy of the same name as before. And third: one thing consorts with another either according to union, or according to com-blending, or according to juxtaposition; and which of these modes of consorting we shall say participation is, must be sought. Not juxtaposition — for things lying beside one another are unaffected by one another, while participation comes with some affection. Nor according to union — for the participated and the participant must be set apart; but union makes the two one, and there no longer remains a participant and a participated. But neither according to com-blending — which seems the most plausible; for com-blending is of two members of like rank, and of elements both belonging to one existence — not of the one as participant and the other as participated. Accordingly, one would not say that the white body is a com-blending of whiteness and body, in the way that body is a blend of the three-dimensioned elements. For the participant always wishes to be the substrate of the participated; and this latter, to be as in that substrate. These things, then, and the like, would be said by those who raise difficulties against participation, and hold it right that nothing participate of anything else.⁶⁸⁶
[126] But truly terrible is the argument, if it shall make all things dis-spanned from one another, and sharing in common in no one thing — not even in the one itself, since the same argument will fit concerning the one as well. And it will abolish many of the acknowledged forms besides: sameness, likeness, equality, union as a whole — nay, wholeness itself; for each of the parts must participate of one wholeness. And it overturns all science too — if indeed it is not admissible to predicate one thing of another, whether speaking or thinking; so that the argument will destroy even its very self. For it will not be permitted to it to say that the realities are separated from one another; for then all things will plainly participate of the same thing — of the separation toward one another. And indeed, to those who look at the realities themselves it is manifest that some things participate of others, and certain things of the same things. For the forms in matter appear to stand thus: the elements participate of one another, and the things made of elements participate both of the elements themselves, and they too of one another; for our body is warmed, and is chilled, and further is nourished from plants and from the other fruits.⁶⁸⁷
[126] And the senses — are they not form-given by their sensibles? And appetite and spirit — are they not altered both toward the worse and toward the better? And the rational soul — is she not educated, taking over the educator's culture? Does she not become Pythagorean by philosophizing — or Platonic? And there is that saying of Socrates: how would one man have recognized another's affection, were there not something common between them? — and it is plain that the common is always from one. And what — do the worse not manifestly participate of the higher, as matter of the forms? The wood, at any rate, has been shaped, and cut by the saw, and formed into a throne; and does the body not live, and is it not moved from within — not in the way the soulless is moved, from without? And this air, and the whole sublunary realm — is it not lit by the heavenly light? And do the immaterial not supply to all the enmattered their unceasing power? And, to speak more logically still: man and horse — each is a form, each an animal, each a being, each one; and all things are common, except the peculiarity of each; and the common things are, as it were, elements of the peculiarity — even of that one — yet are not upon themselves. For that which is not of itself and by itself — and first, itself — of this there is participation, having come from another into another, as we were saying. But these things, perhaps, are agreed.⁶⁸⁸
[126] But how shall we free ourselves from the contrary arguments? It must be said, surely, that the forms are not even of a nature to subsist apart from one another, each upon itself alone; for motion must stand, and rest must move; otherwise, neither will motion remain in that in which it is, nor will rest be active, in so far as it is. Likewise also the beautiful and the just counter-participate one another: the beautiful of the just, in order that it may act its proper activity, and be unconfused toward the others; and the just of the beautiful, in order that it may be lovely, and dear, and worthy of praise. And we shall be at no loss to say the like in most cases. The forms, then, as I said, must of necessity participate of one another; and it is the peculiarities — conceived by themselves, though they are not by themselves — that work the difficulties for us; since, according to truth, neither — —7 [Here the text, as transmitted, breaks off in mid-sentence.]8
[126] ΤΕΛΟΣ
[126] End of the Problems and Solutions Concerning the First Principles,
[126] as transmitted by the manuscripts and printed in the Kopp edition of 1826.
[126] Note 7. The resolution begins from the communion of forms: 'the forms are not even of a nature to subsist apart from one another... for motion must stand, and rest must move' — the Sophist's greatest kinds invoked at the very last; and the exquisite final example: 'the beautiful and the just counter-participate one another: the beautiful of the just, in order that it may act its proper activity, and be unconfused toward the others; and the just of the beautiful, in order that it may be lovely, and dear, and worthy of praise.' The last complete thought of the treatise as transmitted: it is the peculiarities, 'conceived by themselves, though they are not by themselves, that work the difficulties for us; since, according to truth, neither — —'
[126] Note 8. Here the Munich manuscript breaks off, in mid-sentence, at the foot of its folio; the next folio opens with a new title: 'Of Damascius the Successor, Problems and Solutions on Plato's Parmenides, set over against the commentaries of the philosopher [Proclus]' — with a marginal note that the beginning has not been found. The Hamburg codex continues without any mark of lacuna into that same Parmenides material. The Problems and Solutions Concerning the First Principles thus ends as it lived — inside an unfinished sentence about what is, according to truth — and the tradition passes directly into Damascius's commentary on the Parmenides, of which this whole treatise is the threshold. With this chapter the present translation of the Kopp edition (Frankfurt, 1826, pp. 1–390) is complete.

## Notes

[1] A marginal note in the Munich manuscript heads the chapter: "Whether the one principle of all things is beyond them, or is coordinated with them" (εἰ ἡ μία τῶν πάντων ἀρχὴ ἐπέκεινά ἐστιν αὐτῶν, ἢ συντέτακται αὐτοῖς).
[2] Reading with the Munich and Venice manuscripts: "all things means to be many and bounded" — the totality of things is conceived as a finite, bounded multitude.
[3] Speusippus, Plato's nephew and successor as head of the Academy, took the One as a minimal seed or starting-point, less than what develops from it. Damascius inverts this: the One is maximal, the totality "swallowed" into simplicity.
[4] ἀφ' ἑνὸς καὶ πρὸς ἕν: the Peripatetic term for predication that is neither strictly synonymous nor merely homonymous, but ordered from and toward one nature (Kopp's note cites Alexander of Aphrodisias on Metaphysics X).
[5] A Munich marginal note: "the principle beyond all things: inconceivable, unsurmisable, not even properly called a principle"; and below: "the first as unknowable and unnamed."
[6] The Venice and Munich manuscripts read "of what is in every way one and only one" (τοῦ πάντῃ ἑνὸς καὶ μόνον ἑνός), adopted here over the Hamburg text.
[7] ἐκμηρύεται: the image is of thread wound off a ball or skein — all things unreeled from the One.
[8] θριγκός: the coping-course that crowns a wall; cf. Plato, Republic 534e, where dialectic is set as the coping-stone upon the sciences.
[9] ὁμόπνοια: literally a "conspiring," a breathing-in-unison; coordination among the many is itself a trace of unity and so demands the One as its cause.
[10] συναίσθησις: a feeling-with or co-awareness, beneath articulate knowledge; the ὠδῖνες ("birth-pangs") are the soul's inarticulate labor toward what it cannot deliver into speech — an image Damascius develops throughout the opening chapters.
[11] In the Orphic-Platonic exegesis inherited by the school, Kronos is the paradigm of pure, self-enclosed intellect, set above Zeus the Demiurge who turns toward making; hence "Kronos rather than the Demiurge" parallels "contemplative rather than political."
[12] Both manuscripts carry a marginal scheme here: "the nothing-as-emptiness" set against "the better" and "the worse" — the nothing above the One, from which one "falls out" upward, and the nothing beneath it.
[13] Plato on "what in no way and nowhere is" (τὸ μηδαμῇ μηδαμῶς ὄν): Sophist 238c–239a, where the utterly non-existent proves unutterable and unthinkable. Damascius turns the unsayability of the absolutely non-existent ("according to the worse") into a foil for the unsayability of the first principle ("according to the better").
[14] ἄδυτον: the innermost shrine that may not be entered; ἀπόρρητον is likewise the mystery-term for what may not be divulged. The soul's birth-pangs stand ἐν προθύροις, "in the forecourt," never inside.
[15] The first hypothesis of the Parmenides (137c–142a), which concludes that the One neither is one nor is, and that there is of it no name, no statement, no knowledge, no perception, no opinion (141e–142a). The Neoplatonic school read this hypothesis as theology's supreme text.
[16] The Sophist's analysis (244b–245e) that the One itself cannot be identified with Being — read by the school as proof that the One precedes Being.
[17] Epistle VII, 342a–343a: the famous philosophical digression on the five — name, definition, image, knowledge, and the Form itself — none of the first four being adequate to the fifth.
[18] Damascius keeps the promise: whether the One can be known at all is taken up in Chapter 7 below.
[19] The Greek word here (printed ἁλώνης) is corrupt; Kopp despaired of it. The likeliest sense is "after the manner of a halo or threshing-floor" — ἅλως, the perfectly encompassing circle — which suits the context of what "escapes every differentiation" while remaining "most comprehensive."
[20] The opening states the objector's case: if "uncoordinated, unrelated, none of all things" were its nature, then in knowing that nature we would after all know it. The rest of the chapter dismantles the assumption.
[21] Cf. Theaetetus 188a–c, on the impossibility of judging — even negatively — about what one does not know at all.
[22] ἀναιρέσεις: removals, abolitions. Even the loftiest negative titles do not describe it; they only take away, one by one, the things that come after it.
[23] Reading the opening with Kopp's note: the demonstrable is neither in That, nor is it That; what is demonstrated is our ignorance and our want of speech (ἄγνοιά τε καὶ ἀφασία).
[24] The privation "according to the better" yields the famous ladder: non-form = supra-formal (ὑπερείδεον); non-being = supra-essential (ὑπερούσιον); nothing = the truly unknowable by superiority over all (καθ' ἁπάντων ὑπεροχήν).
[25] The "one of matter" is the last and dimmest unity, bare substrate; the "one elder than Being" is the first. Damascius will return to this symmetry of extremes repeatedly.
[26] The promised examination of whether and how the One can be known is resumed later in the treatise (cf. Chapter 5, note 5).
[27] Cf. Theaetetus 188e–189a (and Charmides 175b–c): knowing must be knowing of something; a knowing of nothing is impossible.
[28] ἡ πρώτη ὑπόθεσις: the first hypothesis of the Parmenides (137c–142a), the school's name for the discourse concerning the One — here, that to which even our highest knowables are "unworthy."
[29] Sophist 238c–239b: the Eleatic Stranger's discourse on the absolutely non-existent (τὸ μηδαμῇ μηδαμῶς ὄν) destroys itself in the very saying — every negation of it speaks of "it" and so contradicts itself.
[30] Remaining, procession, reversion (μονή, πρόοδος, ἐπιστροφή): the school's standard triadic schema of causal derivation — exactly what must not be smuggled into the ineffable.
[31] I.e. the Parmenides of Plato's dialogue, whose hypotheses pursue the One through everything that depends upon it.
[32] The ἀξίωμα announced at the end of Chapter 8: the needless (ἀνενδεές) precedes the needy (ἐνδεές). The whole ascent of Chapters 9–13 consists in discarding each candidate that proves needy of something worse than itself.
[33] The unified, not being the one itself, needs the one that holds it together: cf. Parmenides 137c–d and Sophist 245a–b.
[34] "Second matter": body without quality as the second substrate — receiving qualities as first matter receives form.
[35] Aristotle's definition: nature is a principle of motion and rest in that to which it belongs primarily, in itself and not accidentally (Physics II 1, 192b21–23). The Hamburg copy notes "Aristotle" in the margin here.
[36] The manuscripts are uneven in this sentence (Kopp's apparatus); the drift is that above bare nature there stands a clearer, more inward life — the bridge to soul, the next rung of the ascent.
[37] The printed text is corrupt at this point; the sense, confirmed by Kopp's own paraphrase, is that even outward-directed deliberation betrays some trace of the separable, self-examining soul.
[38] Aristotle, De anima II 1, 412b11–15, adapted: as the axe's cutting belongs neither to the iron alone nor to the shape alone but to the compound, so perception belongs to the ensouled body.
[39] Aristotle, De anima III 4–5, where intellect — and, as the school read him, the rational soul — is separable (χωριστόν).
[40] Physics VIII and Metaphysics XII: the ascent to the unmoved mover, which Aristotle takes for the first principle. For Damascius this is to stop several rungs too low.
[41] νοητόν and νοερόν: the intelligible and the intellective, the two poles whose compound is Intellect; each pole needs the other, so even self-thinking thought harbors need.
[42] ἓν ὄν, One-Being: the subject of the second hypothesis of the Parmenides (142b ff.); for Damascius effectively interchangeable with the Unified, Being, and the Mixed — a profusion of near-synonyms Kopp himself remarks on.
[43] "Parmenides the great" is the Parmenides of Plato's dialogue, as the school read him — ascending to the One-Being as the safest, most needless principle.
[44] The Unified as "what has undergone the One" (τὸ πεπονθὸς τὸ ἕν): cf. Parmenides 142b–143a with Sophist 245a–b — what is unified participates in the one and is therefore not the one itself.
[45] The Mixed: Philebus 23c–27c, where whatever is comes to be as the third, mixed kind out of limit and the unlimited.
[46] ἀμφιλαφές: a scholion in the Hamburg copy glosses it as "what is of such size as to be taken with both hands." The image is of unity relaxing into a thick, two-handed projection — substance now instead of henad.
[47] Reading "the savior of all" (σωστικόν) with the Munich manuscript where the printed text is corrupt; the term is picked up a few lines below ("the good, the desired, the saving").
[48] The celebrated symmetry closing the ascent: the highest term keeps a topmost trace (ἴχνος) of neediness, while the lowest, matter, keeps the last echo (ἀπήχημα) of self-sufficiency — faintest of all, in respect of the one in it.
[49] ἀμήχανος ἀγνωσία: the unknowing against which no device avails — the same word that named the "helpless silence" closing Chapter 7. The search for what is not even "most needless" hands the argument on to Chapter 14.
[50] Kopp notes that at the close of Chapter 22 Damascius names this second route "the way through the properties" (διὰ τῶν ἰδιοτήτων). Where the first way climbed by discarding whatever is needy of the worse, this one climbs the ladder potency→act, matter→form, worse→better.
[51] The early natural philosophers who posited a single bodily substrate beneath the differing elements — a qualityless body "graspable by reason" (νῷ), since nothing perceptible is without quality.
[52] The Munich manuscript notes in the margin here: "aporia — whether the irrational soul is moved by itself," with "solution" marked further on (in Chapter 16).
[53] The text is troubled at this point (Kopp confesses he cannot construe the transmitted words); the thread of the argument — vision does not see itself, so the irrational soul does not revert upon itself — is secure.
[54] Syrianus: head of the Athenian school and Proclus's teacher. The references are to Laws X 894b–896c (the self-moving motion as first) and Timaeus 77b–c (plants share in appetitive life but not in self-motion and locomotion).
[55] The organ-as-substrate argument: if the sense-organ were an instrument (ὄργανον) that perception uses, perception would first have to move itself in order to move the instrument — and the genuinely self-moving soul would be reintroduced one level down, with a regress threatening.
[56] The "shell-like" (ὀστρέϊνον) body is the gross earthly frame; the "pneumatic" and the "luminous" (αὐγοειδές) are the soul's subtler vehicles — the school's doctrine of the soul's successive vehicles, here invoked as genuine mover–moved pairs because neither member is merely a substrate of the other.
[57] The chapter's distinction — ὑφ' οὗ ("by which," the imparting cause) against καθ' ὅ ("according to which," the indwelling affection) — does the work of the next two chapters: the indwelling principle of apparent self-motion is an affection, and an affection always points back to an imparter.
[58] The Munich margin summarizes: "life too is twofold," and a little below, "self-motion too is twofold" — the vivifying life against the life-by-which (ensoulment), exactly parallel to the imparted and indwelling motions of Chapter 17.
[59] The resulting scale of separability — quality, nature, vegetative soul, irrational soul, rational form — recapitulates in reverse the ladder of Chapters 9–12, now ordered by the single criterion of reversion-upon-self.
[60] The text wavers here between ὅπως and ὄντως αὐτοκίνητον; the sense in either case is the genuinely self-moved — every rational form — given to us in the most evident human experience.
[61] The dilemma is compressed in the Greek: the unmoved plenitude can be neither dispersed (the self-moved already unifies its three) nor so fused that each ceases to be each — since each self-moved each presupposes an unmoved each of its own.
[62] "The wise" are the tradition's authorities who name the first intelligible "Being" (τὸ ὄν); "concentration" renders συναίρεμα, the gathered pre-containment of the many — the same word that closed Chapter 7's account of our knowledge of the Unified.
[63] The Munich margin: "that Being is not the single principle of all." The chapter's pivot — one and being are different conceptions, and whichever is prior must be the simpler — compresses the opening arguments of Proclus's Elements of Theology into a single dilemma.
[64] The first hypothesis of the Parmenides (137c–142a) once more: Plato strips everything from the One — at the close even being, and the negation itself (142a) — but never the "one" by which the discourse proceeds. The Munich margin: "that not even the One is the single principle of all."
[65] Sophist 245a–b (the one prior to the whole that merely "has" unity); Republic VI 509b (the Good "beyond substance, exceeding it in dignity and power").
[66] The closing formula hands the treatise on: Chapter 23 opens the promised new method — through the all-perfect (τὸ παντέλειον) — beginning this time from the visible cosmos.
[67] The opening of the third method, promised at the end of Chapter 22: through the all-perfect (τὸ παντέλειον), beginning from the visible cosmos — the perceptible god of the Timaeus (92c), set before our eyes by the gods as an indication (ἔνδειξις) of the hidden all-perfection.
[68] The cosmos has the better counterpart of every faculty in us: a nature whose motion is circular, and a vegetative life that sustains rather than repairs — its filling already full, its growth already grown, its begettings (the "illuminations," the lights it generates) already begotten.
[69] ἡ ἀστροθεάμων ἱστορία: the accumulated record of astronomical observation, attesting circuits that never miss their mark.
[70] ὁ κρύφιος διάκοσμος, "the hidden ordering" or hidden world — a term colored by the Chaldaean theology, here naming the unified cosmos that precedes the differentiated one.
[71] With this apology — προπέτεια, the rashness of speech, begging the gods' pardon for its "venturesome eagerness" — Damascius closes the whole opening treatment of the Ineffable (Chapters 1–24): the three ways (through neediness, through the properties, through the all-perfect) all ending in the same silence. With Chapter 25 the treatise turns to the second principle of its inquiry, the One itself.
[72] Reading "negative" (ἀποφατικόν) with the Munich manuscript. The point that follows is more radical: the Ineffable is not a member of any scale at all — not negation, not position, not name, not thing, but a "complete removal" (παντελὴς ἀναίρεσις). There is therefore no "interval" between the Ineffable and the One to be populated.
[73] The Hamburg manuscript numbers the arguments of this chapter α′, β′, γ′… in the margin; Chapter 26 will answer them one by one.
[74] νόθος λογισμός, "bastard reasoning": from Timaeus 52b, where matter is grasped "by a kind of bastard reasoning, without perception, scarcely an object of belief." Damascius extends the term to all knowing of what offers no direct object — privation, non-being, and now the One.
[75] "Incline the radiance (αὐγή) of the soul" adapts the imagery of Republic VII 540a (turning the soul's light upward to the Good); "the flower of our unitary knowledge" is the Chaldaean "flower of intellect" (ἄνθος νοῦ), the faculty by which the Oracles say the supreme is touched.
[76] The greatest study (μέγιστον μάθημα): Republic VI 505a, of the Good; the Sophist reference is to 245a–b.
[77] The "Titanic war": the Orphic dismemberment of Dionysus by the Titans, the school's standing symbol for the soul's dispersal into division — why the gathered, unitary mode of knowing "overleaps" us.
[78] Letters VII 342a–344d: the knowledge of the fifth — the thing itself — does not admit of verbal expression like other studies.
[79] Linus, the legendary singer, credited with the verse "all things are one"; with Pythagoras he stands here for the oldest authority of the ἓν τὰ πάντα.
[80] This chapter answers the arguments of Chapter 25 in order; the Hamburg manuscript marks each rebuttal in the margin — "he objects to the first," "to the fifth," and so on.
[81] ἐπιλυγάζεται, "is overshadowed": the rare verb Kopp glosses from the lexicographers — what springs first from the Unsayable stands in its penumbra.
[82] The concentration-arguments and the analogy of being reach, at most, the summit of the supersubstantial order — not what lies beyond it.
[83] Parmenides 142a ("it is not named or spoken of, nor is it the object of opinion or knowledge"); Republic VI 508a–509b, the sun and the light of truth — turned here against knowability: the One cannot be flooded by the very light that flows from it.
[84] The text of this closing argument is rough in Kopp's sources; the drift: every conception we form of "one" is structured by its opposition to the many, whereas the conception the One would deserve must be opposite-less — so even our highest "gathering" stops at the unitary summit of being's order, beneath the simply One.
[85] The triad of reversions — substantial, vital, cognitive — is school doctrine (cf. Proclus, Elements of Theology 39); Damascius drives it one step higher: beneath and before all three lies bare union (ἕνωσις), which is no longer knowledge at all.
[86] The signature inversion of this chapter: procession cannot begin from the One, because the One never lets anything go. What initiates differentiation is the first thing capable of standing apart — not the One, which "anticipates by its unifying participation the differentiating existence" of whatever comes after (as Chapter 28 will put it).
[87] The formula echoes the close of Chapter 24: there the discourse begged the gods' pardon; here it concedes them the truth — "the gods themselves know" — while claiming for philosophy the right to bring its ὠδῖνες, its birth-pangs of perplexity, to term. Chapter 28 begins the resolution.
[88] εὐρίζωται, "it is rooted": the chapter's governing image. The not-one is a position (θέσις), not a negation — something set beside the one — yet it never leaves the One's grip: "the participation constitutes the very existence; the union constitutes the differentiation." This answers Chapter 27's aporia that nothing can proceed from the One.
[89] ὁ ἐμφανὴς εὐθυντὴρ ἁπάσης ἀληθείας, "the visible corrector of all truth": the sun of Republic VI, now used to model non-reciprocal presence — the sun is present to the blinded eye, but the eye not to the sun.
[90] Since otherness is itself a form (Sophist 254e ff.), matter cannot be "other" in its own right: the differentiation lodges wholly on the form's side. By the same one-sidedness, things are differentiated from the One without the One's being differentiated from them.
[91] The double figure — the One as each thing's "root" below and "end" above — gives the chapter's answer to how the gods' many properties leave the One undivided: it is surnamed from its participants (substantial one, vital one, intellective one) while remaining everywhere the same.
[92] A celebrated sequence: the one of man is "the truer man," the one of sun "the truer sun" — the unitary, divine counterpart of each thing — yet identical with none of them.
[93] The text at this page-turn (Kopp pp. 73–74) is uneven; the drift, supported by Kopp's Latin, is that our knowledge of the One must steer between two shipwrecks — smuggling in the multitude with "all things," and starving the One into an isolated "least one."
[94] Letters VII 341c–d: the knowledge of these things is "kindled of a sudden, as light from a leaping fire" — Damascius sharpens the figure to fire-sticks (πυρεῖα) rubbed together: the divided conceptions are the sticks; their friction strikes the light.
[95] The circle-and-center simile: the Hamburg manuscript adds in the margin a little table pairing the stages of vision (far — middle — near) with the stages of knowledge of the first One — culminating, in both columns, in "in no way."
[96] The sun analogy of Republic VI, now run forward: at the end one does not see the light but becomes it — knowledge folding into union exactly as differentiation folds into the One.
[97] ὑπεράγνοια, "ignorance surpassed" or hyper-ignorance: toward the Ineffable we have neither knowledge nor ignorance. The One, its nearest neighbor, "remains in the inner sanctuary of that silence" — the ἄδυτον of Chapter 8 again — and is overshadowed (ἐπιλυγάζεται, as in Chapter 26).
[98] A precious testimony: Proclus's Monobiblos ("the one-book work," now lost) distinguished the ἀπόρρητον ἀξίωμα — the "ineffable axiom" answering to knowledge still in labor — from the sayable axiom of articulated knowledge. Damascius's whole doctrine of the ὠδίς, the birth-pang that knows but cannot report, shelters under this distinction.
[99] Letters VII 342e–343c: the weakness of accounts lies in their giving the "of what sort" (τὸ ποιόν τι) when the soul seeks the "what" (τὸ τί) — here radicalized: both must go, and their division in us is "the Titanic affection" (the Orphic dismemberment once more).
[100] "Plato, in accord with the Oracles" (κατὰ τὰ Λόγια): the school's standing harmony of Plato with the Chaldaean Oracles — the injunction to put away one's own conceptions and meet the supreme with the soul's "flower" (cf. Chapter 25).
[101] The three questions framed here govern Chapters 30–32. The "Unified" (τὸ ἡνωμένον) is here specified as the unitary one above substance, not the substantial one-being — the distinction sharpened across the next chapters.
[102] ὁ τρίτος θεός, "the third god": the intelligible triad's third moment — limit, unlimited, and the mixed (Philebus 23c–27c, here read theologically). The Unified is the mixed: not the one, not the many, but their mixture shining forth as the existence of Being.
[103] ἰσαίτερον τοῦ ἐπίσης, "more equal than equally": a deliberate solecism (Damascius flags it, "if one may really speak so"). All things hang from the one with a participation that knows no degrees — beneath, or rather above, the ordered inequality of procession.
[104] The chapter's central account of theological language: the order we observe among effects is read back, by transfer, onto the orderless One — the "elder by nature" terms (cause, first, producer) being dedicated to it as the nearest indications, while the "younger" terms (effect, last, matter) are withheld.
[105] A play on the proverb ἀρχὴ ἥμισυ παντός, "the beginning is half of the whole" (i.e. "well begun is half done"). Damascius turns the saw into metaphysics: the principle is "half" only if it merely counterbalances its products; truly it is the whole, and more than the whole.
[106] ἀπαιώρημα, "a thing hung in suspense": the products dangle from the principle like a pendant. The producer exceeds even the causes it contains — hence "more than the all."
[107] ἡ ἐσχάτη ἴτυς τῆς ἀπλανοῦς, "the last rim of the fixed sphere": the outermost felly of the sphere of the fixed stars — the topmost item within the cosmos, with which the One is precisely not to be confused. The image carries a backdrop of the Phaedrus myth (the soul at the rim of heaven, 247b).
[108] The chapter's resolving image, gathering the whole installment: as the center holds the circle and all its radii folded up, so the Unified holds all differentiation folded; and the One simplifies even the center and what is folded within it. Hence the closing formula — the One is altogether all things, but the all things are not altogether one.
[109] ἡ προφαινομένη ἔννοια, "the fore-appearing conception": the dim, pre-articulate apprehension answering to the One (the "birth-pang" of Chapter 29), set against the διωρισμένη ἔννοια, the determinate concept that fits only determinate things. The whole chapter tests how far the names "one" and "Good" can ring true of what exceeds all determination.
[110] The aporia: if "one" and "Good" are forms counter-divided against their opposites, they are members of an order, not its principle — a difficulty answered by distinguishing the participated one (in the many) from the one-by-existence (before the many).
[111] Parmenides 142b ff. and the mutual participation of opposites; the worry that the One, as one member of the one/many opposition, cannot be the principle of both.
[112] Philebus 23c–27c, 64a ff. The "three monads in the forecourt" (ἐν προθύροις) — truth, beauty, symmetry (Philebus 65a) — are read as tokens (γνωρίσματα) set before a sanctuary whose god (the One/Good) remains hidden within.
[113] The exegesis of the Philebus mixture: the Good is invoked there only under one aspect, as gathering cause; in truth it is cause of the elements (limit, unlimited) no less than of their mixture — the "forerunning traces" being the conditions (commensurability, sympathy, the light of truth) under which a genuine mixture can arise.
[114] The chapter closes by assigning the three Philebus-monads their offices — symmetry: order; beauty: sympathetic blending; truth: existence — while insisting that in the One itself all three are present together and without articulation (ἀπορρήτως). The Hamburg and Munich margins preserve this very table.
[115] Republic VI 508d–509b: truth and being as the 'light' the Good sheds upon the intelligible — pressed here as evidence that something is imparted from the First, against the conclusion of Chapter 27.
[116] Parmenides, frr. B8 (the unmoved, indivisible One-Being) and B5; Damascius reads 'it will not cut being off from holding to being' as proof that Being does not proceed by division — a fortiori the One.
[117] The negative pole, sharpened to paradox: That neither proceeds nor remains nor reverts — the three moments of the standard procession-cycle all denied of it, being all things by what is above all things. The two poles are reconciled in Chapter 35.
[118] 'The not-even-one' (τὸ μηδὲ ἕν): the Munich reading. Even Eternity (αἰών) and the eternal stand far below the One; the trace of the One in a perishable thing cannot itself be a perishable echo (ἀπήχημα) of it.
[119] 'On this side' (ἐπὶ τάδε): matter lies below all else, an extreme residue; the inquiry concerns not this lowest trace but the One as present among the forms — the middle things participating the principle before the last things do.
[120] The chapter's hinge: all things participate the One, but by a single undivided participation — the difference falling wholly in the participants, never in the One. The reed-pen and paper, named with rare concreteness, mark the lowest, most particular end of the scale.
[121] 'But itself, which it is' (ἀλλ' ἑαυτό, ὅ ἐστιν): the One imparts nothing other than itself; there is no separate gift beside its own existence. This dissolves the dilemma of Chapter 34: the One both does and does not proceed, because what is imparted is not a differentiated emanation but the One's own undivided presence.
[122] The twin images that close the argument: the One as the root that is already the whole tree before trunk and branches, and as the center that holds all radii folded before they spread — the center not causing the spreading but being that toward which the continuous flows. (Cf. the same figure resolving Chapter 32.)
[123] Republic VI–VII again: the radiance of the soul (αὐγὴ τῆς ψυχῆς, cf. 540a and the Chaldaean flower) that must be inclined toward the light of truth — truth here answering to the sun's light rather than to the sun (the Good) itself.
[124] Philebus 23c ff.: Damascius's verdict on Plato's reticence — the three monads (the divisions of the mixed) belong to the principle after the two, not to the really first principle, which Plato left unnamed.
[125] The doctrinal core: the One does not even unify (since unifying would be one determinate act among others); it makes all things one without making. Differentiation has a distinct, lower cause (the multitude-making principle); the One is all things according to the one above all things, in that all things are one.
[126] 'Having called upon the Savior' (σωτῆρα παρακαλέσαντες): a ritual invocation of Zeus Sōtēr at the opening of a fresh start (the third libation), marking the resumptive solution after the long aporetic stretch of Chapters 34–35.
[127] The chapter's governing thesis: the One is all-making (παντοποιόν) and common-making, not the proper maker of any one thing; it imparts only itself, undetermined, and so stands apart from itself in no way — hence nothing such-as-itself is parceled out from it.
[128] ὑποστάθμη, dregs or sediment: matter as the last determination, the residue marked off after all things — yet even this is comprehended within the One's undifferenced comprehension of all-complete simplicity. The treatise defers the full treatment of matter.
[129] The uniform (ὁμοειδής) and non-uniform (ἀνομοειδής) processions: the more akin, universal generation precedes the differentiated; the figure of gods uniform everywhere versus those styled maidens or youths illustrates the contrast.
[130] The resolution of the procession-question by simultaneity: the One produces uniformly qua all-things-according-to-the-one, and non-uniformly qua before-all-things — one single procession bearing both characters at once, as being the same. The Greek shows a lacuna here, which Kopp marks.
[131] The cause beyond cause: the One is not the productive, paradigmatic, or final cause, nor the three together as one all-cause, for each of these is a determined member of a set; it presides neither as cause nor as effect, but simply and undeterminedly, as one all-things of all things.
[132] The one-sided differentiation argument from Chapter 28 returns: the things that proceed differentiate themselves from the One, as the eclipsing moon stands apart from a sun that does not move; as the form is other than matter while matter is not other in return; as the image resembles the paradigm but not conversely in the same way.
[133] A subtle qualification of the image/paradigm relation: resemblance between unequals is reciprocal but asymmetric — the image is like by falling short, the paradigm like by exceeding; each likens in its own direction.
[134] The renewed aporia: if even the One is determined off from all things (as their determining cause), how can the wholly undetermined undergo determination at all?
[135] The closing knot, left taut: there must be in the second something of the despaired-of such-as-That; yet the common and the proper are themselves determinations, so the One cannot hold a common feature and a determined one together — a tension carried forward into Chapter 37.
[136] ἡ σπαργῶσα ἀεί, τίκτειν δὲ οὐδέποτε δυναμένη ὠδίς: the birth-pang about That, 'ever in travail but never able to give birth' — the doctrine of Chapter 29 pressed to its limit. Its laboring is its only delivery.
[137] δύναμις τῇ ὑπάρξει συμπεπηγυῖα, 'a potency welded fast to the existence': the second principle as the potency of the first, hinted by 'certain holy discourses' (ἱεροὶ λόγοι) — the Chaldaean Oracles, whose triad existence–potency–intellect stands behind the whole passage.
[138] The 'excesses of speech' (ὑπερβολαί): That is not so much 'after-which' as 'than-after-which'; the second is 'of it' rather than 'from it' — grammar strained to keep procession from implying separation.
[139] From here to Chapter 41 the chapter numerals in the margin are not legible in the scan; the divisions follow the argument's seams and the per-chapter restart of Kopp's notes, anchored by his explicit 'Cap. 42' at p. 112.
[140] A precious testimony to Iamblichus: the anagōgē to the First is barred to anything that climbs alone; only what ranks itself with all things (συντάξειεν ἑαυτὸ τοῖς πᾶσιν) and runs up with all to 'the common principle of all' attains it — the metaphysical ground of theurgy's communal, cosmic sweep.
[141] The fourteen-fold denial 'according to the truer birth-pang' (κατὰ τὴν ἀληθεστέραν ὠδῖνα): same/other, like/unlike, one/many, same-rank/other-rank, before/after, first/second, cause/effect — every relational pair refused, since each lives within determination.
[142] ἡ ἑνιαία πρόοδος, 'the unitary procession': a mode of coming-forth that our triadized thinking (remaining–procession–reversion) cannot compass. Neither alternative of the dilemma — separated or not come forth — applies, because both presuppose determination.
[143] The Chaldaean-Proclan triad ὕπαρξις–δύναμις–ἐνέργεια (existence, potency, activity) is invoked and refused in the same breath: There it is 'one, not three' — and That precedes the others even as the one of the three.
[144] The chapter's signature double rule for theological statements: say all opposites of it at once, and none singly; or, more truly, not even all — only 'the one before all things, simplifying all of these together' (ἁπλωτικόν, the rare active form: making-simple).
[145] Republic VI 508e–509a and Philebus 64c–65a combined: the light of truth binds knower and known within the intelligible — so, Damascius argues, Plato's 'sun' passage reaches the principle of Being, not the One before all; the precise exegesis is deferred.
[146] The henads: the common ground by which 'all the gods are one god' is either relational (from-one, toward-one) or a true undifferenced one — the single root of the gods; but even that root is a participation of That, 'a monad of the divine number,' proceeding with what proceeds. (Cf. Proclus, Elements of Theology 113 ff.)
[147] The root-image of Chapter 35 corrected with utmost care: every root is determined against its branches; That is no root, but 'all things together with the root' — root and branches at once — and so beyond even this best of figures.
[148] The boldest statement in the treatise so far of the suspension of logic at the summit: That is beyond every opposition, 'even the contradictory one' (καὶ τῆς ἀντιφατικῆς) — neither given nor not-given, neither perishable nor imperishable. The law of contradiction itself belongs to determination.
[149] The closing clause is corrupt in both manuscripts; the drift is that our likeness and our union reach only the first principle after That, while That keeps its station 'before the one and before all things.'
[150] The αὐγὴ τῆς ψυχῆς of Republic VII 540a once more: the soul's radiance conjoins with the light from That, not with That itself — for That 'does not abide even the conjoined.' The image of the inner sanctuary (ἄδυτον) returns from Chapters 8 and 29: the second has 'not wholly stooped forth' from it.
[151] The methodological hinge of the whole stretch: conceptions must be assimilated to their objects (ἐξομοιοῦν πρὸς τὰ πράγματα) — the second principle therefore licenses positive conceptions that the First refuses.
[152] ὁ πολὺς θόρυβος, 'the great tumult': divided discourse before the One must either shatter the One into many or annihilate itself. The phrase is a small confession of the whole treatise's labor.
[153] The chapter's — and this movement's — culminating formula: our one knowledge of That is the act of dishonoring (ἀτιμάζειν) all our conceptions as unfit; and the final balance: 'simple as at-once-all, all as at-once-simple; all things as one before all things.'
[154] The opening dilemma turns Chapter 28's one-sided differentiation against the second principle itself: if even the second is differentiated from the First, the First seems dragged into mutual differentiation; if not, cause and effect collapse into indistinguishability.
[155] The 'safest formula' (ἀσφαλέστερον λέγειν): production without union and without differentiation, separation-from-all that is also presence-in-all 'in another manner of the same kind.' The triad remaining–procession–reversion is denied of That, and its proper domain — and whether it names one subsistence or three — is booked for later inquiry.
[156] ὥσπερ ἐν σκότει ἀφάσσων, 'as one groping in darkness': the license for what follows — an analogical, not an indicative, theology of the summit.
[157] The proto-triad, stated with the utmost economy: That ~ the purely remaining cause; the first procession ~ the proceeding; the third ~ the reverting — 'whence this is the first intellect,' as Chapter 45 will add. The scheme that Proclus distributes through reality is here suspended above being itself, by analogy alone.
[158] The aporia: if 'remaining' is a determination, the wholly undetermined one-all cannot be the remaining — and the first of the three after it would claim the title; but that first did not remain: it proceeded. Only the unproceeding one-all is left to anchor the analogy.
[159] The regress (something remaining before every proceeding, to infinity) is halted by decree at the one-all: 'the very thing we posited as remaining before the proceeding.' The closing formula — 'let this be carried thus far' (ἄχρι τοσούτων προήχθω) — rules a line under the whole analogical experiment.
[160] A doxographic landmark. Iamblichus, in Book 28 of his (lost) Chaldaean Theology — the 'most perfect' — posited two principles before the intelligible triad: the wholly ineffable, and the uncoordinated One. The majority after him (Syrianus and Proclus among them) set the first intelligible triad immediately after the ineffable cause. Porphyry identified the one principle of all with the Father of the intelligible triad — the chief testimony for his telescoping of the One into the summit of being.
[161] The triads aligned: Pythagorean monad–indefinite dyad–triad; Platonic limit–unlimited–mixed (Philebus); Chaldaean father–power–intellect. Before each stands the One. The Oracle quoted — 'in every cosmos shines a triad, which a monad rules' — is fr. 27 (des Places); ὁ ὑπερκόσμιος βυθός, 'the abyss above the cosmos,' is itself Chaldaean diction.
[162] The etymological argument that decides for Iamblichus: μονάς from μονή — the monad is named from remaining. The remaining principle after the one-all is therefore the monad; the dyad is the processive (and reversive); the triad is triad 'not by multitude but by its own peculiar nature'; and the third, whence reversion begins, is the first intellect.
[163] The chapter's constructive close: a law of descending principles — each is still 'all things,' but each adds a property, eldest and most generic first; the ancients' name-pairs (limit/unlimited, monad/dyad, father/power) mark exactly this first opposition. Above all leaning stands the all-one; above her, the Unsayable.
[164] The Pythagorean–Academic table of opposites (the two συστοιχίαι, columns: one/many, limit/unlimited, good/bad…) pressed into a proof from below: counter-divided columns demand counter-distinguished principles; their common ground demands the single principle before both.
[165] A rare first-person verdict, with the treatise's characteristic piety ('the truest, god would know'): Iamblichus stood alone, so far as Damascius knows, in positing the two principles beyond the intelligible — and Damascius, for all his sympathy in Chapter 45, finds the demonstrations not firm (οὐκ ἐχυρά).
[166] The reductio: if determinate names ascend, then not two principles but many — one per school (limit/unlimited, monad/dyad, father/power) — and determined ones at that; the summit of the intelligible collapses into the genera of Intellect; the One itself shrinks to a genus; and the Multitude must be enthroned beside it.
[167] The closing canon of theological method, with its fine illustration from common sense (one must not demand a 'common sense' above intellective and psychic knowing, since the psychic is the image of the intellective): determined conceptions are ladders for analogy, not freight to be carried up. The very plurality of the schools' name-pairs proves the names stay below.
[168] The chapter's governing principle: the school-vocabularies — Pythagorean (monad, indefinite dyad), Platonic (limit, unlimited), Chaldaean (father, power, aether, existence) — name different things here below, but There they are all paradigms or symbols (σύμβολα) of one and the same nature.
[169] σύνθημα, 'symbol' or token in the theurgic sense: no name discloses the first principle; each school deposits a different watchword — 'the One,' 'God,' 'Time' (Χρόνος — the first principle of Pherecydes and of the Orphic theogonies, as Chapter 50 will recall). The text of the last item is uncertain.
[170] The celebrated Egyptian testimony — among the most quoted fragments of the whole treatise: the Egyptians hymned the first principle as unsayable, naming it σκότος ἄγνωστον, 'unknowable darkness,' with the name proclaimed three times. Damascius later cites the priest Heraïscus and Egyptian cosmogony at length; here the thrice-spoken darkness stands as the perfect emblem of his own apophatic summit.
[171] The survey of Plato: Sophist (244b ff.), Republic VI (the Good as an unknowable nature beyond being), and the two readings of the Parmenides: the first hypothesis, which 'removes the is of the one,' read — in Damascius's signature exegesis — as indicating the Ineffable 'through complete negation and the removal of everything knowable'; the second hypothesis as positing the affirmative one-all, 'simplest of all things.' The one before the monad in Pythagoras, and the one of the first hypothesis, are thus symbols of the Unsayable.
[172] The closing caution: to call the elder of the two principles 'existential' (ὑπαρκτική) rather than 'productive' (παρακτική), or limit-like, is pardonable as indication but disastrous if taken simply — for every principle down to 'the base of the intelligibles' is all things equally; the differences are leanings, not allotments.
[173] The one-all heads the one-like column as multitude heads its opposite — for multitude There is a principle, 'all things according to multitude,' not the bare form of multitude. The argument completes Chapter 46's purification of the two-columns proof.
[174] πᾶσα πρόοδος δυαδική: all procession is dyadic — the axiom on which the whole chapter turns. The one is ever unsplit (ἄσχιστον) and unitive (ἑνωτικόν) of whatever multitude it enters; hence the one-all comes from the Unsayable 'not through procession but through remaining,' and there was not even a stepping-away (ἀπόβασις).
[175] The objector's trilemma — remains in itself (doubleness), in what is before it (something sayable in the unsayable), in what is after it (absurd) — dissolved by the now-familiar move: That is not the remaining thing but remaining itself, by analogy, the cause of remaining to all else; 'remaining' joins one, limit, existence, and aether in the list of analogical names.
[176] The constructive scheme, conceded to a refined opponent: the unsayable; the one-like second, embracing all; the multitude-like third, already inclining toward her offspring — related not as one to multitude, nor quite as monad to dyad or existence to power, but 'as a second whole cosmos toward a prior whole, the differentiated toward the unified' — each being all-one.
[177] At this point Kopp reports that the Hamburg codex begins a new chapter, its first letter painted in red, with the rubric ἀρχαί ('principles') in the outer margin and a little schema of the system: (a) the unsayable above all; (b) she who embraces all — one-like, paternal; (c) she who produces what comes after her — multitude-like, maternal; then the Unified, Union, the One. A precious medieval reader's map. The paternal/maternal pairing of the two principles as joint causes of the Unified is Damascius's own striking formulation: each rules both columns, not one file apiece.
[178] The closing program — to demonstrate the doctrine 'letting go the Oracles that advocate for us' (τῶν συνηγορούντων λογίων), by argument alone — announces the method of the chapters that follow.
[179] A precious testimonium: 'this demonstration has been written by Syrianus and by Proclus, on the Parmenides' — the derivation of the intelligible triad (one, relation/power, intellect-Being) from the Ἓν ὄν that opens the second hypothesis (142b ff.), in both masters' commentaries. The intermediate term, the relation (σχέσις) between pure one and unified, is the power — 'first of all relations.' The text of the sentence is rough in both manuscripts.
[180] τὸ οὐχ ἕν, the not-one: not 'the nothing,' which has no subsistence at all, but the positive nature that manifests not-one among beings — named by the schools unlimited, chaos, indefinite dyad, or multitude. Hence Being is 'mixed': unified out of one and not-one. The derivation is native (αὐτοφυέστερον) — read off the very grammar of the word ἡνωμένον, 'affected by the one.'
[181] The first syzygy of principles is the One and the Many: every other name-pair (limit/unlimited, monad/indefinite dyad, father/power) either points to this same pair or falls below it. The argument runs each alignment in parallel: if the one is before limit, before the monad, before the father — then the many is before the unlimited, the dyad, the power.
[182] The dyad 'rules all procession' for the Pythagoreans; on the Chaldaean hypothesis it is the power that 'first stands away, be it ever so little, from her proper existence' — the minimal first declension from which all procession unrolls.
[183] The two conclusions of the doing-and-suffering argument: (i) the one does not proceed — else a non-proceeding principle is needed before it, to infinity; (ii) multitude, displaying differentiation through itself, is what begins differentiation. Hence 'the much-rehearsed (θρυλλουμένη) syzygy of the two intelligible principles after the one' — the second of which is precisely what every two-principle school intends.
[184] The opponent's brief is given in full strength: the Philebus exegesis (the one before limit and unlimited, supervening on the mixed 'in the unsayable manner,' made known through the three monads — truth, beauty, symmetry — in its forecourt; cf. Chapter 33); Pythagoras; and the common conception praised by Aristotle (Metaphysics XII, closing with the verse), declaring the Homeric verdict: 'the lordship of many is not good — let there be one king' (Iliad II 204–5); with Plato's Sophist and the first hypothesis of the Parmenides, where the one is left 'stripped bare of all the others.'
[185] The counter-thesis that crowns the chapter: the one is not wholly unsayable — it is grasped neither by affirmation nor negation, nor by rational, intellective, or even substantial intellection, but 'by the unitary form of knowledge, and by the flower of such a thrust of support' — the Chaldaean flower (ἄνθος) of the soul's summit, the organ of contact with the One (cf. Chapter 25).
[186] One of the treatise's most beautiful sentences: while the purgation is still near the One, it wipes off for itself some knowledge of it; but having drawn close, it shuts its eyes (μύει — the verb of the mysteries) and, in place of knowledge, there comes to be union (ἕνωσις).
[187] The final adjudication between the names: 'one' is proper (and even then only by indication) to the elder of the two principles; the common conception of all humanity reaches as far as her — the principle truly one, crown of all things — but not to the Unsayable, which is 'unkindred to all our conceptions and altogether beyond conceiving.' The one/many opposition, which seemed to demand a one before the one, is left below among determined things.
[188] The theological dossier for the dyad: Orpheus brings forth aether and chaos after Time (Χρόνος — the first principle of the Hieronyman and Rhapsodic theogonies, which Damascius will expound at length later in the treatise); 'the gods themselves' — the Chaldaean Oracles — reveal father and power as a dyad only, after the one god; 'and all the theologies together have been handed down doing the same.'
[189] The philosophical dossier: Philebus 23c ff. paired with Philolaus's On Nature (fr. 1–2: all things from limiters and unlimiteds) — a notable early citation of the Pythagorean book. The argument: Being participates the one, hence contains a not-one; the elements limit/unlimited demand a pre-divided dyad of causes, as the one Being demands the one that 'Iamblichus posits before both.'
[190] An unnamed champion of 'the principle of Iamblichus' — the One placed midway between the wholly Unsayable and the two principles — is quoted at length; possibly a master in the school's living memory. The image of the two channels (ὀχετοί) parceling out every opposition beneath the two principles, with the single summit as cause of connate growth (σύμφυσις), structures the next three chapters.
[191] The descending degrees within the concession: the henad before the two is all things equally; the first of the two all things 'according to the more limit-like'; the second all things 'according to the more unlimited' — exactly the leanings-without-allotments doctrine of Chapter 47.
[192] The triadic alignment from below: the limit-like principle as of things remaining, the second as of things proceeding, the third — standing at Being — as of things reverting; with the common summit above all three 'not as of things presided over, but only as of things subsisting.' The chapter closes by turning the more-and-less against the scheme: where there is no formal difference, what measures degree?
[193] The methodological reply, stated as a canon of purification (διακαθαίρειν): every conception ascends from the determined; we therefore say 'the one and the all together' — the all breaking the one's partiality, the one's simplicity dissolving the all's compositeness. The formula condenses the whole apparatus of Chapters 5–8.
[194] The construction conceded in its strongest form: two counter-divided causes over the two files; above them, one cause of their connate growth and of the whole middle file of composites at every level — 'the whole before the parts, the unified before the differentiated, one principle before the two.' This 'simply one' is Iamblichus's middle principle; the two beneath it are Limit and Unlimited, or the One-opposed-to-many and the Many.
[195] The dilemma that breaks the construction: the cause of the connate whole is either itself connate (then not simply one, and a simply one stands before it) or simply one (then not the cause of connate growth) — either way two middle principles appear between the Unsayable and the two, 'and no longer one, according to Iamblichus.'
[196] The opponent's last stand — the simplicity and the connate summit are the same nature 'holding together the twin procession' — is allowed as far as it goes, then capped: a monad that heads a double column cannot be the simplest one; it is the all-one, yes, but equally the connate growth (σύμφυσις) of the two files. The refutation proper follows in five points.
[197] First point: a single counter-division — however comprehensive — exhibits all things under just two characters; the true ascent must 'unfold' (ἀναπλοῦσθαι, the verb of Chapter 8's resolution) from all things without remainder to the single cause.
[198] Second point, with the treatise's second and fuller Egyptian testimony. Pythagoras's 'one' was a stammer of necessity — 'having nothing else by which to utter her to another'; we now dishonor even the one (the verb ἀτιμάζειν of Chapter 41 returns), leaving her 'made august with the Unsayable alone.' The Egyptians did the same: unknowable darkness, thrice proclaimed; darkness beyond all intellection (σκότος ὑπὲρ νόησιν πᾶσαν); the great concealment (κρύψις μεγάλη) — names that dramatize our own unknowing rather than describe her. Compare Chapter 47.
[199] Third point: the regress. The one-before-both stands in counter-division toward the dyad of channels beneath it; that opposition demands a prior one, and so on to infinity — the same weapon that halted the remaining-regress in Chapter 44, now turned against Iamblichus's middle.
[200] Fourth point: counter-division as such is offspring of the multitude-making principle; what the scheme calls its 'one' summit is only the monad of the counter-division — connate growth, offspring of Limit — not the simply one. The pair one/many remains 'the most principle-like' of all the ranked names.
[201] The chapter's close locates differentiation in the procession of the intelligible: in Being it lies gathered, undifferentiated — the sole connate growth of all; the middle order is the preparation of differentiation, 'differentiating and not yet bearing anything differentiated'; actual counter-division begins from the third intelligible order, 'hymned as the Fount of founts' (πηγὴ τῶν πηγῶν) — the Chaldaean title (cf. Or. Chald. fr. 30: 'fount of founts, womb that holds all things together').
[202] The fifth and culminating point introduces the treatise's technical name for Being: τὸ ἕνωμα, the union-mass of all — what is all things unifiedly, 'affected by the one yet not one,' one-and-not-one with neither yet determined: hence deserving only the name Unified (ἡνωμένον).
[203] The second principle in her own nature: many only, insofar as she is at all — hence unlimited by herself; 'multitude conceived without the one is infinitely infinite — the unweighable gaping void (ἀστάθμητος ἀχάνεια) of the unlimited.' One of Damascius's most vertiginous phrases.
[204] The doctrine of names by existence: the unlimited is one only by participation, one-many by property; the first is one only by property and according to existence, nothing by participation — 'wherefore that principle is named Existence (ὕπαρξις), because it is only according to existence.' The Chaldaean title of the summit is thus given its strict sense.
[205] The second principle's three properties derived: the dyadic (it first appeared in her), the processive (she first proceeded), and the property of Chaos — 'because she first contained the one before her, and first stepped out of the one': the gaping receptacle of the Orphic and Hesiodic cosmogonies read as the multitude-principle.
[206] The first Orphic exegesis of the treatise: 'the theologian hymns Metis first, bearing the seed of gods' — Phanes-Metis of the Rhapsodies, 'called by the gods themselves' (in the Oracles) 'fount of all the fontal world-orders' (πηγὴ τῶν πηγαίων διακόσμων, cf. fr. 30 des Places). The grades: Metis revealed; 'the Metis yet in the womb'; the intelligible middleness pregnant with metis; and before her Being itself, 'the world-order hidden in very truth' (ὁ κρύφιος διάκοσμος — the κρύφιος τάξις of the Iamblichean system).
[207] 'Let us bring on the sixth generation of the demonstration' — a learned play on the Orphic verse 'in the sixth generation cease the order of song.' The summary table of names: the first principle, One before all; the second, All things; the third, One-All according to union. The one is 'all things according to cause' only if cause is unsaid: 'the one alone, solitary, all-bearing' (πάμφορον).
[208] The Chaldaean revelation invoked and immediately qualified: 'the gods themselves, conversing with men, declared the three principles to stand as Intellect and Power and Father' — existence, the power of the existence, the intellection of the power. But even this is 'not truly true' of them: the determination of father–power–intellect first appears in the third intelligible order; even cause-and-effect is not determined in the summit — 'for not even Iamblichus judged the principle there to be determined.'
[209] The argument's astonishing terminus: among the intelligibles all union precedes opposition; before the whole unified substance, therefore, 'the two are assuredly — one.'
[210] The Iamblichus dictum, one of the treatise's finest testimonia: 'not even by the watchtowers (περιωπαί) of intellect is the summit of the intelligible intellected; rather, intellect must fold its own intellections together (συμπτύξαι) into the intelligible, if, being gathered, it is to cast itself in whatever manner upon the wholly gathered.' Knowledge of the summit is by contraction, not by survey.
[211] The canon of catachresis: we misuse (καταχρώμεθα) all names There — 'two,' 'one,' 'monad,' 'dyad' — since none of our intellections grasps those natures; every name is a goad that 'compels our surmise to flee up into the undetermined and the more nobly born.' Not two as two monads; better, one dyadic nature — and even that fails, since every such one is a particular one.
[212] The three ascents ranked: from the two columns brought to their twin crest; from the whole plenitudes and cosmoi everywhere, 'by steps thus great'; and — grandest and most worthy of the height — from all things simply, surmising the principles as beyond even the name and thing of principle and cause. The topology recapped: in the limit of the intelligibles these are determined; in the middleness, being-determined according to the still-laboring birth-pang; in the summit, gathered into the union-mass of all.
[213] The final table, matching the Hamburg codex's marginal rubric at this point (a: one-all; b: all-one; c: the first composite, union-mass out of one and all, the unified — Being, the Mixed): the first principle is one-all (ἓν πάντα), the second all-one (πάντα ἕν), and the third the Unified, ἕνωμα ἐξ ἑνὸς καὶ πάντων — 'which indeed we also call Being.' The transition to the treatise's third great division, On the Unified, is announced.
[214] The third division of the treatise opens — the Hamburg codex sets the rubric 'On the Unified' (περὶ τοῦ ἡνωμένου) in red at this point. The Mixed: Plato's μικτόν of the Philebus, traced back to Philolaus (fr. 1–2: Being 'compacted out of limiters and unlimiteds') and the Pythagorean unified triad after monad and indefinite dyad. The Orphic verse — 'Then great Chronos fashioned in divine aether a silvery-white egg' (the cosmic egg of the Rhapsodies) — is pressed philologically: ἔτευξε, 'fashioned,' means crafted, not begotten, and the crafted is mixed of matter and form at the least.
[215] The opening aporia — why is the Unified not immediately after the One, since it is what 'first has been affected by the one'? — generates the brilliant false solution: the second principle herself, multitude participating the one, would be the unified, 'having wished to become unlimited, but fettered by the participation of the one.' The refutation: existence and participation are not coordinate, hence cannot be elements of a mixture.
[216] Why the Unified is third: unification requires several things (πλείω), and the several first arise by participation of manyness — hence after the multitude-principle. The second principle 'participates the one — for she too became one — but, being many by her property alone, she does not have union. For union is where there was division of several.'
[217] The regress that guards the door: if the elements in the mixed need two principles, the mixed itself would need a proper 'mixed' principle before the two — and so on forever; 'not even those philosophers who do these things' (the Platonists reading the Philebus) posit a mixed before the two principles. And each principle is principle of all elements, not one apiece — the constant rule since Chapter 48.
[218] The genesis of the Mixed in four prepositions: from the first principle uniformly, from the second dyadically, from both heteroform-wise (mixed from unmixed) and homoform-wise (one-all and many-all). Then the marvelous dynamic clause: the two participations act back upon one another (ἀντιδρῶσιν εἰς ἀλλήλας) — the one is multiplied, the many gathered; union is 'a being-affected of the one in multitude,' differentiation 'a being-affected of the many in the one'; their meeting compacts the whole mixed.
[219] The capstone: the mixed is αὐθυπόστατον, self-subsistent — it 'projected itself from itself' and co-divides its own elements within itself, as the whole apportions its own parts; 'before the divided, always, the undivided subsists.'
[220] The clean production-scheme first proposed: the One brings forth the union-mass (the mixed itself), the principle of the many its elemental multitude — 'and as the one principle supports the other's subsistence, so the union-mass co-establishes the multitude of the elements.'
[221] The alternatives canvassed and superposed rather than decided: the elements from the two principles (but not one apiece); from the mixed itself, 'according to its own twin single nature' — multiplying by its appearance of multitude, unifying by the dominance of the one; or from the second principle dividing them within the third. The constant: 'the connate growth is before the growing-apart.'
[222] The whole/parts/both-together regress, and the taxonomy of pseudo-composites: cause-and-effect, user-and-instrument, paradigm-and-image are 'both-togethers' only by relation (σχέσις), not by substantial co-ordering — a distinction of lasting importance for the school's mereology.
[223] The case of intellect as the true mean: its unified and differentiated are not parts but plenitudes (πληρώματα), 'the one co-subsisting out of the other, as heaven to the sub-heavenly place' — the produced plenitude differentiated and co-established by what pre-subsists from the separate cause. Even the visible cosmos divides into two most-generic 'whole-like parts.'
[224] The triple taxonomy, matched by a marginal table in both manuscripts: elements — gathered, con-fused, no property showing; parts — divided yet straining back toward the whole; forms — each circumscribing itself by its own shape. Proportionally: forms shine forth in the third intelligible order, parts in the middle, elements in the summit.
[225] In the summit 'all has been drunk down (καταπέποται) by the single union of the mixed': the multitude There is 'much only, not several things — like one water, much-divisible (ἓν ὕδωρ πολυδιάκριτον)' — perhaps the most quoted image of the whole doctrine of the Unified.
[226] The grand recapitulation of the three principles as three simplicities: the mixed, all things 'according to co-ordering and compaction'; the second, all according to 'the indeterminacy superior to every bound — for even the embrace of all things is a kind of bound'; the first, all according to the simplicity of the one 'not even poured out into the many.' Then the great image: the unlimited nature as an outpouring (χύσις) that is 'a kind of flowing (ῥύσις) of the one,' and the Unified as that flow congealed (πῆξις) — Being as frozen procession.
[227] The chapter — and the whole aporetic of the Mixed — closes in prayer: forgiveness is begged of the gods 'for the weakness of such conceptions, and still more of the expressions,' since without 'this counter-rampart of arguments and this frankly metaphorical necessity' nothing of the first principles could be indicated at all. 'May the gods, then, be truly gracious.'
[228] The doctrine of Chapters 55–56 re-run through the two other canonical pairs. With Limit and Unlimitedness (the Philebus pair): the mixed is the Limited (τὸ πεπερασμένον) — the outpouring of unlimitedness pinned down (καταπηγνύντες, the congealing image again) by the limit-like bond; neither limit nor unlimitedness but the both-together, conceived as simple and prior to the division of both. With monad and indefinite dyad (the Pythagorean pair): the unified triad, 'not composed out of three, but being the very one of the triad — one triadic property furnishing all things according to this one.'
[229] The double road restated with the treatise's signature verbs: downward, the third subsists from the principles; upward, we return by resolution (κατὰ ἀνάλυσιν), folding together (συμπτύσσοντες — Iamblichus's verb from Chapter 54) the many differentiations into the many unions, the one differentiation-before-the-many into the one union-before-the-many, and their very counter-division into the un-opposed unified summit.
[230] The great monad analogy. The mixed is the union-mass of all, before all the things mixed, 'as the monad is every number': the number proceeding from her never unrolls (ἀνελίξει) what is gathered in her. Hence the mixed is 'super-simplified beyond all after it' while gathering the unlimitedness of all that arises upon it — a monad in the truest sense, not the arithmetical principle ('many removes below') but by indication; for 'the monad before number is a concretion (σύγκρισις) of the one and the many, as that nature is of the two principles.' Intelligible number — the doctrine made famous by Iamblichus — is deferred.
[231] The monad-mixed contains no plurality of causes: 'there is no differentiation of the many causes There — but one all-working (παντουργόν) cause; or rather, no cause other than herself. For she is the nature now made known: the fount of all things, not according to the one cause contained in her, but according to her own existence (καθ' ὕπαρξιν).' The doctrine of Chapter 53 — names by existence — completes itself.
[232] The closing aporia-set sorts the candidate analyses of the multitude There: out of forms (that is intellect's mixed), out of parts (the whole's, or the middle's, gathering), out of elements (triply refused — and 'many' itself was only an indication, since elements, parts, and forms are first determined in intellect, 'I mean their first causes'). The promised precision is the coming doctrine of the intelligible orders.
[233] The chapter's reward, after such austerity: the mixed as 'one offspring, the very first-born of all things, from parents' — the two principles as father and mother — 'he would not throw far from the surmise that is possible.' The genealogical image the theologies use (and which Chapter 50 reported from the Oracles) is thus licensed, by indication, at the very point of greatest abstraction. The final scholion distinguishes the appearance of multitude in the Unified (which belongs to the simpler many before it) from the Unified's own differentiation — 'many unifieds,' the plural henads to come.
[234] The chapter the Hamburg codex rubricates in red: in how many ways Being is said (ποσαχῶς τὸ ὄν) — the Munich margin glosses: why the third henad is called Being and substance. The four senses: (i) eidetic Being, one genus among the five (the megista gene), opposed to not-being — ranked among the generic forms before the hypotheses of the Parmenides; (ii) the connate-whole plenitude of the genera, 'which we peculiarly call presence (παρουσία), with Plotinus' — the Sophist's Being as 'many things affected by the one'; (iii) the whole before soul, the substance of the Republic, toward which soul is 'the first generation'; (iv) the summit of the whole intelligible — unmoved in the Sophist, the One-Being of the second hypothesis, 'hymned as substance at the very opening.'
[235] The ascent uses two senses at once: the simple, from the genus (as the one led to the simply one); the entire and all-full, from the substance-out-of-all, 'a complete whole cosmos.' Hence the unified principle is justly called by both names — and the rule follows: before every multitude is the gathering of that multitude, eidetic of forms, generic of genera.
[236] The argument from namelessness, with the treatise's homeliest example. Our body, compounded of the four elements, has no proper name: 'body' belongs to each simple; 'earthy, wet, pneumatic, airy, fiery, warm' name the whole from one ingredient; 'human' and 'animal' are the supervening property, as form upon matter — 'while matter, by herself, is nameless.' Even some forms lack names, 'as that man says' (Aristotle) of the genus of hot and cold. If partial gatherings defeat language, how should 'the straitened (ἀπεστενωμένη) peculiarity of names' disclose the complete unified simplicity before all?
[237] The form-giving property against its elements: she 'characterizes, gathers, and alters the elements toward herself, sufficing for all by her own simplicity' — and so is more entire than any element. Then the unforgettable formula: 'the four elements subsist humanly, or horsely, or lunarly, or solarly (ἀνθρωπείως ἢ ἱππείως ἢ σεληνιακῶς ἢ ἡλιακῶς)' — the whole-of-both being the form, genus, intellect, animal, life, or Being. The adverbs do the metaphysics: constituents exist in the mode of the whole that owns them.
[238] No composition follows: each form is one by its property, many by its co-seated elements — 'the many proceeding from the one and remaining in the one.' Intellect brings forth its own multitude from its own gathering, and every form imitates the whole intellect in begetting its own. The closing proportion stacks the five derivations — many from one, elements from a unified, parts from a whole, genera from composite substance, forms from intellect — 'but these things belong to a later stage': the program of the doctrine of the intelligible orders.
[239] One of the most beautiful epistemological images in the treatise. The properties we name reach us 'narrowed from afar into the differentiated and as it were atomic character of our conceptions' — as mountains from a distance look smallest and unarticulated, and as the lights of stars, sun, and moon — 'the most visible of all things' — are 'driven together into something narrow and faint and commensurate with us, because of the efflux of the appearances as from the greatest distance.' So 'the eyes of our soul' suffer before 'the radiance (μαρμαρυγή) of the forms' — the word is Plato's, for the dazzle that blinds the cave-dweller turned toward the light.
[240] The technical coinage: are our simple properties ἀπομυουρισμοί — taperings-off, mouse-tail diminutions — of the entire plenitudes There? The answer is double: to us, yes; but There too the simple properties shine forth, more richly and more distinctly, 'dominating all their companions by their own light' — which is why they alone carry to us across the distance while the rest are quenched, as the general features of far mountains run ahead and the particulars hide. Our names are not falsifications but survivals: what reaches us is what shines strongest.
[241] The resumption settles the question of the name: the summit is called Being and Substance not from one conspicuous property — all properties belong to differentiation — but because it is all things and principle of and before all: 'as all these are severally, so is that nature all of them in concert (ὁμοθυμαδόν).' The name itself is an indication taken from the highest of her offspring — Being, the nature 'allotted second after the One; for that name befitted the first principle.'
[242] The botanical figure perfected: the single fount, the root that has never departed from the one (ἀνεκφοίτητος τοῦ ἑνός — the school's word for unbroken procession), unified over the countless branches that grow from her; and between root and branches 'something like a trunk, which is not yet branches' — the middle order, partial already, but not yet plural.
[243] The chapter closes on Iamblichus's thesis, proclaimed 'in many places': the intelligible has its substance in the one and about the one (ἐν τῷ ἑνὶ καὶ περὶ τὸ ἕν). As the name One is no determined thing but an indication leading to the before-all, so Being — 'constituted from That and about That' — is none of the many, and is viewed not according to being alone but by indication of 'the nature that has gathered all things at once.' Every name, like every definition, 'barely lays hold of one property'; the whole-together stays nameless; and the double ascent is enjoined — to the unitary crown from the differentiated henads, to the substantial from the substances.
[244] The genesis of Being as a double flight and a single eagerness. Each prior principle 'fled away from being, in the better manner': the second into 'the gaping void of multitude, poured out to infinity, nowhere able to come to a stand'; the first into the simplicity of the one, 'having wished to be nothing other than one — as indeed not even having wished to be.' The third, 'first constituted and eager to subsist (ὑποστῆναι σπουδάσασα),' furnished the principle of Being. In it the one is affected by the many and the many 'twisted together according to the necessity of the one, which ever bounds what proceeds'; 'and Being bloomed forth (ἐπήνθησε) upon the constitution and the subsistence.'
[245] The second derivation completes the picture: the many proceed about the one and are 'called back toward union, because the second principle too is seated in the first.' Being is then defined by double ecstasy: 'having stood out from the one, having stood out from the many, becoming an other, a third, after both' — nameless like its parents, and hymned by indication as substance and Being because it is the first unified.
[246] The doubling of every term — unitary versus substantial — defended by a ladder of analogies: extended body versus the bodiless body 'according to the paradigmatic property'; soul as 'first generation' versus soul as intellect and god; the paradigm itself (the beautiful itself, the just itself) as 'the preconception in god, and god, as Parmenides says' — supersubstantial yet still beautiful and just, 'the unitary before the eidetic'; intellect as substance versus the henad projecting intellect's character. The unitary Being is mixed 'according to the property alone': a triadic One, not the simply one.
[247] The henadic arithmetic, stated with precision: number is out of monads, multitude out of henads; 'the monad is many removes below the henad.' The unitary unified is triad and mixed by property alone; Being proper is unified also by subsistence, its several differentiated 'not by number but by multitude — or rather not even as the scattered, but as what has grown together and is utterly unified.'
[248] The astonishing aside: 'the monad is somehow Titanic (τιτανική)' — isolated toward determination, as the Titans in the Orphic myth are the agents of division and dismemberment. By contrast, each of the several There 'does not even wish to be each, but also all the others — one in place of all, having gathered all': they are 'the first fragments (κέρματα) of the one,' compacted by the union before all differentiation, which the one There is 'only in labor with.'
[249] The aporia-set held over: whether each is one and not yet unified; whether the unified is itself 'the birth-pang of the one toward differentiation — the one that has conceived (κεκυηκός) the many and so has stood out from the one'; the many points that are not a line; self-complete versus incomplete; how the many gods of the third are hymned as one god; and how the several can be conceived before the mixed at all, when the common always precedes the proper There.
[250] The resolution opens with an invocation — god is called to take part and to forgive a discourse 'dragged aside through its own weakness' — and closes with Parmenides B8.25: ἐὸν γὰρ ἐόντι πελάζει, 'for being draws nigh to being.' The unified is a mean between the one and the differentiated many, carrying 'an appearance of differentiation, not in reality differentiation'; Being neither refuses multiplication, as the one does, nor admits differentiation; and so, with the unified so understood, 'the perplexities no longer have any room.'
[251] The new approach (ἐπιβολή) starts from the Sophist's mark of the real: that is, which can do and act. Distributed over the triad 'as in the Oracles': the first is viewed according to existence (ὕπαρξις), the second 'plainly so called' according to power (δύναμις), the third adds activity (ἐνέργεια) — and is therefore substance and Being: existing, empowered, and acting at once. Each principle is the universal cause in its register: subsistence-making, empowering, awakening-into-activity.
[252] The refinement: the first substance does not lack power and activity but possesses them con-substantiated (συνουσιωμένα), 'one with the substance' — by which she begets the differentiated power and activity after her, her 'stretching-out' (ἐκτένεια). Above her: power-with-existence only; above that, existence only — 'the simplest of all things.'
[253] The treatise's most direct citation of Iamblichus's lost On the Gods (ἐν τῇ Περὶ θεῶν): is existing (ὑπάρχειν) other than being (εἶναι)? Damascius's answer: being is denominated from substance; substance, even taken at its summit, is con-substantiated out of three characters — the subsistence-making (= existing, sometimes called being), the powerful ('the fertile element of existence'), the active ('stretching toward the outside, displaying its own use'). Separated in conception, these yield the ascent by indication: from bare existing to the first principle, from power-with-existence to the second. Kopp's text here prints 'to the third' with signs of disturbance in his apparatus; the symmetry of the passage (and the doctrine throughout the chapter) requires the second, the clause for activity having apparently fallen out.
[254] The distribution-by-dominance across the intelligible: in Being, power and activity exist according to existence; in the second order, existence and activity according to power ('all things stretch out into what is being differentiated'); in the third, existence and power according to activity — 'by now a limit of the intelligible, stretched toward what is outside.' Hence the magnificent thesis: the first of all activities is reversion — 'that of the second is not yet activity, for there is not yet a standing-away from being, only a preparation; that of the first is not even a preparation for standing away, but being only.'
[255] The recapitulation 'more unsayably, by indication': the active gives form to the third (though grown together with existence); the second is power as 'the first stretching-out'; the first is existence because 'the one gives subsistence to all things, while to it nothing gives subsistence — for it would no longer be one, if it were itself something and participated in a giver of subsistence before itself.' Q.E.D.: Being is the third principle.
[256] The Chaldaean coda: the first intellect of the hymned triad (father–power–intellect) is the same third principle. 'Intellect first stood away from its cause, and turned back toward it, and exercised this first activity… reversion is the setting-right (ἐπανόρθωσις) of the standing-out (ἔκστασις).' Being is what 'first escaped the principles that pour over it — bound and unboundedness — having first become a determined one, congealed (παγέν) into subsistence': the πῆξις image of Chapter 56 again. So the intelligible intellect is 'substantial intellect, characterized not by intellection but by being' — 'and if Amelius wishes to speak in this way, let him call intellect this': a dry nod to Plotinus's colleague and his notorious triad of intellects.
[257] The new chapter sets the semantic ground: Being is 'the property signifying the being of each thing,' and properties are known through themselves, not by analysis — 'man signifies what it is more than rational mortal animal.' Then the grammatical image: as the copula is is the bond (σύνδεσμος) of verbs and nouns, so Being is the bond of all forms, 'a root of every form' — with the addendum that the one is 'a root even of this root, a simpler one.'
[258] The Sophist (247d–e) definition — Being as 'what is able to act and to suffer' — is examined with care: Plato shied from defining the cause as standing or moved; failing a common term over acting-and-suffering, 'he fled down upon the power.' But this explains the prior by the posterior: 'power is activity still remaining within; activity is power gone forth toward the outside; substance is power remaining wholly within, preparing itself for motion' — a perfect interiorization series.
[259] The remarkable Peripatetic testimonium: Strato of Lampsacus 'declared Being to be remaining (τὸ μένειν), since he saw that power is the stretching-out (ἐκτένεια) of Being.' Damascius's refutation: a thing must first be, then remain or move; remaining has being-moved as its opposite, while being has either no opposite or only not-being. Defining Being as subsistence (ὑπόστασις) collapses into Strato's thesis, since 'to subsist' (ὑφεστάναι) is denominated from standing — and any attempt to give it independent sense circles back to the is.
[260] The etymological excursus, tabulated in the margins of both manuscripts: ὑπάρχειν (existing) — as ranked under the first principle (ὑπό + ἀρχή); ὑφεστάναι (subsisting) — as not yet having made procession; τελέθειν — 'because it runs (θεῖ) toward a telos, and the telos is near,' with the lovely aside that it is disputable whether the striving is for being or for the One alone (for well-being, it is for both-together); πέλειν — 'because it draws nigh (πελάζει) and wishes to be near (πέλας) the one'; σώζεσθαι — because being is 'intact and sound (σῶον) and lacks nothing, for it is all things'; τυγχάνειν — because being is 'attaining of the common telos and filled full (διακορές) of the good.' Each verb of being secretes a doctrine of procession and reversion.
[261] The Cratylus etymology (401d, 421b–c): Being (ὄν) from going (ἰέναι) — the participle ἰόν shedding its iota; Damascius adds the philological refinement that the older spelling with the diphthong makes the derivation 'still more analogous,' citing Homer's ἴομεν ('let us go, as he commanded, up through the thickets'). The etymology converges with the Sophist: Being as what is of a nature to act — being is going, actuality, not stasis.
[262] The most personal moment in the treatise so far: 'as a certain dream also disclosed to me, saying that Being is this: what of each thing is the in-actuality (τὸ ἐνεργείᾳ).' The Hamburg codex notes in red in the margin: behold the dream about Being — which belongs to the philosopher. Late Athenian Platonism took such dream-disclosures seriously as divine instruction; Damascius cites his as one cites an authority.
[263] The systematic disentangling of activity from motion, in three steps: the genera (sameness, otherness, one, many, limit, unlimited — and rest and motion) participate one another by their very subsistence, before all power and activity; powers and activities themselves participate the genera; and the oppositional geometry differs — substance versus activity with power as their mean, but motion versus rest alone, with no mean and no relation to substance.
[264] The linguistic argument (standing, resting, sleeping are acts but not movements) drives to the reductio: if nothing opposes activity-and-power except substance, then substance would be rest — 'and this, I suppose, is the thesis of Strato, which did not seem sound.' The chapter closes with the Empedoclean flourish: each genus is first itself, 'and thereupon all things become of one another, according to the reciprocal exchange of friendship (κατὰ τὴν τῆς φιλίας ἀντίδοσιν)' — Love as the mutual participation of the genera; hence motion is not Being's offspring: 'how shall the effect impart anything to its cause — the begotten to its begetter?'
[265] The aporia of suffering opens the chapter: if Being is 'what can act and suffer,' and activity is 'the fulfillment of the proper work (ἀποπλήρωσις τοῦ οἰκείου ἔργου),' then even the patient acts in suffering — its suffering is its work, 'as one might say of matter that its one and only work is to suffer.' The dilemma of work and working follows: if work = working, substance and rest and every form turn out to be activities; if work is other than the working, motion itself has a work (to move the things that are) and hence an activity over and above itself.
[266] The choreographic image that decides the analysis: where the work lies in the very rendering — 'as the dancing is the dance (τὸ ὀρχεῖσθαι ἡ ὄρχησις)' — still every activity is for the sake of something and is not, primarily, its own end. And since motion imparts its character as rest imparts standing, motion acts just as rest does — 'activity, therefore, is not motion': the chapter's refrain against the identification, common since Aristotle, of ἐνέργεια with κίνησις.
[267] The argument from multiplicity: motion qua motion is just motion, but activity 'connotes the work being accomplished' and is as manifold as its agents — 'the activity of a man is a man acting, and that of a horse, a horse; for activity, too, is a kind of whole form.' Activity is composite for composites and simple for simples; even motion has its activity.
[268] The polemical aside — 'these things have been said even beyond measure, because of the disagreement with the philosophers, who are accustomed to say constantly that activity and motion are one' — targets the standing identification in the schools (Plotinus had already played energeia against kinesis; Damascius radicalizes the separation). The closing question — is activity a form participated, or 'the stretched-out element of each thing, a procession of each from itself into itself, or toward another?' — is handed to the next chapter, which raises the same difficulties about power.
[269] The chapter opens by extending Chapter 64's closing dilemma to power, and immediately generalizes: procession, differentiation, and 'everything that has a marked-off conception' is a property, a real difference 'from a principle of its own peculiar manner, not out of the spontaneous (ἐκ τοῦ αὐτομάτου) — if there is a difference of things and not of names only.' Damascius's realism about distinctions in one sentence.
[270] The doctrinal anchor, attributed to 'the philosophers themselves' (the Iamblichean school): power begins from the first Power, existence from the first Existence, activity from the third and mixed — proof again that activity is not motion, 'for the genera of Being are not yet There.' Then the beautiful resolution of the resulting aporia: in the first mixed the three are not arranged but folded together (συνεπτύχθαι — Iamblichus's verb once more), 'not yet even differentiated: the three being one, the so-called mixed.'
[271] The scale of activities: intellect's activity is concurrent and compacted with its substance; Being's activity is its substance; life's 'carries an appearance of separation' (life lives); souls have both concurrent activities and activities 'that have flowed from the substance' — as the enmattered forms, 'where the substances themselves have flowed out toward the exterior': the degrees of self-coincidence from Being down to body.
[272] The genus Being vindicated as quasi-unified: in it, being = the being, activity = the substance; like the genus one, it is 'composite by rank, simple by property.' But the very comparison breeds the next aporia.
[273] The convicting argument: the genus Being is counter-divided against the other genera and counter-participates them — so not a true unified; just as the genus one 'is caught out: not really one.' Yet each 'wishes to be' its pure self according to its 'fore-shining nature,' and precisely so serves as the best indication of its principle: Being, most unified of the genera, points to the unified summit. The verb ἐκμηρύεται — the things from the principles are 'wound off' them like thread from a spindle — is one of Damascius's finest coinages.
[274] The summit re-secured: the unified principle stands not according to the unified-opposed-to-differentiated but 'above both and above all, having gathered all in itself' — as the one before all 'has snatched itself away (ἁρπάσαν ἑαυτό) before all things.' Lacking conceptions for such transcendences, we 'compel the things we conceive to take the lower honor' — the canon of indication restated.
[275] The closing aporia coins a term: if every form is mixed through some one existence, the unified is the summit of a simply mixed whose property — 'the simple property of the form or genus' by which a thing is called composite — 'might be called mixedness (μικτότης), set in opposition to simplicity.' Deferred, like intelligible number, to a later stage.
[276] The resumption fixes the dream-doctrine of Chapter 63 in technical form: Being is 'what of each thing is in actuality,' and the in-actuality (τὸ ἐνεργείᾳ) means 'the already-proper existence of each thing, according to which it stands.' The aside that the in-potency stands 'relative to the in-actuality and not after it' guards against the Aristotelian priority of potency in things that develop.
[277] The simply Being as simply activity: the third stood first by activity, the second by power, the first by bare existence — 'by indication only,' since There the three coexist: 'she is existence alone, having in mere existing alone both the being-able and the acting; for by being she both is able and acts; and the three are being alone.' The most compact statement of the doctrine of the con-substantiated triad.
[278] The scholion 'as that man says' is Plotinus — intellect acting by its very substance. In the summit, by contrast, 'power and activity are drunk down (καταπίνεται) by the existence': the verb of Chapter 56 again. Hence the existence There 'is not bare, but already substance.'
[279] One of the great sentences of the treatise: That is 'one all-holding (παντοῦχος) gathering above all things, which we do not yet know, because we are unable to bring forward an intuition complete and made equal to it; and setting ourselves to conceive it as we are able, we partition it — or rather, we are ourselves partitioned about it (περὶ αὐτὴν μεριζόμεθα).' The failure of knowledge is a fragmentation of the knower, not of the known.
[280] The terminological climax: the mean of one and Being, 'which one would call the unified for lack (ἀπορίᾳ) of a proper name.' Plato saw it: the Parmenides calls it 'neither one nor being, but the whole One Being (ἓν ὄν), through lack of a proper appellation, wishing to present the mean from its extremes' — exactly as the Timaeus (35a) presents soul as 'between the partless substance and the substance partitioned about bodies,' though soul too 'is one single nature, not compounded from the extremes.'
[281] The closing thesis against 'the philosophers' (Proclus's school and its exegesis of the second hypothesis): the One Being is 'not some composite, nor two things, the one leading and the other following, but one nature of both, in the middle of the one and of Being: already slackened (χαλάσασα) from the simplicity of the one, and not yet projecting the gathering of Being.' Slackening without yet gathering — procession caught at its first instant.
[282] The double question — why Being? why intelligible? — when That is all things and cause of intellectual and sensible alike. The Iamblichus testimonium is decisive: the intelligible 'has its subsistence about the one and is never-departing (ἀνεκφοίτητον) from the one' — read as agreeing with Damascius's One Being: 'not yet really being, nor yet some one, but ranked through the middle of both.'
[283] The further Iamblichean datum: substance is counter-distinguished from the one only at the summit of the intellectuals, where 'the divine otherness' first shines forth — exactly where Chapter 68 will locate the vehicle and the rider. Below that line, the Parmenides' cutting of the One Being (142d ff.) is read as Damascius requires: each portion is again a one-being; 'neither is being without the one, nor the one without it'; apparent mutual participation is only 'disclosive of the nameless meanness' — illustrated by the partless and partible in soul, each of which must be conceived 'according to the single both-together nature.'
[284] The argument that the unified is intelligible only as it is Being: the knowable is counter-divided against knowledge, but That is counter-distinguished against nothing; nothing in it is transparent. Then the magnificent doubled formula: 'the most venerable things are drunk down within it (ἐγκαταπέποται)' — or, corrected, are 'the more appropriated and assimilated to it; wherefore it even seems to be these very things — though it is not, in truth.' Likeness to the summit masquerades as identity.
[285] The Platonic dossier: Phaedrus 247c — the supercelestial 'substance without color, without shape, intangible, beingly being,' the plain of truth and the meadow that feeds the soul — placed There, in the intelligible; and Cratylus 396b–c, where heaven (οὐρανός) is 'the one that looks upon the things above (ὁρῶσα τὰ ἄνω)': what the first looker sees, 'the first visible,' is what lies proximately above — the intelligible substance again.
[286] The Orphic coda, the treatise's second sustained exegesis of the Rhapsodies: Kronos is intellect (the myth, and the epithet ἀγκυλομήτης, crooked-counselled); Night is 'the first substance and nurse of all' — citing the verse: And out of them all, Night nourished and reared Kronos (ἐκ πάντων δὲ Κρόνον Νὺξ ἔτρεφεν ἠδ' ἀτίταλλεν) — because 'for the intelligizer its intelligized is nourishment, according to the Oracle.' Even Zeus's swallowing of Phanes, 'him who is before him,' happens through Night and him who abides at her side. Intelligible Night as the nurse of intellective Kronos: the mythic form of the doctrine that intellect feeds on Being.
[287] The advocate's case assembled from the dialogues: the Sophist's 'being affected by the one' (the Eleatic Stranger), the unified as gathering of all beings and substances — and the famous image: in the One Being 'it is not easy to distinguish the vehicle (ὄχημα) and the rider — or rather the haver and the had — because everywhere the firsts resemble, as closely as may be, the things before them.' Proximity to the source erases articulation.
[288] The exegesis of the hypotheses: the name One Being (ἓν ὄν) itself indicates 'the unspeakable union' — Plato never said one participates and the other is participated; the first hypothesis strips being from the one and then the one itself; the second posits the two 'yoked... so connately as to leave no entering-wedge (παρείσδυσις) for what would differentiate them.' Only where the union slackens through procession does substance stand against the one 'as a vehicle against its rider' — and there begin the intellectuals, 'which have their being in differentiation.'
[289] The Iamblichus testimonium: 'the intelligible remains in the one, because it is the more unified toward it, and is form-given according to it rather than according to Being' — the same doctrine as Chapter 67's never-departing, now grounding the claim that multitude was in the unified 'by appearance only.'
[290] The Chaldaean anchor, quoted directly: for it is — but intelligibly (ἔστι γάρ, ἀλλὰ νοητῶς), says the Oracle; the intelligible 'gathers all our intellections into one and makes one complete intellection... such as Iamblichus wishes the intellection of that intelligible to be' — the folding-together of Chapter 54 as the official theory of intelligible knowledge. The apparent counter-text (substance as summit of the intellectuals) is harmonized: pure substance — determined, turned back under the one 'as other to other' — first appears exactly there, where 'the substantial and unitary otherness shone forth.'
[291] The irenic turn: 'while seeming to contradict much, we appear to be waging the battle about a name only (περὶ ὀνόματος μόνου).' If substance means the already-differentiated, the unified is not substance; if it may name the wholly unified and un-othered, nothing forbids it — and the One Being, before otherness, is the one 'con-fused toward' Being: 'the meanness we were seeking, the connate growth of the two.'
[292] The chapter's closing architecture, stated 'as most true': the supersubstantial one is neither being nor one-against-Being ('not a rider riding upon a vehicle') but above both; the unified before each pre-takes 'the unified of them toward each other' as the one pre-takes each as simple; third comes their connate growth 'as of things now other,' where otherness first co-appears — the very point at which Plato, 'after the One Being, differentiated substance and one from each other.' Four strata: the one (above both, by the one); the unified (above both, by their union); the two as two; their othered connate growth.
[293] The positive doctrine of the mean, in three permitted formulas: 'a meanness of both, imaged toward each as the other'; 'one as being at once, and being as one'; or 'the both-together One Being, according to the as-it-were blending (κρᾶσις) that is before the things blended out of differentiation.' Its proper name fails — 'unless someone should say unified One.' Neither participation nor existence applies: 'it is not yet being, nor yet one,' but one simplicity 'capable of carrying both' (οἰστικήν). Then the magnificent cascade of the riding image down the whole scale: from the demiurgic intellect proceed 'the whole bodiform nature, and the soul riding upon this, and, further, intellect mounting upon her' — the vehicle-relation, denied of the summit in Chapter 68, restored at its proper level.
[294] The summary doctrine: the One of indication is not even one in truth; the many after it are 'a forward-stepping toward the unified, a descent (ὕφεσις) of the first principle into the subsistence of the third'; the third principle is the summit of the unified; after her, the differentiating of whole-and-parts as 'a birth-pang of the unified's differentiation'; and after this meanness, 'the base (βάσις) of the intelligible' — the differentiated of the unified nature, whose every member 'falls short in nothing of the two sections, neither of the one nor of being, as says the Platonic Parmenides' (142e–143a). The intelligible intellect divides 'into unifieds, not into forms — unless one makes the union-masses paradigms of the eidetic paradigms': henadic, not eidetic, articulation.
[295] Plato's three hypotheses (or three moments of the second) read as the three strata: the first neither of the two; the second the both-together; the third each separately, with otherness. Only so does 'the ancient perplexity' dissolve: substance cannot rank before life and intellect where no determination yet exists — 'how could there be determination, otherness not yet existing?' The truly unified is 'neither life as yet, nor intellect, nor substance — except by analogy or cause-form appearance — but all things undeterminedly'; counter-distinguished against nothing.
[296] The retrospective harmonization: the earlier doubling of the third principle (substantial/unitary, Chapters 60 ff.) is now folded together (συμπτύξαντες — the Iamblichean verb a third time) into the one-before-both, the differentiated pair demoted below the intelligible — 'in accord both with Plato and with the intelligible, wholly unified and wound up together (συνεσπειραμένῳ) about the Good, according to Iamblichus.' Everything syllogized of the first mixed transfers: the first mixed is the both-together before the one and Being.
[297] The chapter on the knowability of the unified — the locus classicus of late Neoplatonic epistemology. The opening concedes the entire negative ladder to 'the great Iamblichus' (τῷ μεγάλῳ Ἰαμβλίχῳ): not opinion, not discursive reason, not intellective intellect, not intellection-with-reason, but only 'the complete watchtower (περιωπή) of intellect' — and not even 'the flower of intellect (τὸ ἄνθος τοῦ νοῦ),' nor intuition, leaning-upon (ἐπέρεισις), or embrace. But the master is then put to the question — knowable or not? — with the wonderful admission that Iamblichus 'seems carried toward each side — or rather makes us be carried about, partitioned around his single intellection,' the argument having 'much pull (περιολκή) toward each.'
[298] The case for unknowability, first two arguments: the knowable is being, and That is above being; and a knowable-before-substance would make substance herself cognitive, whereas the knowing (intellect) is third from substance with life as mean — knowledge 'reverts through life toward substance,' whose possession it is.
[299] Arguments three to five: a knowable unified would be internally determined (knower against known) — so contact (συναφή) and union alone remain; the three first reversions (substantial, vital, cognitive — making the substantiated, the living, the knowing) all come after procession, and the unified neither proceeds nor reverts; and the capstone — knowledge circumscribes, everything circumscribed is a form, 'but the unified is uncircumscribable: completely unknowable, therefore (ἄγνωστον ἄρα τελέως).'
[300] The counter-case: we ourselves already surmise it; the divine intellect assuredly knows it; and the doubling of every cognitive term (unitary/substantial) demands a 'simply knowledge' before both — the intelligible knowledge, as there is intelligible life and intelligible substance, their common element being the unified itself: 'for it is all things — but intelligibly, says the Oracle — and that means: undifferentiatedly and unifiedly.' Hence the thesis: 'the unified is known — by the unified knowledge.'
[301] The reductio that protects the hierarchy of unknowing: if the unified were wholly unknowable, the one would be more so — and then nothing would distinguish the Unsayable from the one and the unified; but their differences are conceived (Chapters 5–8, 47).
[302] The first Oracle (fr. 1 des Places), quoted entire — the gods themselves speaking to the theurgist: the intelligible must be intelligized 'by the flower of intellect'; intelligized as a determinate something, it escapes; it is 'the power of an all-round-shining strength, flashing with intellectual cuttings'; it asks not vehemence but 'the subtle flame of a subtle intellect measuring all things — except that intelligible'; and the unforgettable directive — 'not fixedly, but bearing the pure, turned-away eye (ἁγνὸν ἀπόστροφον ὄμμα) of your soul, to stretch an empty intellect (κενεὸν νόον) toward the intelligible... since it exists outside of intellect.'
[303] Damascius's exegesis defines the knowledge that can receive it: not pressing-against, not appropriating, but 'letting itself go toward the unfolding (ἀνάπλωσις) of itself into it — eager to be intelligible rather than intellectual,' denying every determination 'not as being, but as not being'; knowledge 'most connately grown with its known.' The second Oracle (fr. 2) seals it: 'clothed in the all-armored vigor of sounding light, having armed intellect and soul with three-barbed strength, to cast into the heart the watchword of the All-manifold — and not to frequent the empyrean channels scatteredly, but massively (στιβαρηδόν).'
[304] The resolution of the circumscription argument: this knowledge 'is not such as to circumscribe the intelligible — rather, to be circumscribed by it, and bounded, just so far as it gives itself over into the vision (θέα).' Knowing the unified is being-measured, not measuring.
[305] The opening reversal completes Chapter 70's resolution: 'every knowledge is itself given form by the known, more than it gives form to the known.' The unified knowledge subsists only by self-abandonment — 'letting itself go and being poured out whole into That: attempting, with its own uncircumscribed, to seize the uncircumscribed of That' — and, having made the intelligible the same as itself, 'it has itself come to belong to the intelligible.' Knowledge of the unified is membership in it.
[306] The doctrine of hidden procession: the unified has 'a unified procession within itself — a birth-pang of the procession below'; relative to the one it has proceeded ('so far as a procession can come from the one'), relative to all determined principles it still remains. The paradox stated with full force: 'it has proceeded only so much as to remain within itself and in no way to have proceeded.'
[307] The hidden triad and the great arithmetic: in the unified there is first, middle, last 'by cause and altogether hiddenly — and this is the very thing we mean by unifiedly.' The three first reversions — substantial, vital, cognitive — yield the self-subsistent (αὐθυπόστατον), the self-living (αὐτοζῶν), and 'the self-knowing — and the Know Thyself (τὸ γνῶθι σαυτόν)'; in proportion as intellect : life : substance. Hence 'knowledge is ninth from the first substance' — three triads down — and the aporia: who would posit so great a differentiation in the unified?
[308] The reply re-invokes Chapter 66's deepest insight — 'it is we who are partitioned about it' — and unfolds the Oracle's all things intelligibly into the intelligible triad proper: the summit ('as it were substance — the unified of one and substance, before both'), the middle ('a certain unified life, homonymous with each of the two below, because it is neither, pre-existing both'), and the third, the intelligible intellect — 'a union-mass of the intelligible and the intellectual one, the both-together before each' — whose knowledge is 'one and unified before both.'
[309] The short paragraph fixes the referent: the simply knowable belongs to the simply Being — the unified, 'neither the unitary one, nor as the vehicle of this one': the vehicle-image refused at the summit a final time.
[310] The dialectic of knowable-and-unknowable: the knowable is in That 'not in potency but in actuality, according to the gathering before all division' — every form is whole-knowable by the property of the knowable; but by the property of the unknowable That is also 'least knowable and most unknowable,' since 'the generators are always unembraceable by the generated, and super-simplified beyond their substance — let alone beyond their knowledge.' Both at once: most intelligible, and beyond knowledge unknowable.
[311] The closing canon against transitivity: although That has all things intelligibly, it does not follow that all things are in each determined thing; 'all things are wound off (ἐκμηρύεται) out of the unified according to proper determination: the one, substance, life, the one of life, intellect, the intellectual one' — substance is not therefore life, nor cognitive merely because the unified's third element is. 'From the knowable above is made manifest the knowable below; from the knowing, the knowing; from the middle, the middle.' Vertical analogy, not horizontal contagion.
[312] The new aporia, with Kopp's own marginal analysis of the sequence: the unified — the being-differentiated (διακρινόμενον) — the having-been-differentiated (διακεκριμένον). If 'differentiated from' demands a differentiated correlate, the first differentiated would need a prior one — but its prior is the unified, which cannot be differentiated. The first differentiated is third from the unified; the regress threatens at the top.
[313] The first instrument of resolution: relatives convert among coordinates (where mutual subsistence, ἀνθυπόστασις, is real) but not across cause and effect — 'the effect does not make the cause a cause; the cause makes both the effect, and itself the cause of it.' Both manuscripts flag this canon in the margin. Asymmetric relations may still be relations 'according to the synonymous relation' — but they carry no equality of nature.
[314] The second instrument: differentiation happens in the lower term. The differentiated 'differentiated itself from the first within itself, by its own stepping-down (ὑπόβασις)' — as body parted from the immaterial by form's inclination toward matter, while the immaterial 'passes even through the enmattered, not admitting the differentiation.' Even among differentiated terms the mode differs: the otherness of the beautiful from the just is itself beautiful in the one and just in the other.
[315] The doctrine's sharpest edge: otherness is a form; therefore 'the form is other than matter, yet matter is not other than form — because no otherness fills her out... she is formless.' Symmetrically at the top: the first differentiation is the form's from the super-eidetic (ὑπερείδεον), 'which remains undifferentiated; for being super-eidetic it could not suffer anything form-like.' Differentiation runs one way at both ends of the scale: the extremes are not differentiated from what differentiates itself from them.
[316] The generalization: differentiation, otherness — and sameness too — take the color of their host: immortal in the immortal, mortal in the mortal, eternal in the eternal, temporal in the temporal; eidetic in form, material (in potency) in matter, by-cause in the super-eidetic. 'All things are in each according to its own peculiar-natured manner' — the πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν οἰκείως canon of the school in its differentiation-theoretic form.
[317] The closing aporia turns the machinery against the unified itself: if even the by-cause mode means the cause 'has gathered up in herself the differentiation too,' then a determined differentiation inside the unified would co-differentiate everything — absurd, since 'it is absurd that anything whatsoever be determined in the unified.' What 'determined' means is precisely the contrast we draw between the unified and the differentiated; the answer comes in the next chapter.
[318] The resolution of Chapter 72's aporia by a doctrine of privilege: the unified is exempt — it admits neither differentiation toward the one nor procession from it, 'but has grown about it; and in this consists that famous being-unified: in not being its own, but the one's (ἐν τῷ μὴ ἑαυτοῦ εἶναι, ἀλλὰ τοῦ ἑνός).' Perhaps the most beautiful definition in the treatise: to be unified is to belong to another.
[319] The logical instrument refined: there are relations that 'equalize by the conversion' while the natures do not match — the different differs from a different, but formfully in form and formlessly in matter; image and paradigm share likeness 'according to the rough whole of the property,' one iconically, one paradigmatically. Applied upward: if the unified were united to the one as to a co-united term, the one would be unified — 'and then no longer one'; so the union holds 'according to the relation alone,' as the caused is yoked to the cause by a relation whose nature differs on each side — 'the relation in the cause is cause of the relation in the caused.'
[320] The chapter's jewel, and one of the great sentences of Damascius: the undifferentiated 'stands apart from the differentiated — differentiated only so far as to remain undifferentiated (τοσοῦτον μόνον διακριθέν, ὅσον μεῖναι ἀδιάκριτον), and so far as to stand counter-distinguished toward the differentiated.' Its only difference is its indifference.
[321] The conclusion completes the inversion: such differentiation 'even guards the unified undifferentiated — or rather, it is differentiated by the differentiated' (the lower term does all the differentiating), 'and this is, once again, to be undifferentiated.' The final canon on language seals the chapter: names belong to the determined and eidetic; 'when we say that matter is differentiated from form, we syllogize truly — yet we do not name truly' (ἀληθὲς μέντοι συλλογιζόμεθα, οὐ μὴν ἀληθῶς γε ὀνομάζομεν).
[322] The Hamburg codex sets a red rubric at this chapter: on remaining, procession, and reversion. The classic Proclean triad (Elements of Theology props. 25–39) is submitted to the full aporetic. The opening clears the crude senses of 'remaining in the cause' — not in place, not in a vessel, not as a part — and fixes the hard case: the procession of what has proceeded (the middle, the being-differentiated, can be treated by the same arguments).
[323] First model — remaining as retention of the producer's property: the proceeded 'engrafts (ἐγκεντρίζει) its own property' upon the producer's, as man upon animal, life upon substance. The horticultural verb is choice: procession as grafting onto the parent stock.
[324] The refutation: on that model the common remains and the proper proceeds — so the proceeding does not remain (only the remaining does), and the question is begged; with a regress besides. The forward reference ('whether something of like nature proceeds from the producer at all... will be shown not to hold simply') announces the coming critique of the school's principle of similarity.
[325] Second model — remaining as having one's root in the cause, 'as the plant sprouts up from the earth while remaining in her only by the root.' Refined and corrected: the cause in the producer is the producer's substance, not the offspring's part — analogous not to the root but 'to the principle (λόγος) of the whole plant, whole and en-substanced in the nature of the earth.'
[326] The refutations return: cause and from-cause never change places ('it is no longer cause, but from-cause'); 'the proceeding remains' deflates to 'the cause of the proceeding remains'; and the likeness of cause and from-cause makes remaining and proceeding 'the same in the rough-whole sense — by property and form — but in truth not the same, nor in subsistence.'
[327] The cost of that deflation, in three counts: it tears the produced from the producer ('begotten severed, as man from man'); it makes the axiom merely apparent; and it leaves the doctrine saying 'nothing august' — only that the first is not the second. The triad cannot be saved on the cheap.
[328] The synthesis begins: the proceeding is 'mastered by neither — but has something at once remaining and proceeding, which both-together constitutes its being.' For the middle (whose being lies in proceeding) this is easy; for the proceeded, the splendid image answers: 'as it were having planted itself firm above (ἄνω στηρίξαν), and then stretching itself down toward what is below' — the Chaldaean στήριξις turned into the very form of finite being.
[329] The partibility objection ('whole in each way, or part by part?') is met with the great methodological canon of the whole treatise: 'does our conception partition even the impartibles? They must be conceived as those things ought to stand, and not as we conceive them; and the human intellections must be compelled back, and accustomed, to unfold themselves and to broaden out (ἀναπλοῦσθαί τε καὶ ἀνευρύνεσθαι), so far as is possible, into the truth that befits those natures.' Thought must be stretched to the things, never the things shrunk to thought.
[330] The positive doctrine: the proceeded is whole, and remains in just that respect in which it has proceeded — because it is 'most like and most akin to the producer, as it were the producer itself according to the third measure of the stepping-down.' The dis-spannings (διασπασμοί) of our world deceive us; There, 'nothing among the produced is of another tribe (ἑτερόφυλον) toward its producer.' Every offspring is double — as itself, proceeded; as from-that, remaining — 'for the from-that is not an accident, but the substance of the proceeded': sonship as substance, 'as if a son should be most like his own father... the form almost the same.'
[331] The hetero-form begettings There bind closer than the homo-form here; intellect is third from Being yet near it, 'for the third itself, and the triad, is the very nature of intellect' — the first and second contain the same all, 'save that There union dominates, and here differentiation.'
[332] The universal law: everything both remains and has proceeded, from the firsts to the lasts, by more and less — remaining dominant where differentiation is hard to find, procession dominant where union is non-apparent; 'and it is setting out from these last that we falsely ascribe (ἐπιψευδόμεθα), even to the first processions, the complete dis-spanning — which is not complete even in the last.'
[333] The closing seal: everything proceeded remains 'in the nature and within the bounds of its own causes'; what in no way remains has not even proceeded — 'for who would say that what is in no way and nowhere the being's has proceeded from the being?' Total separation would unmake the very relation of origin.
[334] The aporetic of reversion opens from its received definition: the return (ἐπάνοδος) of the proceeded to the begetter, 'set against procession — its setting-right (ἐπανόρθωσις) and resolution (ἀνάλυσις).' The soul-case shows the danger (reverting would unmake the procession); the eternals hold both at once. The marginal table both manuscripts carry at this point distills the doctrine: procession — reversion :: othering — assimilating :: differentiative — gathering :: forward-leading — up-leading :: substance-making — perfection-making.
[335] The first wave of difficulties: the reversive supervenes on the processive (so the prior is better — the thing is no nearer its begetter by reverting than by having proceeded); and if remaining already assimilates, reversion threatens to collapse into a post-processional remaining. The conceptual rescue: by remaining the begotten wishes to be the begetter; by procession, to be itself-after; 'by reversion the begotten longs for (ὀρέγεται) the begetter — itself remaining, and that one remaining, each within its proper bounds.'
[336] The chapter's emotional center: reversion is the desire of the third 'in longing (πόθῳ) for its ancient nature (τῆς ἀρχαίας φύσεως)' — possible only after the standing-apart that procession is. Hence the inversion that startles every reader of Proclus: 'proceeding is finer (κάλλιον) than reverting: for having-proceeded is substance-making (οὐσιοποιόν) of the third, while reverting is perfection-making (τελειοποιόν)' — being before well-being.
[337] The objection of the redundant gift (what it has, why take again — and through the worse activity? an image? but nothing desires the image of what it already possesses in the elder way — like the perfectly healthy craving inferior health, or the contemplative praying for political virtue) sharpens the standing question: what does reversion confer that neither remaining nor proceeding gave? The answer is in note 8.
[338] The kinematic excursus: two opposed motions (downward, upward) demand two rests, 'as say the children of the natural philosophers' (the Aristotelian school, Phys. VIII 8). So either two genera — rest and motion, 'remaining and way (ὁδός)' — or four species: procession, return, and a double remaining, above (for what is about to proceed) and below (for what is about to revert).
[339] The 'much-rehearsed (πολυθρύλλητος) counter-division' is grounded in the three prepositions: in which, from which, toward which (ἐν ᾧ, ἀφ' οὗ, πρὸς ὅ) — with Damascius's refinement that the in-which is itself double, above and below: 'on either side the remaining is the mean — here projecting the procession, there the reversion.'
[340] The aporiai multiply symmetrically (double reversion → why not double procession and remaining?; do all three appear wherever one does?; three to the third, two to the second, one to the first?) and the chapter pauses on its most beautiful methodological prayer: 'marking off their properties from above, let us state the appearances; and may grace lead us toward the truth (ἵλεως δὲ ἄγοι πρὸς τὴν ἀλήθειαν).'
[341] The positive doctrine, among the most original pages of the treatise: remaining is 'the nature of the first as in-mingled (ἐγκεκραμένη) with the third'; procession its standing-away; neither unalloyed (the standing-away is never 'bereft and torn from its cause'; the first's nature never 'drinks down' the procession). Reversion is then defined as the third's own constitution: 'the union of the two elements into one another... the blending (κρᾶσις) according to which the character supervenes, and the form of the third.' Hence reversion is ἰδιοποιός, property-making — what reversion confers is the thing's own self. The third has the three as elements of its substance and acts triply toward itself: the answer to note 4's question.
[342] The triadic arithmetic seals it: differentiated from the first it is third; multiplied in itself it is triadic; every triad rides upon a monad — so it proceeds by the triad, remains by the monad, reverts by the union of triad toward monad; 'the triadic is cause of the reversion (reversion is third), the dyadic of the procession (procession second), the monadic of the remaining (remaining first).'
[343] The double reversion resolved: 'one in the subject, double in the relation (τῷ μὲν ὑποκειμένῳ μία, τῇ δὲ σχέσει διττή).' Self-circumscription is reversion toward itself; standing whole and complete, the thing is thereby likened to its prior, 'because that too is complete according to itself' — likeness to the parent is self-completion. And before both stands the deepest fact: 'the begotten was brought to completion such as the begetter wished it.' Becoming itself, it turns at once both ways.
[344] The same analysis distributed over procession and remaining: it proceeds from itself (by the differentiated within it) and from its prior — and from the cause 'according to the both-together'; it remains in itself precisely because it does not wholly part from its cause — 'its not standing wholly apart from the cause is what made it not stand wholly apart from itself either.' One subject, one set of three elements, double relations everywhere. The closing definition: the proceeded is out of the three 'not insofar as it proceeded simply, but insofar as it is this determinate thing: say, intellect.'
[345] The distribution-law for the whole triad of levels: the three elements are in all — gathered and undifferentiated in the remaining first; in middle manner, 'and only being-differentiated,' in the proceeding middle; divided in the proceeded third. The grammar of Chapter 72 (unified — being-differentiated — having-been-differentiated) returns as the inner structure of remaining, procession, and reversion themselves.
[346] The startling consequence, stated without flinching: since the elements are undifferentiated in the first, 'not even remaining could justly be predicated of the first' — except by analogy, as not-proceeding; and the middle is in truth neither. Hence 'the third is properly the first' to possess the three in determination — and it exercises them doubly toward its priors: toward the proximate second by the variation from the being-differentiated, toward the supreme itself by the subsistence from the undifferentiated. Intellect bears the triple relation to life and to Being alike — 'about these matters, again, hereafter.'
[347] The law of dominance (ἐπικράτεια): the three, first manifest in the first third, pass through everything in succession — in every intellect all three are present, but remaining dominates in the summit ('giving form to the others'), procession in the middle, reversion in the last; hence every intellectual triad has its more-stable, more-processive, and more-reversive member. The double remaining of Chapter 75 is then re-derived, and the question raised whether the producers can be said to remain at all — perhaps only the produced remain ('in their producers and in themselves'), the producers' remaining being merely their not-proceeding-along.
[348] The mutual-participation solution: reverting is itself 'a certain advance (προκοπή) — only not from the cause'; the stable proceeds into the third; procession has something reversive and reversion something stable. 'The three, being of the same rank, participate one another; and the perplexity has no place; for the division was not made of the properties according to existence' — the counter-division is of dominances, not of existences; 'the lower remaining is a participation of the one named above.'
[349] The necessity of precisely three, rendered as a piece of grammar: procession discloses only the standing-apart and variation (παράλλαξις); remaining discloses 'the begetting form'; and reversion — the new content — is 'presentative of the begotten (τοῦ γεννωμένου παραστατικόν),' the twisting-together (συστροφή) and constitution of the character in which the proceeding halts and is circumscribed. Two at the limits, one at the middle: the thing remains in the producer, proceeds from it into what it becomes, and reverts according to the produced that it is. The question of participation is formally deferred — the first announcement of the promised discourse On Participations.
[350] The triple division applied: each of remaining, procession, and reversion is substantial, vital, or cognitive. The cognitive case is evident (the knower knows itself and its priors); the substantial case is secured by the necessity of the self-subsistent (αὐθυπόστατον): without it, infinite regress, or the absurdity of ranking the from-elsewhere-subsisting directly after the wholly insubsistent while 'looking down upon' the from-itself — which is 'a mean by its very nature, as the self-moved is a mean of the unmoved and the other-moved' (the Phaedrus-Laws doctrine in Proclean dress). Both manuscripts set the marginal rubric: that the self-subsistent reverts toward itself according to substance.
[351] Self-subsistence is self-reversion: 'this giving-subsistence-to-itself is precisely a reverting of the thing toward itself according to substance' — and the self-living (αὐτόζων) follows by the same causes. The existence, nature, and rank of the self-subsistent are formally deferred (a promissory note the later treatise redeems).
[352] The reversion toward the first, in its three modes. The substantial is the plainest and most beautiful: the third, by 'stepping into its own bound (ὅρος),' is thereby made akin to the first bound — 'as that is Being simply, this is intellect simply; as that is unified substance, so this is gathered intellect — with the gathering that befits intellect, not that which befits Being.' Likeness is achieved not by departing from oneself but by becoming perfectly oneself. The vital reversion presses into 'that contact (συναφή) with Being which life herself, before all others, joined.'
[353] The three reversions ranked by distance: the substantial makes the thing 'such as that'; the vital makes it 'joined to it immediately'; the cognitive 'knows it from afar (πόρρωθεν) and leads it back from the third rank to the first.' Hence the dictum: 'great is the standing-apart of intellect from Being, and of the knower from the known; the seer stands in notable differentiation toward the seen; whereas life is almost substance.' Knowledge is the longest road home — and the only one that spans the whole distance.
[354] The reversions toward the second, completing the grid. The summary image is among the treatise's finest: 'conceive intellect for me as being third — as having become three-formed (τρίμορφον) throughout the whole of itself: being and living and intelligizing; gathered, and being-differentiated, and differentiated.' Intellect contains the whole triad twice over — as content (being/life/intellection) and as mode (the grammar of Chapter 76). The vital reversion toward life is then defined with exquisite precision: not to become life but 'to live, rather than to be life; and to desire life, but not now to become life' — the third's relation to the second is participation at one remove, longing without identity.
[355] The universal stamp (τύπος) of all reversion: assimilation either through proper characters flowing in from the priors ('of plenitudes or of elements... con-substantiated or adventitious') or through the thing's own analogous existences, 'its own, not come from above, yet analogous to those natures of its elders — toward which the reversion is accomplished by analogy.' The two mechanisms the argument has been alternating between (assimilation by the proceeded bound; ascent by the unified within) are both put on the table and formally deferred 'to the discourse concerning the participations (εἰς τὸν περὶ τῶν μεθέξεων λόγον)' — the second announcement of that treatise.
[356] The brief determination that closes the chapter is a complete doctrine of creaturely love: 'it is one thing to be the very thing one is, and another to be likened to another according to the very thing one is.' Intellect is from itself by self-reversion — and yet that very selfhood proceeded from life. Hence: 'every intellect, and wholly, has been turned toward its cause — not insofar as it is its own, but insofar as it is hers; it desires to be joined to the producing cause, and to be, in some manner, that very one, so far as it can, and to see her as ranked before it, and as separated.' Desire for union, with sight of the difference — toward each producer alike.
[357] The first and deepest aporia interrogates the school's most cherished triad: why precisely substantial–vital–cognitive, when 'undifferentiated, being-differentiated, differentiated' or 'unitary, unified, multiplied' would serve — and when every cosmos and every form has its own remaining, procession, and reversion 'by-named from it'? And whence the counter-division itself? Knowledge pairs with the knowable, but the knowable is not in every way Being (every form is knowable, intellect itself is knowable); and if life is motion, where is the opposing rest? — either intellect falls outside the counter-division, or substance is rest and intellect superfluous. The triad's credentials, not merely its application, are on trial.
[358] Aporiai two through four extend the grid's own logic against it: if the second (life) reverts toward Being, then what has not proceeded reverts — against the axiom; remaining and procession should triple as reversion does; and the cognitive reversion alone shows the inner triple structure (knowing, known, knowledge) — what answers to it substantially and vitally?
[359] The fifth aporia contains the trio that gives the chapter its fame: the self-known (αὐτόγνωστον) merely knows itself, but the self-living (αὐτόζων) and self-subsistent (αὐθυπόστατον) make themselves live and be — yet reversion's proper work is only 'to incline the thing together (συννεύειν) toward itself,' not to vivify or substantiate. Why is one reversion contemplative and the others productive? The sixth inverts it for the upward direction: toward the priors, the cognitive does exactly what it does toward self (it knows), while the substantial and vital, productive toward self, 'do not act in any way whatsoever upon the things before.'
[360] The seventh aporia is the hinge of the coming epistemology: does intellect know its prior through knowing itself (as it assimilates by perfecting its own bound) — or by 'letting go its own' and laying hold of hers, 'reckoning in the difference'? If the latter, the scandalous corollary: the cognitive reversion outranks the substantial, being measured by the producer's bound and not the proceeded's.
[361] The last three: the end of knowledge (the known's form in the knower? the knower's potency actualized? — 'and what is august in either, or what profitable?'); the direction of action between knower and known (either way, something worse acts on its better — 'for the known is better than some of its knowers, and worse than others'); and the summary demand — what are knowledge, the knowable, the cognitive; how far up do they reach ('even the first intellect is cognitive'); and what, after all, are life and substance, 'and in what do they differ from knowledge?' The next chapter begins the answers 'climbing back, supine, from the last to the first.'
[362] The answers begin 'climbing back supine (ἐξ ὑπτίας)' — from the tenth aporia to the first. The tenth asked what substance, life, and knowledge are: the reply opens with the rank-doctrine (they are cause, caused, and both-together — so priors never participate posteriors) and then the chapter's great thesis: these names signify not genera, species, or partial subsistences but whole cosmoi, 'the first of all things synonymous or homonymous' with them — as the first intellect contains in itself all the intellectual world-orders, so life is a whole-complete cosmos 'full of all things life-wise,' and substance 'the eldest of all cosmoi, and the most embracing.'
[363] The triple formula, the heart of the answer: 'Substance is a whole-complete cosmos that has gathered all things in the undifferentiated; intellect a whole-complete cosmos subsisting in the differentiated; life a whole-complete cosmos in the being-differentiated of the middleness — in travail with all things (πάντα ὠδίνων).' The grammar of the treatise (Chapters 72, 76) has become cosmology.
[364] The portrait of life: neither fixed in the uncircumscribed nor settled in the circumscribed, but 'amphibious (ἀμφίβιον), as it were in motion from this to that — whence they name it life, as a stirred, and as it were seething, substance (ζέουσαν οὐσίαν)'; even eidetic life 'brings the seething' to every form it enters. The middle hypostasis as boiling-point of Being.
[365] The genealogy of knowledge — perhaps the most remarkable page of the treatise. Being's unmoved nature 'stepped down a little, relaxed the fixed,' proceeded, and was circumscribed by 'the first differentiation, and the differentiation of firsts'; standing apart now from its priors and from itself, intellect 'took in hand a setting-right of the standing-apart, and as it were a consolation (παραμυθίαν): knowledge.' Knowledge lives only among things parted by otherness (knower, known, and the mean); all relations bind, 'but most of all knowledge joins the knower to the known; for it stretches the knower out into the known through love of the true (δι' ἔρωτος τοῦ ἀληθοῦς), and sets the knowable within the knower through the lightning-flash that leaps across from it (διαθρώσκουσαν ἀστραπήν).' Hence substance cannot know herself (wholly united); life has knowledge only as 'dawning from beneath (ὑποφαινόμενον)' — still being-differentiated.
[366] Intellect's coronation: in it the first knowledge, since the first circumscription; its contents, mutually parted, 'know one another and the whole'; the whole, entire in differentiation, 'was made true, and became intellect according to intellection, and was gladdened by the light of intellectual truth — first projecting within itself the eye of knowledge (τὸ τῆς γνώσεως ὄμμα).' The three reversions are then measured: substantial (first standing-apart), vital (second), cognitive — 'ninth from the undifferentiated, third from the differentiated' (the arithmetic of Chapter 71 confirmed); knowledge is 'the joining of things that stand apart... the last reversion.'
[367] The etymology, in the manner of the Cratylus: γνῶσις is 'a coming-to-be knowing, which is νόησις; and νόησις because it goes (νεῖται) toward being and the is — it would justly have been called a going (νέεσις); but giving the word solemnity through the eta and making it well-mouthed by the contraction, we call it νόησις.' Intellect (νοῦς) itself is named from going-toward-Being; and before cognitive intellection one should name the very subsistence of intellect an intellection — 'the first return into Being... already inclined toward Being, and returning, before knowledge.'
[368] The Aristotelian seal: knowledge 'wishes to be a generation of being'; the knower is substantiated by its return into Being — 'not the first substantiation, but an as it were coming-to-be one; wherefore intellect is the things themselves (ὁ νοῦς τὰ πράγματα), as Aristotle also says' (De anima III 4–5). The chapter's working definition follows: return that 'does not dissolve the standing-apart, but leads the very thing that stands apart, as it stands apart, back up to that from which it stood apart.'
[369] The doctrine of τὸ φανόν, the shining: knowledge is 'a shining-round-about (περιαυγασμός), a light's fore-escorting of the known in the knower' — as every cognition subsists by its gnosma, 'the known itself, now en-substanced in the knower.' The knowable differs from Being as 'the shining of the subsistence' from the subsistence — as the enmattered form's sensible is 'what falls forward and fore-shines as far as sensation.' So Being's shining is 'a light escorting forth as far as the knower, going out to meet him as he strains upward; commensurately it grows together with him, perfects, and satiates (κορέννυσιν) his desire of Being.' The startling conclusion: 'intellect does not know Being — but the shining of Being'; it desires it as Being, attains it as knowable, 'for the natural desires are of the same things of which the attainments also are.'
[370] The objection and the optics: not the whole is knowable, 'but only the light — as to sight only the color is visible, not the substrate'; something of the firsts is always 'ungraspable and unsayable to the seconds.' Against the worry that intellect grasps a mere efflux: the shining is no emanation ('as the earth-encircling light from the sun') but Being seen 'according to the brightness of nature within it'; and it goes through the whole — 'nothing of it that does not shine through and hasten toward shining-forth, as glass or any diaphanous thing is visible whole.' Yet the dialectic honestly registers the residue: even in the diaphanous, body and through-shining differ; and we risk determining the undetermined.
[371] The final answer: Being is, in itself, only undifferentiated; but when intellect stood apart, Being became 'not only undifferentiated, but a differentiated's differentiated' — and to just that extent 'the knowable dawned forth in it,' named 'not according to something within it, but according to the counter-comparison toward intellect.' Intellect, seeing itself parted and That unparted, named the stepping-out 'differentiation' and 'shone forth the knowable that was in it, though not determined.' All names belong to the eidetic nature; 'the properly knowable is intellect, being cognitive of itself.' Then the astonishing biology: every form is form-like, hence knowing in some degree; 'every form is a living thing — or a corpse of a living thing (ζώου νέκρωμα),' as stones, timbers, dead bodies; natural things have con-sensation (συναίσθησις) 'even if the faintest and to us imperceptible'; plants are living things 'of another kind, says Plato' (Timaeus 77b); and 'rocks, and metals, and the whole earth, and each of the elements are not soulless in every way' — the Hamburg codex flags the thesis in its margin. Panpsychism as a corollary of the metaphysics of form — 'another discourse.'
[372] The climax of the chapter and of the whole epistemology: intellect, whole through whole cognitive and knowable, 'is joined to itself through knowledge — which is the law for things that stand apart, toward that from which they stand apart.' Toward Being — 'the last contact (ἐσχάτη συναφή) of the things that have proceeded' — it 'gathered its own knowledge into one gathering of all knowledges (ἓν συναίρεμα γνώσεων ἁπασῶν), and having wrought one unified knowledge, with all its speed (πασσυδί — the Hamburg margin glosses: with all its rush, in one accord) set out toward the undifferentiated, the knowable in very truth'; and 'having shown its knowledge to be substance by the great union, it cast itself upon the knowable as substance; it desired as a cognitive desires a knowable — because of the from-afar; but having been joined, and having attained, it knew the contact to be not of a cognitive toward a knowable, but of substance toward substance.' Toward That, the return is substantial; toward itself, cognitive. Knowledge, perfected, abolishes itself into union.
[373] The coda on asymmetry: 'the knowable wishes to be a desired thing, the cognitive a desiring' — substance the desired (because better), intellect the desiring; 'the desiring and the cognitive belong by nature to the more needy.' Intellect is substance by participation, cognitive by existence; substance knowable by existence. And the careful concession: substance might be called cognitive 'according to her proper gathering — yet not according to determined knowledge'; her knowability itself is projected 'just so much as the property of the relation fore-appeared' once intellect proceeded — relational through and through, as the φανόν doctrine requires.
[374] The ninth aporia (who acts on whom?) is dissolved through the theory of relational form. Even among coordinates, relations supervene without transitive action: the approaching and parting things 'hold the rank of matter, and the form of the relation straightway shines upon them' — illustrated by the two Socratic examples from the Phaedo (96e–97b): men coming together 'attain a number that supervenes from without,' and 'the one rod, cut into two, participated a dyad instead of a monad.' Number and relation arrive like light, not like a blow.
[375] Across cause and effect the asymmetry is total: nothing passes from each into the other, and where there is nothing before both (the first knowable and first cognitive), the shared relation can only descend from the prior member: 'all things that are in the caused come from the cause, together with its very substance.' The producer 'gives the differentiation both to itself and to that'; the paradigm is assimilated to the image because it assimilates the image to itself; and the most beautiful formula — the desired confronts the desiring 'because, when this stood away, it breathed into it a desire of its own rank (ὄρεξιν ἐνέπνευσε τῆς ἑαυτοῦ τάξεως).' Longing is the gift of the longed-for.
[376] The application crowns Chapter 81's doctrine: substance, begetting intellect, 'fore-shone herself forth as knowable to it, and made within it a power cognitive of herself — not in potency only, but the in-actuality as well'; the knowable is what fills the knower, the desired what raises and fills the desirer — 'so too does Iamblichus take the intelligible in relation to intellect: that it has filled intellect with the intellection of itself.' And the astonishing reflexive conclusion: the cause, 'before making the produced... pre-makes itself knowable, and desired, and cause, and producing.' Causality begins at home.
[377] The eighth aporia (the end and use of knowledge) receives three ascending answers: knowledge gives the knower its very being ('intellect is in intelligizing; intelligizing is the substance of intellect'); it shines forth the knowable in the prior (the φανόν doctrine restated); and — 'most august' — it form-gives the knower according to the known, setting the caused 'within the form of the producer': through knowledge the effects wear the forms of their causes.
[378] The descending case, with the school's pastoral realism: knowledge of worse things corrupts only 'where there is sympathy (συμπάθεια) of the knower toward them'; passionless knowledge of the lower instead 'leads the worse back up toward the better, and sets them within those' — cognition as the redemption of its objects.
[379] The finale on the good of knowledge: it works 'the kinship of all things toward one another... according to the recognizing of the common kinship (συγγένεια)'; on the road of all things toward the Good it 'sets right the wandering, and is established as guide'; 'it is like an eye fore-escorting and leading the desire as it hastens toward That — kindling its proper light... the most accomplishing (ἀνυστικώτατον) of the things that lead toward the end.' And the sober boundary, stated once and decisively: 'it is not to the Unsayable that we are joined through knowledge, but to Being; That has been joined to the Unsayable through total union; so that through this mean it would join the rest as well.' Knowledge carries us to Being; Being, by union beyond knowledge, carries all to the Unsayable.
[380] The seventh aporia threatened to rank the cognitive reversion above the substantial (since it follows the producer's bound, not the proceeded's). The defense: intellect, knowing according to its own bound, 'imitated that of That which is seated above knowledge, in the knowable alone' — the cognitive relation is 'confessedly a second bound, not of subsistence toward subsistence, but as of knower toward known.' Each reversion answers a procession: self-knowledge answers the procession from itself; knowledge of the prior answers the procession from above.
[381] The hinge question — through itself, or letting go its own? — answered: all must run together. Since intellect proceeds, all its own, from That, 'knowing itself, it finds itself the imitation (μίμημα) of what is before it — itself, and the as-it-were That'; in knowing itself it knows That, the likeness and the unlikeness at once: 'the one is itself, the other generative of itself; the one That's own, the other from That.'
[382] The chapter's — perhaps the treatise's — most tender page. Being 'does not know, but is known only; and this because she submits to be made commensurate toward intellect, by, as it were, a tender love (φιλοστοργίᾳ) for her own offspring.' Intellect, 'having wished to seize her, instead of this it knew her; or rather, it seized her in such a way as not to become her, but to embrace her cognitively (περιπτύξασθαι γνωστικῶς); and this is: to have its eye flooded round with the light of her light.' Against all mystical short-circuits ('to become that, to be that's, to receive an efflux, to be led back into that' — which 'confound the things once differentiated'), knowledge keeps its form: 'a recognition (ἀναγνωρισμός) of things that have stood apart, and a welcoming greeting stretched out in return, together with the standing-apart (δεξίωσις ἀντιπροτεινομένη μετὰ τῆς διαστάσεως).' A handclasp across the distance — union of Chapter 81's substance-toward-substance kind is reserved for knowledge's self-transcendence, not its exercise.
[383] The Empedoclean maxim ('by the such within we know the such without') is granted and radicalized: intellect is outside Being 'by the variation of nature' alone — 'the differentiation alone changed over; so that with the whole of itself intellect knows substance, no less than if it contained a trace (ἴχνος) of substance in itself.' The gathered plenitude before the differentiated is 'an intellectual image of the unified substance... by which it will know the paradigm, as by the paradigm the image.' Whether something of the unified nature itself dwells in intellect is deferred — the third announcement of the discourse on participation, now joined to a promised treatise 'concerning intellect, the intellect truly so called.'
[384] The sixth aporia is met by the separation of offices: making is never the knower's ('only the knowing of what already is'); substantiating belongs to substance, and to life 'the stirring of substance and rousing of her toward procession.' Knowledge's symmetry (acting nothing toward self or prior alike) is its purity, not its defect.
[385] The substantial self-reversion is then disarmed: it is substance-making of intellect's own substance — 'as of one begotten from what is before it': turning toward That, intellect 'circumscribed itself, receiving its being-from-That'; turning toward itself, it gives subsistence to itself as proceeding from itself. The cause is never substantiated by the caused.
[386] The fifth aporia dissolves in a pair of definitions worth the whole chapter: reversion's proper work is only 'the inclining-together (συννεύειν)'; the productive characters ride along with it (the self-subsisting property in substance, the life-making in life). And knowledge — distinguished even from reversion — 'is, as it were, an assent (συγκατάθεσις), and an agreement that each thing is what it is.' Cognition as the cosmic act of letting be.
[387] The fourth aporia receives the full table: knower–known–knowledge; living–livable (the life it lives)–act-of-living (ζῆσις); substantiated–substantiable–substantiation. The reversion sits at the middle; the desiring extreme (knowing, living, substantiated) faces the desired (knowable, livable, substance-making).
[388] The closing grammatical observation, flagged as 'deserving attention': only knowledge has differentiated names, 'inasmuch as knowledge subsists in a notable differentiation'; life and being are too united to their sources for active and passive — 'I know you and I am known by you, we say; but I live and I am are spoken in neither voice, viewed by the grammarians as standing in simple subsistence' — until making enters: I make-live, I am made-live. Syntax itself testifies to the metaphysical distances.
[389] The third aporia (does the triple division extend to remaining and procession?) is answered by the doctrine of double procession: the procession of the proceeded divides three ways (the knowing from the knowable, the living from life, being from the first being), but the procession viewed in the proceeding — 'according to which alone we say that life subsists' — admits no division: 'in the substance that is coming to be it is impossible to divide the substantial and the cognitive and the vital.' Likewise the remaining: bare remaining is indivisible; the remaining of the proceeded divides — intellect remains in the knowable by knowledge, in life by its own life, in Being 'by its not standing wholly out of Being.'
[390] The second aporia (does the second revert?) yields the distribution-law in its final form: the three exist determinately only 'in what has its substance determined — and this is the proceeded.' Being 'could not fittingly be said to remain — it, which does not even proceed'; it is unmoved only as 'abiding in the nature before all and without procession (ἀπροόδῳ)'; life has only the three 'still dawning from beneath.' Together everywhere, the three are undifferentiated in the unified, counter-divided in the differentiated, in-between in the middle.
[391] The boldest stroke: even self-subsistence is denied of Being at the summit. That Being is 'reverted toward itself and self-subsistent... appears to us — to us who are partitioned about its single simplicity'; in itself it is none of these, having 'the one communion of the three, gathered up within the whole communion of all things.' The reason is a definition worthy of the whole treatise: whatever is by reversion or procession or remaining 'must be in some particular manner; but That only is, simply.' The middle nature is 'a birth-pang (ὠδίς) of these, and an advance (προκοπή)'; in Being, 'not even a dawning.'
[392] The scope of 'the proceeded' is widened: after the first intellect, every second is differentiated from its priors by participation in the differentiation projected above; and some things stand in the being-differentiated by analogy toward what is before and after them — 'as, in the Chaldaean triads, the Power (ὡς ἐν ταῖς Χαλδαϊκαῖς τριάσιν ἡ δύναμις).' The Oracles' Father–Power–Intellect triads supply the canonical instance of the analogical middle.
[393] The first and deepest aporia — the credentials of the triad itself. Damascius first concedes the 'finer' counter-divisions (undifferentiated/being-differentiated/differentiated; one/mean/multiplied, set 'diametrically'), then grounds the received triad empirically: the sensibles themselves divide into what only is, what also lives, what also knows; and the definition of the animal (substance living and knowing) strips down by subtraction to living substance, then to substance alone.
[394] The conceptual survey is among the most quoted pages of Damascius: to know stretches toward another ('knowing subsists according to the desire toward the knowable'); to be is 'by itself, of itself, only itself, without any doubling'; to live is 'artlessly the middle: still in itself... yet already roused up from itself, being differentiated toward itself, and as it were over-seething its own substance (ὑπερζέον τῆς ἑαυτοῦ οὐσίας).' Life is 'the up-standing (διανιστάμενον) of substance' — yet not motion, not differentiation: these are forms, determined; 'whereas intellect is all things — the first intellect — a whole cosmos, ordered, and sphered (ἐσφαιρωμένος), by its proper circumscription.'
[395] The unforgettable portrait of the middle: life 'is not yet ordered... not yet differentiated nor circumscribed — since circumscription too is a differentiation; it shows these from beneath, as flowing upon them from Being; and it is nothing other than only flowing (μόνη ῥύσις) — neither having remained above, nor having proceeded below. And before this is the wholly-complete subsistence of Being — so wholly-complete as not even to admit of the flowing, nor of the forth-pouring (πρόχυσις) into the middle.' Pure flux between two intacts.
[396] The vindication of the triad 'according to the sequence of the determined conceptions': substance says only what each thing is (even knowledge and life are, in this regard, subsistences — 'the good, the beautiful, the just, everything insofar as it is substance, belongs to that first'); life is each substance's seething (τὸ ζέον αὐτῆς), 'up-standing and strengthening itself toward the outward activity'; knowledge appears when the thing 'is interwoven with another form and stretches toward another.' Hence the proportion: life : substance :: power; knowledge :: activity — with the immediate caution that there is also cognitive power and cognitive substance: the triad cuts across itself at every level.
[397] Intellect's third place secured from both sides: as knowing (knowledge being the antithesis of life) and as returning (intellection = return toward Being, return = reversion); substance uncircumscribed, intellect circumscribed, life the middle disposition; substance single-form, intellect 'many instead of one,' life between.
[398] The closing vindication of remaining–procession–reversion, with the homely medical analogy: one and the same thing 'either keeps its quiet, or changes some change, or desires again the quiet — for the body, too, either is healthy according to nature, or is being led away into the contrary-to-nature, or is being led back up into the according-to-nature'; and relative to a prior: it is with it, departs from it, or returns to it. The ten aporiai are answered; the triadic doctrine stands.
[399] The Hamburg codex marks this chapter ἀρχή — a beginning — and rightly: here opens the great inquiry whether the intelligible, the wholly unified, 'has within itself any differentiation, and an order of first and middle and last plenitude' — whether as 'the philosophers' say (substance, life, intellect: the Iamblichean-Proclean school), or as 'the theologians, who multiply the intelligible principles, each school in its own way' (the Orphic and national theologies, whose great review impends), or as 'the Chaldaeans, who celebrate the paternal triads.' Method first: the question of many and multitude must be settled — the Hamburg margin summarizes: the many are spoken in three ways.
[400] The three senses of 'many': (i) forms — things that 'have stood apart, each by itself in its proper circumscription, wishing only to be what it is... as we say the forms strive to be'; (ii) parts — many (since one part is impossible; 'two at the least') yet wishing 'not to be by themselves, nor their own, but altogether one another's and the whole's,' subsisting 'according to the one mutual inter-holding (ἀλληλουχίαν)... still con-substanced by the inclining-together' — the like-parted (homoiomere) the clearest case; (iii) elements — of which likewise at least two are needed to fill out the elementated (στοιχειωτόν).
[401] The three differences of parts and elements: parts are of the same stuff as their whole (the four elements compose the sinew and each part of it; fire and earth are simpler than the least part); parts must preserve their partition to be parts at all, while elements 'do not abide any standing-apart, but are poured together into a blending, and press into union — and have their being elements in just this'; and elements are never of the same nature as the elementated (the body's elements are not bones and flesh, but of bones and flesh) — whence the crucial corollary: the elements of substance, if any, are not substances. The triadic map: forms circumscribed at one extreme; elements blended into 'the one common union' at the other; parts — 'already in a manner standing apart, but not yet circumscribed' — the meanness of both.
[402] The objections that force refinement: the four elements are surely forms; the genera of Being are called both genera and elements of substance ('substance has been blended out of them') yet preserve circumscriptions (motion and rest are manifest in substance); head, hands, feet are parts of man yet form-like; sun and moon are parts of the All yet whole forms.
[403] The resolving canon, one line: 'the lower always participate the higher; so the forms are also parts and elements, and the parts also elements — not, however, conversely in every case.' Form, part, element are stations on the scale of self-possession, and a thing may occupy two at once.
[404] The taxonomy of forms-and-parts: the unlike parts within a whole (our organic parts; in heaven, hemispheres, quarters, zones, 'poles and centers and axes and circles, marked off by certain demiurgic cuts'); in souls, the reason-principles (λόγοι) and all causes and participations — while the existences (ὑπάρξεις) belong to the self-complete, though even of these 'there come to be gatherings, as out of elements, and wholenesses, as out of parts.'
[405] Forms-and-elements: the cross-blended animals — 'mules, and ostriches (στρουθοκάμηλοι, the sparrow-camels), and all such... constituted out of different forms, as out of elements poured together into some one form.' Pure parts: what 'juts forward (προκύπτει) from the gathered nature' without circumscription — the like-parted; then the first jut into unlikeness — the ordered animal in each form, 'still animal, a part and measure of animal,' yet 'already in a manner human or equine... by the projection, and the inclination (νεύσει), toward man and toward horse.' Parts-as-forms flank the self-circumscribed forms on both sides: toward the worse (our organs), toward the better (the parts of the cosmos — 'rather the whole's, even if each has been eager to be its own').
[406] Parts-become-elements fill out 'the wholeness from parts': the one form completed 'out of many that vanish into the one of the many, no longer preserving their partition.' And the species in the genus are parts ('not yet circumscribed there') that become its elements: 'the gathering of the many animals is the one animal' — genus as συναίρεμα. The genera of Being themselves are finally re-read: rather parts of the whole blending than forms — and thereby elements 'according to the one substance which they all constitute.'
[407] The decisive question for the intelligible — do elements pre-exist their compound? In most cases yes (our body from pre-existing elements; man from the more whole-like; the soul 'blended from substance and life and knowledge, which pre-exist'); but not in all: 'the whole body of the All is out of the four elements — which, however, no longer pre-subsist; nor is the first substance out of elements elder in nature. For before her, the elements are nowhere.' The elementated 'always wishes to be better than its proper elements,' using them as matter, 'itself like a form supervening upon them.'
[408] The conclusion that will govern the whole coming analysis of the intelligible triad: the first elementated is 'out of elements first shining forth within it — more incomplete than the whole form, and for this reason conceived as simpler; though perhaps, in truth, not even simpler, but only more incomplete and more partial.' And the closing reversal of the obvious: 'the more whole-like seems more composite, because more embracing; but it is not so — rather, it is both simpler and better.' Wholeness outranks its own constituents in simplicity: the metaphysical license for a triad inside the unified.
[409] The double elementated resolves Chapter 85's closing paradox: relative to the mixture (the 'one composite matter' presupposed), the elements are simple; relative to the supervening form — 'in real truth both simpler and better' — they are not. Substance proper is the form; the mixture is substance in potency, its elements 'not yet substance, but substance-like, and near to substance.'
[410] The threatened regress (is the first substance from matter and form? whence matter, 'if not from the elder principles, as they say' — the Iamblichean derivation) is deferred to the discourse on participation and then cut: substance, 'being before all substantial determination, could not be second to her own elements. Subsisting first, she shone forth, together with herself and within herself, her proper elements' — as this cosmos its own four, 'whether wholeness projected them as four parts, or the visible and the tangible and their means' (the Timaeus 31b derivation) 'were differentiated off from the one and single-form constitution of the cosmos.'
[411] The chapter's great principle: 'every one is, by its own nature, before its proper multitude... for — so to speak — the One is slackened (χαλᾶται) into the subsistence of the many: that one not being used up into these, but furnishing room to these also for their subsistence.' The threefold many demands a threefold one: the many-formed one of the forms (monad and number); the impartible one before the parts ('it gives the parts room for the subsistence partitioned within it'); and the elementated — 'squeezed together into union... compelling the elements to make sail toward its own subsistence,' the many 'unified, and drunk down by the one, and standing in the undetermined of the one.' The elements are not matter but 'analogous to matter'; and the genealogy of forms is given in one clause — if the one 'should relax its simplicity and be mastered by the many that have risen in faction against it (διαστασιασάντων) — or, more truly, that have imitated it — the many are established as forms instead of elements.'
[412] The middle station: the parts subsist 'according to the partition that was dared (τὸν τολμηθέντα μερισμόν)' — the old Pythagorean daring (τόλμα) — yet with a double inclining-together that makes whole-and-parts the one place where 'the doubling and the single relation are both manifest'; at the extremes the structure goes faint — in the elementated the elements' multitude 'appears rather by inference (συλλογισμῷ).' Even in blends the forms 'show forth their proper activities now and then': the visible and tangible everywhere co-present yet distinct; in soul the substantial, vital, cognitive 'everywhere, yet determined in some manner'; and in intellect, the genera of Being — 'elements of that substance: not of the super-eidetic and simple, but of the eidetic.'
[413] The fourfold architecture of the eidetic cosmos (eidetic substance as single-form gathering; its partition and gathering wholeness; the differentiated forms with their many-formed monad) opens onto the chapter's most splendid page: before the elemental gathered substance is the true whole-and-parts, 'the first and really being substance, which for this reason we call life: as already swelling into dis-stance, and stirred into differentiation, and — as the name signifies — seething, and boiling up (ζέουσάν τε καὶ ἀναβράττουσαν); not yet poured out into the subsistence of forms... remaining, she is moved; and, unified, she suffers something of being-differentiated: by the unified, the whole; by the being-differentiated, the parts.' Whole-and-parts is one nature with two names; and before her, substance — 'unified, not as the one, but as the unified; and this is out of many and with many': the first elementated.
[414] The downward confirmation (even the bodily triad: blend / stirring-toward-activity / standing figure = substance / life / form) and the upward conclusion: if every substance is a gathering 'according to a joint-perishing of the elements,' the first substance's elements are 'the most properly elements of all: not blended by con-fusion of circumscriptions, like the elements here — as Aristotle also says (De gen. et corr. I 10); nor united only at their summit, as the forms... but having nothing determined, nothing eidetic — whole through whole, simply elements of the substance that stands according to union.' Hence the elimination: not the forms, not even the genera of Being.
[415] The positive identification, with the treatise's deepest epistemological reservation: the elements of the first substance are the genera of Being 'not subsisting eidetically, as they are named by us and conceived; for all our conceivings and namings are eidetic — I forbear to say that they are not even intellectual and true, but one must be content if they are even psychic.' Strip the eidetic, leave the partition: the genera as 'parts only, simply parts... before being made proper by circumscriptions'; strip even the partition: the same natures 'growing together and united into one blend' are the elements. The triple scheme closes on itself: elements by existence; parts becoming elements by participation (the whole 'a connate growth of the part-wise summits'); forms becoming parts and elements by ascending participation, 'by the union, and the riddance not only of determination but of partition.' One nature, three subsistences.
[416] The universalization: not the genera only — all forms, down to the last, 'are ever contained in the firsts,' differentiated earlier or later as their circumscriptions consort with more of the undivided or the divisive. And the definition that crowns the whole inquiry: 'procession is nothing other than the differentiation of the gathering — not all at once, but little by little, the more whole-like shining forth before the more partial.'
[417] The closing volley against the school's restrictions, in Damascius's most expansive vein: why should only the genera — or 'limit and the unlimited alone, for the philosophers say this as well' (the Philebus-doctrine of Proclus) — be gathered There? Then That would be principle 'only of the couplings of limit and unlimited,' not of all. 'If the summit of each form is a gathering of that form's whole multitude, how is not the one principle of all a gathering of the whole multitude of all things?' All things are elements in substance, parts in the middle, forms in intellect. The residual puzzle — why call some forms elements and others from-elements, 'for the animal is an element of man, and man of the land-dweller' — is handed to the next chapter.
[418] The graded scale of blendability answers Chapter 86's closing puzzle: forms near the unified have circumscriptions 'neither deep nor manifold, just now dawning from beneath' — hence easily blended, appearing 'elements rather than forms'; as the procession 'descends, deepening, and being built up (ἐποικοδομουμένην) with circumscriptions,' forms blend badly, 'cleaving the union toward differentiation.' The genera of Being: rather elements; the most specific forms (man, horse): rather forms; the middles — 'also called subaltern (ὑπάλληλα),' the logician's term — are 'equally elementated and elements': elements toward what comes from them, elementated toward what is before them.
[419] The aporia of individuation, posed with full analytic force: the most specific form cannot be an element of further forms (it is last) — nor of individuals, since the required individual differences are either accidents (which 'do not fill out a substance') or substantial (and then proper ideas of individuals follow, or a form 'which comes to be, whole, and perishes — neither monadic nor embracing of individuals': both absurd).
[420] The resolution: differentiation is double — division of the One into many whole forms by form-making differences; and 'stamping the same whole upon many matters' — wherefore the individual is 'the more properly called atom: whole everywhere, having no single differentiating variation.' Matter individuates without eidetic difference; the elegant aside about 'the likeness of Socrates in stone and in bronze' concedes only that the enmattered form 'is somehow co-altered along with its substrate.'
[421] The famous paradox, stated without retreat: 'in many substrates nature has set the same form whole.' Strip the matter and 'the whole form would have appeared one'; the individuals are not other by form, nor by otherness ('for otherness too is a form'), nor by number ('number too is a form, undifferent on either side'). The form of Socrates is the form of man 'narrowed not insofar as it is form, but insofar as it is a particular' — and so: 'Socrates is not other than Plato — for all the same attributes are rendered, conversely, of each.' Individuality is real but not eidetic.
[422] The universal and the individual man distinguished without splitting the form: the universal is the reason-principle grounding 'one participation common to all'; the form in each individual is 'the same both with the common, and with the each-of-each... nothing of it that is not everywhere'; the only difference is that 'it has been partitioned in its subsistence... itself dis-spanned (διεσπασμένον) from itself into determination' — the διασπασμός of Chapter 74 reaching its last station.
[423] The grand diagonal: 'nature seems to have gone all the way through, from the firsts to the lasts, along the diameter, and to have arrived from the opposite at the opposite' — at the top each form is one only ('that there be two first is impossible, as Plato shows': Timaeus 31a); at the bottom, 'many the same — many images of one and the same.' Hence the double generation: by form-making differences, and by 'the different scatterings (σκεδασμούς) of the same' — continuous (bodies, qualities) or discrete (monads, men, horses). Even the genera of Being suffer the undifferent multiplication; 'every nature proceeds down to the individuals; and all procession is eidetic' — with the portentous deferral: whether the elder principles also proceed is the inquiry to come.
[424] The conclusion: the most specific forms are not elements in individuals; 'the whole elementated structures themselves are, in many places, the same' — as the one bodily blend is 'whole in the part, and, in this part, the whole compound of the four elements.' Individuals are whole replicas, not new compounds; and Damascius closes with characteristic economy: 'concerning this, I do not know whether anything further is worth drawing out.'
[425] The opening paradox — elements lower in subsistence, higher in the nature of their property (animal: whole-like before man, an element within him) — is met by the doctrine of proper divisions: each monad has its own division, not inherited from the larger number ('the triad is not the dyad's two plus one'). Animal divides one way into rational/irrational; the triad animal–rational–mortal 'shone forth first in man, and was differentiated off from him, as being properly his own.' Even the monads of the smaller numbers are the more whole-like — quantity inverts rank.
[426] The law of gathering, stated in its most universal form and crowned with the treatise's central theological assertion: the seconds are always in the firsts — wholes in wholes primarily, parts and elements and forms with them; substance is contained in the unified 'undifferentiated from her proper henad,' the henad undifferentiated from substance, their elements mutually undifferentiated — 'wherefore There they are neither elements nor an elementated; for there is no determination at all.' The cosmological illustration is unforgettable: 'the elements of the cosmic body are impartibly in the hypercosmic light, whatever it is and however great; and the elements of the human body are gathered, undifferentiatedly, in the sublunar cosmos — common to all animals and plants and metals, all pre-taken in one gathering.' Hence the double verdict: all things alike 'both do not pre-exist, and again seem to pre-exist' — not by this differentiation, but by the gathered, more whole-like manner of form-giving.
[427] The chapter's doctrinal core, flagged by the Hamburg margin (the procession of the forms is double): elements and parts always co-proceed with their one; but the forms — circumscribed, 'striving to be upon themselves' — proceed twice. As parts, they fill out the multiplied aspect of intellect (as soul's logoi fill soul's many-formedness): the unlike-parted parts 'by-named from the whole — human, equine,' each logos no more a man than 'a head, and a hand, or a foot,' yet completing into the whole — 'so that the part is neither the same as the whole, nor other, but in a certain respect and manner, as Parmenides the great requires' (Parmenides 146b). The second procession separates each form 'self-completely (αὐτοτελῶς)' from whole and fellows — 'seeming more complete, but in truth of the needier ones, which have relaxed the con-spiration (σύμπνοιαν)... and proceeded scattered (σποράδην).' Apparent independence is metaphysical poverty.
[428] The hierarchy bites downward — the logos in soul is better than 'this apparent man'; the logos of the human soul in the more whole-like soul better than the self-subsisting psychic substance — and the scattered forms are then given their true constitution: 'not as a swarm (κατὰ σμῆνος), but, as it were, autonomous. But since the titanic differentiation (ἡ τιτανικὴ διάκρισις) did not wholly prevail over them' — the Orphic dismemberment of Dionysus by the Titans, become a metaphysical category — 'these too keep an ordering: a chorus, an army-camp, some whole cosmos of wholes; but better to say: a monad, and a number wound off (ἐκμηρυόμενον) from the monad — a chain (σειράν) flowing down from its proper principle.' And the cosmos itself: 'one, and then many after the one; and if all are one — yet as one chorus with its leader (χορὸς εἷς μετὰ τοῦ κορυφαίου).' The question whether the first principles themselves proceed is formally reserved.
[429] The closing gathering: elements with substance, parts with whole, forms in either borrowed rank with elementated or whole; the autonomous scattered forms 'each, like a number, depending from its proper monad.' But autonomy is bounded twice: each still participates the communion as of parts, and the monad that of the whole nature — so the same forms are parts of the single-form cosmos by the partitioned aspect, and 'according to the whole union of the eidetic summits — as of straight lines grown together in the center (ὥσπερ εὐθειῶν ἐν τῷ κέντρῳ συμφυομένων) — they become, as it were, elements of their one common substance.' The radii meet: the geometry of reversion closes the chapter.
[430] The recapitulation that the Hamburg codex distills into a red marginal table: the many everywhere are elements, or parts, or forms; forms unified into eidetic substance (eidetic elements, as the four of our body), or in partition (eidetic parts, like-parted and unlike-parted), or each upon itself ('a man and another man, and sun and moon'). The third remove yields the law of closure: elemental nature at the summits; whole-and-parts by inclining toward the one; the released, peculiar-mannered form — 'a number from a monad, a chain from a principle, a filling-out of a self-complete from self-completes — and further than this, nothing proceeds. For the further would be the complete dis-spanning of all — un-kindred (ἀσύμφυλος) and altogether torn asunder, in which disorder will supervene'; this affection does arise in the All, 'yet it is led back again into one, and ordered toward the one.' Procession has an absolute floor, and even its overshoot is retrieved.
[431] The deferred refinement — whether every multitude is double, inner and outer (forms connate with intellect vs. the many intellects after the one; the psychic logoi in the one soul vs. the many souls) — is the agenda of the coming discourse on procession; its mere statement already reorganizes the whole ontology into nested multiplicities.
[432] The discovery of the chapter: being many is not being forms, parts, or elements — each of those is 'a multitude and a particular multitude'; the simply many lie before all three, before the elementated itself. Their correlate: the One — 'not as some one of the many, but as the before-the-many, a monad of the many, and one-the-all (ἓν τὰ πάντα).' One and many are not two substances but the both-together; the simply one is itself 'many of this kind.'
[433] The elimination and the positive doctrine: not monads (monads are forms), not parts, not elements ('the elements blend toward the mixed substance; the many wish to be the multitude of the One... being more impartible and more unitary, instead of being blended they are unified; instead of making the mixed, they make the One'); neither continuous nor determined ('these are among the forms'). The simply many admit no differences at all: 'whatever of them one may take — even if all together — he will see nothing other than many; for theirs is neither the other-and-other, nor the together, nor the all.' And the master-theorem: 'no multitude is self-constituting (αὐτοσύστατον), but is always multiplied about some one'; the simply many are multiplied about the simply one — 'the multiplication is of the one, as the partition is of the whole: an affection of it, and a procession within itself.' Multitude is what the One does to itself.
[434] The identifications: this is 'the unlimited multitude hymned in the Parmenides' (143a–144a) — unlimited 'because it has no limit which is not multitude... many-where' rather than everywhere; and 'the One Many from which the negations of the first hypothesis begin' (137c ff.), gathering 'the all-bearing (πάμφορον) cause' of all that proceeds. Then the first full chord of the national theologies, anticipating the great review to come: 'the children of the Chaldaeans celebrate it as fount of founts (πηγὴν πηγῶν); and Orpheus, as mixed, bearing the seed of the gods; and the Phoenicians, as cosmic Aiōn — as having gathered all things in itself.'
[435] The dialectical complication, handled with complete candor: these titles traditionally name the limit of the intelligibles, which is One Being — but the argument seeks a One Many that is not One Being ('Plato showed the One Being to be unlimited multitude — not the One alone'). Every determinate one rides upon substance and is thereby a unitary substance (life double: unitary and being-differentiated; intellect double: henad and substantial form); so where is the simply one, 'principle of the double processions, the unitary and the substantial'? The candidates are weighed — the unified itself ('one in greater measure'), or a simple one before both — and the criterion is fixed: 'the argument seeks a simply one, only one, and not one-being; as the simply intellect is the first intellect... The first henad must be the simply henad: qua henad only, and not some particular thing's one.'
[436] The resolution sketched: rank the third element of the intelligible as its limit, and between it and the unitary substance set the simply One 'according to the first and simply god — if, as they say, one and god are the same (ἓν καὶ θεός) — since the things before this it is not right even to call gods.' The supra-divine ineffable stands above god himself; the One Many is the first that may bear the divine name. The unified remains One Being Many ('because the differentiated belongs to the One Being'), while the simply One is many 'as the principle contains what comes from the principle, and as the monad is called number' — each proceeding thing begetting its outer multitude 'according to the multitude wound up together (συνεσπειραμένον) within itself.'
[437] The alternative left standing — the One Being as 'double-faced (ἀμφιπρόσωπον): hymned both as limit of the intelligibles and as fount of the intellectuals' — with the theological testimonies divided: Chaldaean and Orphic for the one hypothesis, 'the Egyptian, and that of the Phoenicians' for the other; and the most Damascian of verdicts: 'the truth of the matter the gods themselves would know; for us, let the perplexities stand thus far.'
[438] The provisional architecture: the simply one before the unified; the simply unified 'riding upon the simply being,' gathering every substance, unitary and substantial alike; the simply substance before the determination — 'after which the particular substance is determined, here unitary, there substantial (or better: unified and mixed, as truly opposed to the unitary); and if this should prevail, all things will be in harmony — both the conclusions of the arguments, and the doctrine of the theologians.'
[439] The final ascent: of the doubly-determined substance, the multitude is elements, parts, or forms; of the substance before both, the simply many — 'Plato's unlimited and artlessly undetermined multitude, since no otherness has yet shone forth... an outpouring, and as it were a relaxation, of the unified.' And above even that: 'what is before the simply being also — the simply one — has the simply many; for the first principle is the many of the simply one — as it is called the Power of the Father (δύναμις τοῦ πατρός).' The Chaldaean dyad emerges as the metaphysics of multitude itself: simply one, simply many, simply substance — 'and below there sprouts off the double file (στίχος) of henads and of substances.'
[440] The closing law of analogical naming, the treatise's standing epistemology of the intelligible: in the unified 'the one and the multitude have run together into the same... neither one nor many, but only the both-together'; our triads are 'led up from below, by analogy — these not being There, but being, as it were, unknowns analogous to these knowns'; hence the summit mixed-from-elements, the middle whole-from-parts, the third monad-with-number — 'the third intellect, the second life, the first Being — from the things differentiated below indicating the wholly-complete and entire subsistence of the undifferentiated.'
[441] The Hamburg margin announces the question in red: inquiry about what was called the wholly unified, whether it has any differentiation in itself — which is the same as to say, procession. The case against is stated with full force: in what subsists 'immediately after the One, and about the One,' not even the first of all differentiations — that of one and being, whose 'connate growth and union is the first of unions' — has arisen; without a first otherness of the two monads no number can divide; one nature whole through whole unified admits no first, middle, last: 'it is like working darkness into the light, and a moving thing into the only-unmoved, and the temporal into the eternal.'
[442] The second arm of the aporia turns the treatise's own grammar against the triad: first, middle, and last are constituted only in the differentiated or the being-differentiated; the Parmenides (137d, 144e–145a) places beginning–middle–end 'many removes down,' in the limit of the differentiating nature, with whole-and-parts before it and number elder still. No number There, no triad; no triad, no first–middle–last.
[443] Against the aporia stands authority and argument at once: 'the gods, and the theologians, have hymned to us intelligible triads' — the Chaldaean Oracles and the divine poets against the dialectic. And the argument itself demands a procession There, 'even if, as far as may be, a unified one': the unified is after the One and with the many, so must be multiplied; before either life and either intellect there must be a unified life and unified intellect — 'where, if not in the unified all-world-order? Triply, then, even That has been world-ordered (διακεκόσμηται).' The key principle: 'the outer multitude is by nature begotten according to the inner'; even one who denies many in the one must grant 'the many of the one... the inner multitude' — or at least a unified, still undifferentiated multitude between the one and all determined multitude.
[444] The outer procession dilemma: like-formed (intellects from intellect) or unlike-formed (life from substance)? If unlike-formed, the unified itself never proceeds ('from the One also come the many... yet the nature of the One does not go forth and become many, nor does that of the Unsayable become sayable'). If like-formed, mere lowering is no procession at all: 'neither has it any good, that the same should be lowered, unvaryingly, in many places; nor is it possible for the same to be differentiated from itself' without added difference — not even individuals proceed 'without some form-making difference.'
[445] The aporia sharpened to its point: every procession yields things at once common and proper ('every star, and every animal, is a common form, and is varied in form') — but how does the different proceed from the undifferent? And of the unified the argument is 'still more impassable (ἀπορώτερος)': intellect, a form, can divide into forms; the whole into parts; the mixed into elements; 'but the unified wishes to be nothing other than only what it is called' — neither like-formed nor unlike-formed differentiation can touch it, and the both-together inherits both absurdities.
[446] The resolution begins from the school's own theological example — the double procession 'as the philosophers say' (Proclus's ὁμοειδής and ἀνομοειδής processions): Athena from Athena, Athena from Zeus. Damascius dissolves the division from both sides. The like-formed is secretly unlike-formed: the second Athena differs as partial from whole, heavenly from super-heavenly — and by 'a certain Athenaic peculiarity of manner (ἰδιοτροπία τις ἀθηναϊκή), according to which every Athena is first according to her own proper nature... since every god is a summit (πᾶς θεὸς ἀκρότης ἐστί), according to his own nature.' And the unlike-formed is secretly like-formed: Athena from Zeus is 'god from god, intellect from intellect, demiurgic from demiurgic.' Every procession is the both-together.
[447] The deeper unification: from Zeus proceed Zeus and Athena and another and another — possible only because 'the one was all of them' ('the more whole-like gathers the more partial in itself, as the animal was man and horse and ox, all together'). The second Zeus 'is not the same in form with the prior; for the one was all the proceeded, while the other is one of the proceeded.' Hence the theorem: 'every procession — even the all-from-one — is a partition of the existence (μερισμὸς τῆς ὑπάρξεως) of the whole Zeus'; each product is part and namesake of the producer — 'with the whole, as whole, none; according to the part, every one' — and the like-formed chain shares its father 'as far as the name.'
[448] The closing analysis abolishes the residual dualism of cause and existence: the cause of Athena in Zeus 'is con-substanced with Zeus himself — and Zeus would not be without it, which is the more reverent and the truer thing to say'; so even the unlike-formed procession is a partition of the existence. 'Perhaps the same thing must be called the existence of one thing, and the cause of another; and there is no need to double the nature of each thing' — sealed by the parallel for participation: the animal in man is participation insofar as from elsewhere, existence insofar as it fills out the man. One nature, two relations: the lesson of Chapter 76 now governs theology.
[449] The ascent to the oldest question: how from one, many? The Orphic ladder supplies the test case — 'the whole Demiurge proceeded from the whole Kronos: one entire cosmos from one entire cosmos, the demiurgic from the titanic.' But wholes-from-wholes fails the rank test.
[450] The containment argument, with its splendid Orphic regress: the container exceeds the contained, in the bodiless as in the bodily — 'the Kronian will contain the Dian, and the Ouranian the Kronian, and the Nyktian this' (the cosmos of Night), 'and this again the simply one cosmos, world-ordered before all.' Kronos contains the Demiurge and the excess; so 'every productive cause partitions the procession from the many within her... we shall be compelled, everywhere, to set the inner multitude above the outer' — and the simply one itself must have multitude within, 'and the argument is persuaded of the unlimited.'
[451] The 'ancient and newer' dilemma — Parmenidean in origin, scholastic in currency: procession from being is superfluous (it already is), from not-being impossible; no matter There to mediate by potency (and act never comes from the lesser potency anyway). Applied to the whole chain (life from substance, intellect from life, soul from intellect, body-forms from soul): the seconds are in the firsts in actuality (procession superfluous) or not (procession impossible).
[452] The standard escape — 'according to cause (κατ' αἰτίαν)' — is interrogated until it confesses: same in number, impossible; same in form, impossible ('the form is everywhere one, and first; not even this man here is the same in form with that one There: the one an image, the other the paradigm... the one in soul a mean, other than either'). What remains: 'the cause of the begotten, in the begetter, is nothing other than the begetter itself' — and then the abyss: 'why is one thing the cause of another? It is like saying that not-being is the cause of being.'
[453] The corollary for the lowest level: nothing first grows up in matter, all comes from There — yet 'the iconic, the generated, the enmattered, the dis-tended and swollen' are forms with no paradigms There ('they do not pre-exist There'), and what does pre-exist There — 'the eternal and ungenerated things' — cannot descend. Procession is squeezed from both ends.
[454] The aporia of the unified and differentiated, flagged in the Hamburg margin: union and differentiation appear only together, in the differentiated — 'not, then, before the differentiated is that unified from which the differentiated proceeds'; or else differentiation invades the unified. And the cause-question bites again: the unified causing differentiation is 'like making the contrary generative of the contrary'; if the descent (ὕφεσις) differentiated, 'what has made the descent itself? For surely not, in turn, did the excess make the descent.'
[455] The received answer — 'what the philosophers say: the proceeding becomes needier... insofar as it steps out of the one, it is not one, so many of necessity' — is refuted three times: the needier does not change the form ('the higher beautiful and the lowered are each beautiful — so each also one'; the one has its own procession, one into one); on that account the many would proceed only by accident; and the original scandal stands — generation from contrary to contrary.
[456] The better answer, the chapter's center: 'the One is not only one, as the name shows forth, but all things, according to the one simplicity before all; wherefore it is cause of all according to this its all-bearing (πάμφορον) simplicity — not insofar as it is one as set against the many, for it pre-exists all antithesis, but insofar as it is principle of all, and all things.' It produces 'all things, as being alone; the many, as being one; the beings, as being supersubstantial.' The proportion: as the demiurgic intellect, pre-taking all paradigmatically, produces all iconically — so the one principle, 'being simply all things before all things, undifferentiatedly and according to one unmultiplied nature, produces all the many from herself.' The aporia dissolves: 'from the principle of all, all things have shown themselves forth — because the principle also was all things, before all things.'
[457] The doubling of the principle, with its Chaldaean seal: one principle 'according to the simply One that is hymned,' the other 'according to the all' — 'the many of the One... as it were its unlimited power, according to which, or together with which, That is all things and generative of all; wherefore this principle is invoked, even by the gods, as Paternal Power (πατρικὴ δύναμις)' — the Oracles' own δύναμις πατρός, cited as divine self-naming. And since 'the first principles have grown together — the second in the prior, proceeded from her, in her' — everything thence is 'one and many at once... the many from the one, in the one.'
[458] The digression on matter answered by the circle-image — 'the many are everywhere in the one, as things encircled by the one as by a circle; so that the one is everywhere first, and last' — and the doctrine restated in its final form: the many and the all are the second principle, 'a loosing (λύσις), and an unlimitedness (ἀπειρία), of the one: she who is generative of all.' The deepest sentence of the chapter: 'to seek how the one produces is the part of those ignorant of the simplicity of the one; for not yet There have existence and power and activity been counter-divided' — production-talk presupposes a triad the One precedes; the second principle 'first shows from beneath the generative... the power unfolding outside the one; wherefore she has been deemed worthy of the second names.'
[459] The same defense extended to the unified ('at once also multiplied... fittingly generative of all, as a unified principle of all'), and the original aporia answered at last: 'the principle, being all things, was also procession, and descent, and differentiation; for each of these too is one of the all.' Producing substance, life, and intellect, she 'co-begets the descent, and the differentiation, and the procession, and all that holds of otherness; for otherness too is differentiated together with the others.' The conclusion in one line: 'Not by accident does anything go forth into differentiation: the generating cause both differentiates, and co-produces the differentiation itself.' Difference is not a fall from the cause but her co-creation.
[460] The penultimate aporia receives the full ladder of unions, ascending: the union of the same rank as a given differentiation; the union that is 'the one com-paction (σύμπηξις) of the same matter of the antithesis, as with dyads' (the union of a single opposed pair); the union gathering all such monads — 'a monad of all the monads... being the one form, in which all the forms are gathered up' (the eidetic summit of Chapter 86); the union of the whole simply, embracing the simply parts; the union of the elementated, 'a gathering of all the elements, the unified substance... the unitary'; and 'one union before both, the most proper, that of the One Being — which we exceptionally hymn as the Unified.' In it are all things — even differentiation 'according to union'; from it the being-differentiated, and upon that the differentiated: the whole triadic grammar regenerated from the doctrine of union alone.
[461] The regress objection — is the unified unified through union, as the differentiated through differentiation? but the two appear only together; and dominance-talk (union above, differentiation below) smuggles differentiation into the summit, 'for where the one of two opposites rules, there is also the other: where sameness, otherness; where rest, motion.' The first answer: That union and That differentiation are opposed 'not as things of the same rank, but as cause and caused' — the vertical, not the horizontal, opposition.
[462] The better and final answer is the treatise's epistemology in a single page: 'all things we conceive and name as determined... and from these we give indication (ἐνδεικνύμεθα) also concerning the undetermined.' The unified is not form-given by union; intellect is 'unified and differentiated at once,' and what part is to part within it, the whole intellect is toward substance — or toward 'the both-together, one and being, the unified before both.' Our names of the determined serve, 'by themselves or according to interweaving (κατὰ συμπλοκήν),' only to indicate the wholly undetermined, 'of which we have neither an articulated concept nor a name, because of the great partition of our thinking.' And then the sentence that could stand as the motto of the whole work: 'we must gather all our concepts together into one, and trans-think (μετανοῆσαι) the one summit of all concepts, if we are ever to lay hold of some trace of that gathered nature.' Thought must perform on itself the very gathering it ascribes to its object.
[463] The third aporia — must the genera pre-exist in the ungenerated? — is granted its premise and inverted in its conclusion. The enmattered forms, 'con-kneaded (συμπεφυρμένα) with not-being and the formless,' are not self-sufficient, not first, 'not truthful in their eidetic existence'; hence the swollen (διωγκωμένον) and the dis-stanced, as forms, have prior originals There. But as generated and enmattered — 'such as we see them to be — they are first, and alone, as such, here; while as forms, they are last of all things.' The antitheses rule equally on both sides; the difference is adverbial: There 'ungeneratedly and eternally — the same as to say impartibly'; here 'generatedly and temporally — the same as to say partibly.'
[464] Partible and impartible are not forms but manners — secured by the digression on naming, in the manner of the Cratylus: every name takes the whole from a part, 'not having a name significant of the commonness': cosmos from being-ordered, chorus from dancing, army from campaigning, anthrōpos from 'looking up at what he has seen' (Cratylus 399c), hippos from 'rushing with its feet' — and holon itself from the massed heap (ἅλις). Hence the resolution: every form is in intellect and in matter, 'the same form impartible and partible — here according to existence, there according to participation; here first, there last' — and even first/last, existence/participation are themselves forms on either side.
[465] The same surgery on paradigm and image: the properties (likeness, archetype) are on both sides — 'Socrates, too, is a paradigm of his own image'; but image-only (the enmattered form) is not in intellect, nor paradigm-proper (the ungenerated, eternal, first-existent) here. The astonishing concrete: 'the swollen, as a form There, is an impartible swollen (ἀμέριστον ὠγκωμένον)' — extension itself has an unextended original. First and last subsistence differ 'not as the properties, but as begotten and begetter, as existence and participation... not as common properties, but as proper subsistences, being above, and proceeding to what is below.'
[466] The ancient dilemma of Chapter 91 (from being or from not-being?) is now dissolved by the adverbial doctrine. The triple cosmos supplies the model: 'all that is in the first unmovedly, is in the second self-movedly, and in the third other-movedly; so that beings proceed from beings, and from things in activity; and nothing absurd follows.' Producer and produced are 'thus the same, and thus not' — 'so that you might even say: being from being, and not-being from not-being.' In the unified and the differentiated alike, 'in activity all things are in all; and again, in activity, nothing is anywhere: thus nothing, thus all.' There is no potency There, and no not-being in the aporia's sense — only otherness in 'the manner of the subsistence'; potency-talk survives only as the truism that 'things are by nature begotten, others out of others.'
[467] The fourth-from-last aporia (how many from one?) is dispatched 'by the like manner of method': the one is generative 'whether according to its own all-bearing simplicity, or according to the multitude embraced within it' — being all things in activity, yet 'not determined, like this cosmos... but one only — all things according to the one.' The full cascade is then drawn in a single sentence: the second principle from the first 'as one-many from one'; from her the unified, 'at once also multiplied'; from this, 'little by little, the subsistence of the many, differentiated off into multitude' — so that one-from-one, many-from-one, and many-from-many are all unscandalous descriptions of the same descent.
[468] The closing taxonomy of processions, each with its theological instance: one from one — 'as Dionysus from Zeus'; many from one — the many gods from Zeus; one from many — the soul 'from all the things before her'; many from many — the sensibles from the intelligibles. The regress is stopped at the source: 'this very thing — the simply one — is cause of all the many; being one, it is nevertheless all things, because before all; not some one of the all, nor one made out of all, but really one — all things together, according to the very One'; the second principle all things 'according to her being the many... every multitude subsists about the one, as every power about its proper substance.' And the final, perfect distinction: 'all things, as already numbered (ἀνηριθμημένα), proceed from the One; and many, as still unlimited and undetermined and not yet at their end, from the second principle.' Number is the gift of the One; the unbounded surge, of the Power.
[469] The next aporia in the series: if procession is whole-from-whole — and the Orphic-Chaldaean ladder is invoked at once, the demiurgic cosmos from the titanic, the titanic from the connective (συνοχικοῦ, the Chaldaean connectives), the intellectual from the intelligible — then either nothing exalted remains above, or what remains is 'sterile, and wholly without procession.' The easy converse (something new shines forth below, not yet differentiable above) is rejected with the treatise's standing law: 'it is There too — gathered — the very thing that is being differentiated in this one; or else whence is it differentiated?' The lower are 'more' than the higher only according to differentiation.
[470] The reconciliation with the doctrine of proper existence (Chapter 88's first ὕπαρξις): each thing 'shines forth according to its existence' where 'it furnishes to all its timely activity' — and both are true, because all things are everywhere but not in the same way: 'here unified, there being-differentiated.' The Hamburg margin states it as the chapter's question: it is asked, if all things are in all, yet not in the same way but properly in each, how we call the higher more whole-like than what is under it. And the doctrine is sealed by Chaldaean revelation, quoted as scripture: 'for all things are, but intelligibly, says the Oracle (φησὶ τὸ λόγιον)' — the famous fragment (ἔστι γὰρ πάντα, ἀλλὰ νοητῶς) — 'and in the sensible; and, plainly, in the means.'
[471] Containment without numerical excess: 'even if equal in multitude, the one can contain the other by magnitude — and the one, sometimes, the many; as the sphere of the fixed stars contains all the spheres that follow; and the Kronian will contain the Dian, even if equal in the multitude of its forms — by its embrace, and its aspect, and, as it were, by the majesty of its nature (μεγαλειότητι τῆς φύσεως).' Rank is measured by fertility as well: the intelligible cosmos begets all its successors (intellectual, hypercosmic, encosmic), the intellectual two, the hypercosmic one — 'the intelligible most whole-like, because embracing of all; the sublunar most partial, because last, containing only its own parts' — and the same proportion runs down every chain (σειρά).
[472] The mythological control-cases, handled as precise theology: 'Zeus is begotten from Kronos together with many others — both among the Greeks and among the barbarians'; Kronos from Ouranos with the other Ouranids; Dionysus from Zeus. The single-form sons who proceed from the whole father 'are established as successors (διάδοχοι) of the paternal kingships' — the six kings of the Orphic succession; the others divide the father by parts. Zeus, after the whole-complete partition into many gods, 'brought forth the partitive wholeness, and the many gods ranked beneath her' — and the astonishing confirmation: 'did not Zeus beget even the Titans, in his own world-order, according to the Orphic tradition?' Each level reproduces the whole structure, including its own titanic moment. The counter-exceeding (ἀντιπλεονεκτεῖν) follows: sons within the father are more partial; sons who step out of the paternal property become wholes in their turn, 'keeping, toward the things begotten from themselves, the analogy of their own begetters' — though 'the second kings do not stand at an equal counter-position to the first.'
[473] The positive doctrine of the one-and-many begetting: Zeus produces one (himself as one; Dionysus 'according to the whole alone'), the whole chorus 'according to the differentiated whole plenitude (πλήρωμα) of himself,' and each god severally 'according to some one of those within him.' Like-formed and unlike-formed are then assigned: the Dian chain 'according to his own property'; Dionysus and the hetero-named gods 'according to the cause pre-taken within him' — the formula whose adequacy the next chapter will put on trial.
[474] The closing aporia tightens the screw: whole and parts are alike Zeus's own existence — why then is not every procession synonymous? 'The many gods are not Zeuses; nor is Dionysus these things, though he is one.' Nor can the synonymous chain proceed by the whole (counter-divided against the other chains) nor by all the parts nor by one part only. The perplexity 'interwoven fourfold' is illustrated from the Chaldaean system at its most exalted: production by the whole may be synonymous — 'as the sevenfold-proceeding whole Demiurge among the Chaldaeans; for each of them is hymned as twice-beyond (δὶς ἐπέκεινα), and has gathered up in himself all things, the very things the first also has, even if more partial by the descent of his rank' — or hetero-named, like Dionysus; production by part may be synonymous (the Dian chain) or hetero-named (Athena from Zeus). The grid is complete; the principle that sorts it is still wanting.
[475] The resolving distinction, drawn directly from the Chaldaean theology of founts (πηγαί): every producer is partitioned twice — by depth (the whole chain flowing off by descent: like-parted, hence synonymous) and by breadth (the forms or unlike parts within: unlike-formed, hence hetero-named). The first and second Zeus proceed 'from the all-complete one according to the whole of him' and bear his name; the fount set over divinations (the text is uncertain here) proceeds by one of the unlike parts. Each partial fount leads off its own like-formed chain by depth; and founts nest by breadth — 'as in the heliac fount the Apolloniac, and in this the Asclepiac' — Helios containing Apollo containing Asclepius, each nested begetting unlike-formed. The grid of Chapter 94 is sorted at a stroke.
[476] The same machinery 'in the philosophic manner': intellect's depth-procession (intellect from intellect) is like-formed and carries the whole breadth with it; its productions of soul, nature, body — or per the beautiful, the good, the just — are unlike-formed, by something contained in it. The pointed question of allotment (ἀποκλήρωσις): why do soul, intellect, and body subsist separately and self-complete, while the beautiful and the just and the genera do not? — and why does matter alone receive all the forms? Two answers begin the series: the element-like forms 'refuse the separated subsistence,' their mutual union 'more complete than the dis-stance differentiated into self-completeness'; and the beautiful, rest, and motion 'made their procession simply into all things — the beautiful has made room for itself in every form.'
[477] The third answer is one of the most remarkable pages of the treatise: the simply intellect, per each form within it, begets a descending file — first an intellect, then a soul, then an enmattered nature, all stamped by that one form: 'by the beautiful, the aphrodisiac intellect; by the just, the intellect of Dikē; by the good, the intellect of the good daimon, so to speak.' The whole depth and the whole breadth are partitioned together, each product 'varied by the dominance (ἐπικράτεια) of ever some one form.' The breadth has its own first, middle, last — the genera; the more whole-like forms; the most partial, 'which, for all their great composition, seem self-complete and to subsist upon themselves' — and is then deepened again (intellectual, psychic, nature-like subsistence): procession is a two-dimensional weave, every thread of breadth deepening into its own unlike-formed line. Damascius closes the construction with his characteristic check: 'but these matters, perhaps, exceed the measure.'
[478] The honest reckoning that gives the chapter its drama: 'having gone round a great circuit, we have accomplished nothing' — the depth/breadth doctrine merely restates the original formula (existence: like-formed; pre-taken cause: unlike-formed) without explaining it. What is the cause? how is another nature pre-taken in another? why is the existence of one not the cause of another? — 'for we have now come to the very elders of the perplexities (τὰ πρεσβύτερα τῶν ἀπορημάτων).'
[479] First argument that cause is other than existence, sealed with the rare appeal to Aristotle by name: as the in-potency, in the lower world, is something beside the existence — 'as Aristotle showed clearly' (the Metaphysics Theta doctrine) — so the according-to-cause, its higher analogue, must be other than the existence There.
[480] Second argument: a begetter that is only its own existence, begetting from and by itself, transmits its proper nature and so can give subsistence only to a like; the unlike-formed therefore demands a pre-taken cause 'according to which, being something else, it will beget something else.'
[481] Third argument: without the pre-taken cause, sheer otherness would suffice for generation, 'and why does not any chance thing proceed from any chance thing?' — causation would be without cause. These three arguments are the case for the ancients' doctrine; the next chapter opens by naming them as exactly that — and turning the argument against it.
[482] The chapter opens by naming the preceding three arguments as precisely what they are — the case that 'persuaded the ancient philosophers' for the doctrine of the pre-taken cause — and turns the engine of aporia against it: 'the argument is a strange one (δεινὸς ὁ λόγος)' if the cause is in something whose existence it is not. Whence the cause itself? (infinity, or from the existence — and then how unlike-formed?); if being begets, and being is proper existence, 'what is called the cause was, after all, a part of the existence'; and the Aristotelian argument of Chapter 95 inverts itself — the in-potency is part of the existence, 'as the bronze is a statue in potency; for the bronze is by nature easily moulded, and the easily-moulded is a part of the bronze's nature.' The first resolution is among the most elegant in the treatise: 'perhaps the cause is nothing else than existence inclined toward otherness (ὕπαρξις εἰς ἑτερότητα νεύσασα), and become, for this reason, other-making; while the existence that remains upon itself is same-making' — instantly self-criticized: even the like-formed requires an inclination, 'for it is as inclined that the begetter is cause of the begotten' — so what difference remains?
[483] The final doctrine: existence is threefold — by like-parted partition (depth), by unlike-parted partition, and by breadth — and the producer's gathering need not be counted a fourth existence over these: 'as many things as each is, so many does it project from itself; and the things produced are, all of them, an unfolding (ἀνέλιξις) of the producer's gathering — as every number is a forth-stepping (προποδισμός) of the monad.' The simply animal embraces all animals by depth (heavenly, aerial, watery, chthonic) and by breadth (man, ox, horse); so the Dian intellect: 'in Zeus the god himself, all things are according to existence' — the whole-complete processions 'synonymous with the whole, as the twice-beyond demiurges among the theurgists (οἱ δὶς ἐπέκεινα δημιουργοὶ παρὰ τοῖς θεουργοῖς)' — the Chaldaean Oracles cited by their most august title — and the part-wise processions 'stepping out of the begetting nature, becoming hetero-named toward her.' Both proceed from the existence; the unlike-formed merely from the existence as divided. The pre-taken cause is dead; everything is ὕπαρξις.
[484] The synonymous chain explained at last: 'every synonymy is produced from its producer taken as whole... for every Zeus is father of all the gods, even if it has proceeded rather according to some one of the gods within him.' The twice-beyond demiurge 'is everywhere whole'; and within him the partial founts bear the divine names severally — 'one of the partial founts within him is a Zeus — as another is a Helios, and another an Athena; for the partial chain of each god flows off from some partial fount.'
[485] The homonymy of whole and partial founts, with the first full muster of the Chaldaean hierarchy in the treatise: the whole fount sends off 'a fountal chain only'; the partial fount 'proceeds into arches (ἀρχαί) and archangels, and into azonic gods (ἄζωνοι) and zones (ζῶναι), as is the law of the procession of the partial founts that are hymned' — the complete descending order of the Oracles. The precedent for homonymy-with-kinship: 'the iynges (ἴυγγες), and the connectives (συνοχεῖς), and the teletarchs (τελετάρχαι), and the archic ones' — the great triads of the Chaldaean intellectual world, named here together for the first time.
[486] The topography of the goddess — Hecate of the Oracles: the archic founts flow from her crown, 'the archic soul and the archic virtue from the partial founts at the girdle' (the Oracles place the fount of souls and of virtue at Hecate's flanks and girdle). Iamblichus is cited by name for counting a partial fount of the Implacables (the ἀμείλικτοι of the Oracles) among the partial founts; and the defended conclusion (ἀπολογισμοί) allows a partial demiurgic fount — set against 'the telesiurgic, and the guarding, and the purifying' founts — alongside the whole Demiurge who embraces 'all the causes engaged about matter,' both lawfully bearing the names of Zeus and Demiurge.
[487] The chapter's magnificent close gathers the whole fount-theology into the law of pre-taking: each chain in its partial fount; the hebdomadic fountal chain in the whole fount; all the partial founts in the whole fount — for the inner partition precedes the outer. The body of the goddess is itself the diagram: 'the cosmos that lies about the parts answers in proportion to the parts of the divine figure: the girdle answers to the girded flanks of the goddess; the crown, to the temples and the forehead of the divine head.' The breadth-partition flows from the hebdomad, the hebdomad is pre-taken in the monad by depth; 'the whole hebdomad of the first founts is gathered in the triads of the elder founts; and the triads, again, in the one fount of founts' — and at the last, in the strongest image the treatise possesses: 'all is drunk down (καταπίνεται) in the summit of the intelligible, and the very appearance of multitude by the union.'
[488] The series of gathered conclusions now begins (this must be believed... third... fourth...). The first conclusion is the biconditional of inner and outer multitude — many within the begetter pass over into the begotten; many differentiated in the begotten show forth beforehand in the begetter — grounded in the loveliest formula of the chapter: 'everything which is seen in the begotten is pre-sketched (προϋπογράφεσθαι) in the begetting cause, according to that cause's own existence and gathering.'
[489] The third conclusion fixes the geometry of pre-taking: seconds in priors, the more partial in the more whole-like — 'the like-formed according to depth, the unlike-formed according to breadth.'
[490] The fourth conclusion crowns the treatise's long architecture: all things in all, properly in each (undifferentiated / being-differentiated / differentiated; elements-in-elementated / parts-in-whole / forms-in-monad), and the outer processions run in strict analogy — intellects as a number from the monad, lives as parts from the whole, substances as elements from the elementated. Hence the epistemic gradient: many intellects are familiar (self-complete circumscriptions); many lives less so; many substances least, 'because of their great and elemental union' — yet all three multiplicities are necessary, given the definitions: substance an elementated, life a whole-from-parts subsisting in the being-differentiated, intellect 'a form out of forms.'
[491] The generative law restated in its exact, double form: not only does each inner multitude beget the outer (each product mastered by one dominating element, part, or form — the ἐπικράτεια doctrine of Chapter 95), but 'the whole begets also the whole — the second whole; and the parts, by themselves, the parts in the second; and the whole, according to each of its parts, a more partial whole'; and the arithmetical paradigm: the monad begets each number's monadic one, the multitude in the monad the multitude everywhere — every number 'given its form according to one form, having gathered up within itself a whole multitude proper to itself.'
[492] The universal gathering, distributed across the world-orders down to the sensible, with the final refinement that 'properly in each' means the peculiar manner of union and differentiation in each — and that containing and being contained themselves differentiate the levels.
[493] The decisive equation of the chapter: is procession mere shining-forth (ἔκφανσις) of what is gathered above, rather than begetting? Damascius dissolves the alternative: differentiation 'sets each thing according to its own existence — an existence which previously was not its property... it was an existence of another, of that which, according to it, existed whole-naturedly (ὁλοφυῶς)'; therefore 'it is the same thing to say that the seconds are differentiated from the priors, and that they are begotten from them.' Generation is the coming-into-property of what was another's existence.
[494] The limit of pre-taking: individuals have no eternal gathering — else the eternal would lose something when Socrates dies, or hold his cause in vain forever — 'and it is for this reason that we do not even make paradigms of the individuals' (the old Academic thesis, here given its deepest justification). The escape: beings that make by their very being pre-take their offspring; what moulds outwardly by activities — 'as in the case of the artefacts' — does not; and individuals arise precisely so, 'by the outwardly extended activities of the moving causes.'
[495] The regress (whence the form of the activities?) is met with the subtlest doctrine of the chapter: the pre-taking of individuals is lodged 'not in the substances, but in the activities that stand now thus, and now otherwise' — the universal forms give form to ever-deployed individual activities, 'changed, moulded now in this way and now in that, figured... the accomplishers of the individuals'; a pre-taking that is itself 'atemporal pattern re-fashioned' as the activities vary — eternity delegating individuality to time without surrendering causality.
[496] And if the unmoved itself must be cause even of the perishing individuals — 'as I for my part am persuaded (ὡς ἔγωγε πείθομαι)': one of Damascius's rare first-person professions — the resolution is the one cause of all the ever-recurring individuals, 'not the proper cause of me, nor of you; and yet a cause of me also, and of you, and of those that once were before, and of those that shall be once again' — sealed by the great simile: 'as the light of the sun both remains eternal in its own commonness, and is portioned out individually to each, because it has one cause, illuminating, of all individual eyes.'
[497] The doctrine of existences absorbs the scholastic triad: the Athena in Zeus is an existence of Zeus; 'she who has leapt up (ἀναθοροῦσα) from his summit is, surely, Athena herself'; the Athena in the Korē an existence of the Korē. The philosophers' threefold (by cause / by existence / by participation — the standard Procline formula) 'is well said; except that all must be determined as existences' — each filling out the existence of its host or standing as its own. The vertical relations are real, but everything, everywhere, is somebody's ὕπαρξις.
[498] The dialectical and logical confirmations: the genera of Being fill out every subsistence — as unified in substance, being-differentiated in life, differentiated in intellect, with partial intellects leaning by dominance; and the simply man is in animal (the whole-natured existence embracing all animals), by himself after animal, and in the land-dweller — 'and in me, the individual' — as an element: 'according to existence, then, this also. For even if it is given in from above — and in this respect is participation — yet the very seating of it, in that into which it is given, becomes a part of the existence.' Participation itself, once seated, is existence: the chapter ends by closing the last gap between having and being.
[499] The adjudication concedes the aporia its premise — each procession contains something of the other — and saves the distinction by the doctrine of bounds (ὅροι): every Aphrodite and every Athena 'remains somehow within the bounds of the first Athena and the first Aphrodite,' each a more partial bearer of the same property — hence the persistence of the name and the partition, 'the whole chain of Hera proceeding as from one and toward one'; while Erōs from Aphrodite is unlike-formed 'because Erōs has stepped out (ἐξέβη) of the aphrodisian bounds.' The symmetry is exact: in the unlike-formed, the like-formed strain 'is preserved as one within differing bounds'; in the like-formed, 'the differing shows itself within common bounds.'
[500] The criterion is then sharpened against a lurking confusion: Athena and Zeus are not like-formed merely because both are gods, intellects, demiurges — 'these common attributes attend even the like-formed ones,' as the many Aphrodites (whose pandemic members are themselves demiurgic intellects and goddesses all). 'The like-formed must not be defined by the more common genera, but by the more proper existences — upon which the proper names also are observed.' Hence the elegant chiasmus: 'all Aphrodites are like-formed, with a certain otherness; Erōtes and Aphrodites unlike-formed, with a certain sameness.'
[501] The generic registers of either procession, laid out as twin litanies — the unlike-formed: substance from Henad, life from substance, intellect from life, soul from intellect, the bodiform from soul; or again the unified from the one, the being-differentiated, the differentiated; and the unmoved, self-moved, other-moved; the like-formed: 'gods from god, substances from substance, lives from life, intellects from intellect, souls from soul — and, from the one natural animal, the many animals of its kind.' The two processions thread the entire architecture of the treatise.
[502] The question of priority: the like-formed is elder — the intelligible gods proceed from the simple god before the intelligible substances do; and the like-formed makes a cosmos 'in the same manner' (Kronos begets the titanic world-order, his own), the unlike-formed a descended one (Kronos begets the demiurgic). Same-rank generation precedes descent.
[503] The universal objection — procession as such is ἔκστασις, and 'every stepping-out carries the begotten down into the unlike-formed' — would make the unlike-formed elder. The reply is one of the great sentences of the treatise, the law of μονή itself: 'even before this, the like-formed must be — that upon which the unlike-formed attends; for each thing proceeds remaining (ἕκαστον γὰρ μένον πρόεισι); and the remaining in the cause makes the likeness and the sameness toward it.' Procession never outruns abiding; likeness is the trace of the remaining.
[504] The new division of the treatise opens — 'the things that lie beyond these investigations' — and its question is the deepest yet in the theory of procession: does the unified itself proceed, and into what? The threat is radical: the very arguments that ground the hierarchy (the other-moved demands the self-moved; the self-moved, the unmoved) prove only one intellect, 'and one soul, ensouling all things'; extended upward, one life, one substance, one henad — a world of solitary monads. 'Whence, then, is it plain that there are many gods, and many substances, and many lives, and many intellects, and many souls — each a number proceeding after its proper monad?' The plurality of the divine orders must be earned, not assumed.
[505] The first demonstration, from the inner multitude: the cause, one-and-many, begets according to the One, the many, and the both-together — 'each single product receiving its form, by dominance (κατὰ τὴν ἐπικράτειαν), from some one of the many, while being one, and yet also being the many in this one.' The descending file is drawn from the Orphic-Chaldaean orders themselves: from the simply intellect the connective (συνοχικός), from this the titanic, from this the demiurgic — each whole in the simply intellect, each stamped by one form. Then more partially: 'from the Demiurge proceed the Apollonian intellect, and the Areic, and the Athenaic' — and, in the boldest extension of the doctrine, down to the most specific forms: 'according to each form there is begotten a certain whole intellect, standing upon itself — as it might be, according to man, and according to horse.' Every form in the demiurgic mind is the principle of a whole self-standing intellect; the outer multitude of intellects is forced by the inner multitude of forms.
[506] The parallel for the middle order: the many lives subsist from the inner multitude of parts and hold the rank of parts. The double paradox — wholes from a wholeness that generates parts; self-complete from the non-self-complete — is resolved by their peculiar mode of being: as lives they are 'not yet circumscribed' (circumscription belongs to intellect and the differentiated); their being is 'in the being-differentiated'; so they are self-complete 'in another manner,' above the intellectual kind — wholes from a cause whole in life's way, parts in their manner of proceeding: 'as it were a number of the life seen in the being-differentiated — like monads that have their being not in the having-been-determined, but in the becoming-determined.' Life's numbers are caught forever in the act of becoming distinct.
[507] The lowest reach of the triad: the first mixed produces the many mixeds — the many substances after the one, 'a number proceeding from a kind of monad: unified from unified, and substance from substance,' holding the rank of elements, 'self-complete through the great union of their blending... the uncircumscribed manner, which strives rather to be blended toward union.' The chapter closes with the splendid gradient of the three multiplicities: 'the substances rejoice in their blending, and all but flee back into the undifferentiated; the lives are differentiated just so far as parts are from the whole and from one another; while the intellects were the first to be circumscribed' — union, differentiation-in-process, and circumscription: the three manners of being many, in strict correspondence with substance, life, and intellect.
[508] Kopp's margin numerals run legibly again from this chapter (Cap. 98 here at p. 306; 99 at p. 309; 100 at p. 312), confirming the division of the preceding stretch. The chapter opens with the universal law now 'gathered from all': wherever a multitude is contained within its proper one, a proper multitude is begotten without, 'as a number growing out from its proper monad; for the One must everywhere be prolific.'
[509] The law is then tested against its hardest case: do the simply many of Chapter 89 — elder than forms, parts, and elements — beget an outer analogue? That would be a procession of the intelligible itself, the question 'examined from the beginning.' The answer is prepared by the Parmenides (142b ff.): Plato makes the apparent division of the One Being like-parted, brings in the first otherness lower down, and founds the first number on it — 'reasonably: for where otherness is, there is the dyad' — and the simply many precede even that: no otherness, no difference, no determination. Only the proto-difference of the elements ('many of a certain sort: eager for their mutual blending') lets the monad of the many substances stand apart without — and even those substances, 'far from that archaic nature, still hasten toward their mutual con-natured blending.'
[510] The verdict, in the chapter's grandest period: the simply many — 'wholly without difference, and of no particular sort... one prolific nature... an unlimited multitude' (no limit of quantity or quality; not enduring 'even the relation of one and being') — have no proper procession; 'but since it is wholly many, all things are begotten from thence, down to the very individuals,' by 'the one all-bearing, unlimited-begetting (ἀπειρόγονον) power of the intelligible.' Then the double scriptural seal: the Chaldaean Oracle quoted at length — 'from hence all things begin to stretch their rays into the below; from hence leaps forth the generation of the manifoldly-variegated matter (ἔνθεν ἀποθρώσκει γένεσις πολυποικίλου ὕλης) — and whatever else the gods declare in their oracles about that order'; and Orpheus, who 'celebrated this much-honored god, the one bearing the seed of the gods, and called him Ērikepaios,' deriving from him 'the whole generation of the gods' — all things pre-taken There 'scattered (σποράδην), as the theologian says,' in the unified embrace he named the seed. Even the simply One pre-took all — but without depth, 'for in the processions, depth belongs to what differs in breadth.'
[511] The precise differentiation of union from blending: 'blending belonged to differing elements, but union to undifferent many'; hence the elementated's procession went outward along the differences of its elements, 'while that of the unified remained, all of it, within... for, difference not being, it inclined all together into one and whole, and remained' — closing with the axiom that procession requires difference: nothing proceeds 'both from something and from itself, where there is no difference.'
[512] The analogy from demiurgy, in one of the most exalted pages of the treatise: as the Demiurge produces all the enmattered without descending into matter, 'just so the intelligible god brought forth from himself all the divine world-orders, while himself remaining in his own — truly hypercosmic — watchtower (περιωπή); having gone forth into them only so far as to establish his own monad as queen of all.' The arithmetic of the processions follows: the most whole-like gods 'tripled or sevenfolded,' the more partial multiplied by greater numbers — while he remains 'the truly remaining monad... exceeding all the monads, and the whole single-form, fountal multitude, to speak according to the theurgists (κατὰ τοὺς θεουργούς). Whence also he is hymned by all as the fount of founts.'
[513] The counter-battery of authorities for a triadic intelligible: the philosophers' substance–life–intellect; the Chaldaean Father–Power–Intellect (πατήρ, δύναμις, νοῦς) — named here in its canonical form; Plato's three ranks in the Parmenides (One Being; Whole and Parts; Unlimited Multitude); and Orpheus, who 'brings forth from the egg, when the cloud is burst, the much-honored Phanēs' — the breaking of the cosmic egg as procession within the intelligible itself.
[514] The resolution maintains the treatise's analogical epistemology — these triads 'we carry up from the things below... desiring to give some indication according to the analogy of the more familiar': one-and-being differentiate outside the intelligible; whole-and-parts Plato sets among the intelligibles-and-intellectuals; the unlimited multitude divides only where differentiation shines forth — 'for we know all things eidetically — and perhaps, indeed, only psychically.' The unified 'is not divided — it which is not even being-divided'; no forms, parts, or elements There, hence no true procession — 'whence the triad shone forth after the intelligible.' And the proof-text is the great Chaldaean fragment, quoted verbatim: into three, said the intellect of the Father, all things are cut — whose will nodded assent, and at once all things were cut (ἐς τρία γὰρ νοῦς εἶπε πατρὸς τέμνεσθαι ἅπαντα· οὗ τὸ θέλειν κατένευσε καὶ ἤδη πάντα ἐτέτμητο). The god is 'three-barbed (τριγλώχις)' not as constituting a triad but 'as commanding the triadic division in response, not as making it': the cut falls after him, at his nod.
[515] Kopp's margin places Cap. 99 here (p. 309). The chapter opens with the epistemological confession that governs everything that follows: 'since it is not possible to see the unified itself, insofar as we are not one — having attempted to behold it, and being unable to gaze upon its single union — we multiplied it according to analogy'; and since 'the first multitude is the triad, we supposed That also to be triadic, by analogy.' The intelligible triad is our projection of the first multiplication below — true as indication, not as anatomy.
[516] The alternative cosmology of succession, among the most striking constructions in the treatise: every cosmos 'proceeds in itself as far as it was of a nature to proceed,' then 'furnishes the beginning of subsistence to the one after it, but does not itself descend' — the psychic cosmos stands, and the bodily takes up the succession; so the intellectual ends into the psychic, the intelligible into the intellectual. Hence 'the nature of the intelligible does not proceed outside the intelligible cosmos'; the lasts are released from connection (not all bodies hold to souls, nor souls to intellects); and the conclusion in its lapidary form: 'the intelligible is wholly unparticipated (ἀμέθεκτον ὅλον) — the cause being, that it is the summit of all the cosmoi; so that it is seated upon the very crown of all.' Contraction into the undifferentiated is not diminution: 'it is the greatest of all the cosmoi.'
[517] The vehicle-analysis (the ὄχημα of the Platonic schools turned into a structural category): every first-ridden becomes vehicle of a further rider (intellect ridden by soul, soul by body), so the intelligible cannot be vehicle of anything — 'for in that way the first god would be participated; but everywhere the first must be unparticipated.' The clean limit-cases: 'body is vehicle only; the intelligible, ridden only; and the means are viewed in either way.'
[518] The pluralization of the participated (one for substance, life, intellect, soul, body — the ridden gods differing in form from encosmic up to intelligible-and-intellectual) is allowed to stand as schema, but its ground is confessed inscrutable: 'what this so great difference within the unified would be, and whence, it is hard even to fashion in thought (χαλεπὸν καὶ πλάσαι).' The placement theorem follows: the One proceeds neither in itself nor after itself; the intelligible 'has justly remained in the middle station: having proceeded in itself, but having made, after itself, no procession at all.'
[519] The order of riding is itself derived: 'the first ridden is the henad; and that upon which it first rides is substance; but the unified was before both' — hence before carrying and ridden altogether, not admitting the rider's difference. Then the first Iamblichus citation, the most beautiful in the chapter: 'the intelligible subsisted about the One, and has grown together with the Good, and, by the inclination (ῥοπῇ) of its whole nature toward That, is as it were frozen fast (ἐπάγη)' — the intelligible as a crystallization of desire about the Good, therefore abiding, undifferentiated, processionless.
[520] Even the 'highest appearance of sub-stepping (ἄκραν ἔμφασιν ὑποβάσεως)' within it is no plurality — and the second Iamblichus citation gives the rule: 'the triad There is not three monads, nor did it supervene upon three monads; but it is only the form itself that supervenes upon monads' — which Damascius immediately outbids: 'or rather, not even the form; for that is not yet a form There, nor anything like an element... but only the very one of the triad, and even this undetermined toward substance — the unified before both.' The intelligible triad is the One of triad, before any three.
[521] The closing genealogy of number, the chapter's deepest stratum: before the unified, after the One, stand the many — 'not so-many,' but 'an unlimited-begetting henad (ἑνὰς ἀπειρογόνος)' — the second principle herself; 'her first offspring is the intelligible multitude — become a unified instead of a one.' The first number subsists only where determination and otherness first appear, 'immediately after the unified... the number according to the first determination... the multitude of the first elements, where determination first subsisted — one and substance being the first things determined; or rather, not even these as having been already determined, but as still being determined.' Even the primal pair, one-and-substance, exists only in the present participle — caught, like everything in this treatise, in the act of being born; with the promise that these matters 'will be touched upon many times hereafter.'
[522] Kopp's margin places Cap. 100 here (p. 312). The treatise turns its method upside down: having descended from the unsayable, it now ascends 'from the things below, and lying under sensation,' by 'the demonstration that arises from evidences (τεκμήρια), coming about by way of analysis' — empirical confirmation sought for the intelligible architecture. And the question is fixed with precision: not the monads (their necessity stands proven), but 'the many ranked under each monad' — the very existence of the divine and psychic numbers.
[523] The agreed ladder is laid down twice — kinetically (other-moved / self-moved / unmoved-but-differentiated / being-differentiated / undifferentiated) and ontologically (body / soul that moves and vivifies / intellect knowing all at once, not transitively / life / substance) — 'demonstrated, and agreed by all the most renowned of the philosophers.' The Hamburg manuscript glosses the transitive thinking of soul in the margin: thinking transitively, soul has the power of unfailing motion, joining her periods one to another and making her activity unturning, one, and unceasing.
[524] The great illuminationist hypothesis, stated with such force that the Hamburg scribe summarized it in red in the margin: perhaps the many souls are only many illuminations (ἐλλάμψεις) from the one soul into the many bodies; the many intellects, intellectual illuminations from the forms in the one intellect; the many lives, vital illuminations from the one life; the many substances, in-givings (ἐνδόσεις) from the one substance. The multiplicity and formal difference of the illuminations is conceded — 'unless a man should wish to quarrel with the very principles' — only their self-completeness is denied. And then the historical thunderclap: 'even the many gods were supposed to be such by almost all the philosophers before Iamblichus (οἱ πρὸ Ἰαμβλίχου σχεδόν τι πάντες φιλόσοφοι): saying that the supersubstantial god is one, and that the others are substantial, divinized by the illuminations from the One... divinizations given-in to the substances.' One sentence of doxography that rewrites the history of pagan theology: before Iamblichus, one supersubstantial god and illumined divinizations; after him, the self-complete henads. The stakes of the chapter are nothing less than polytheism itself.
[525] The instrument of resolution: illumination is double — 'the one suspended (ἀπηωρημένη) from the illuminator, con-being with it according to one continuity; the other growing into (ἐμφυομένη) the illumined, becoming its own, subsisting in it as in a substrate.' And the pre-determination, argued through the chapter's governing image: the self-complete subsistence is better than the same-rank illumination — 'as the light of the sun, if it had subsisted by itself, and were not a hanging appendage (ἀπαιώρημα) of something else; and if it were a substance, and not, in a certain manner, an activity of substance.' Of the two illuminations, the suspended is better (belonging to the illuminator, and separate) than the in-grown (belonging to the illumined, in a substrate, inseparable).
[526] The a-fortiori principle that drives the whole ascent: 'if something is in the worse, it will be in the better in far greater measure' — if even the human soul, worst by nature among souls, is a self-complete substance, then the divine soul much more; and if soul, then intellect; if intellect, life; if life, substance; 'and if the substance, the One as well; for the self-complete, and self-sufficient, and seated upon itself would be in the superior things rather than in the needier.'
[527] The terminological determination: the substantified-by-itself-and-in-itself comprises substance, life, intellect, soul, body — marked off against what has its being in these: 'elements, and parts, and forms, and the reason-principles in the soul.'
[528] The empirical argument proper, from the manifest plurality of bodies ('evident even to a blind man') and the felt diversity of lives ('we perceive one life in one way, and another in another'), through the destructive dilemma against the illuminationist: in-grown illuminations are impossible, 'for that which itself moves itself is assuredly separate from the substrates'; suspended illuminations would make souls 'each of them not their own, but as it were out-growths (ἀποφύσεις) of one nature.' Then the moral coup de grâce: 'what place will vice have, and ignorance, there being no longer any partial souls? These, then, will be affections of the whole soul' — as, if lamp-light were the sun's own, its quenching would afflict the sun: 'but this it is no longer lawful (θεμιτόν) to say.' The conclusion carries the strongest word in late Platonist moral psychology: the human souls are 'self-complete, and seated upon themselves... their own and not another's — which is to say, self-determining (αὐτεξούσιοι), and self-moved in truth.' The freedom of the will is the evidence that we are not God's light but our own substance.
[529] The triple ensoulment of the human body — the rooted-down ensoulment, the proper self-complete soul that breathes it in, and the soul of the All from afar — generalized: the betters among the ensouled must have all three; 'if it has the worst... and the strongest... why should it not have the one ranked in the middle?'
[530] The continuity argument, invoking the law of middle terms: between the monad of souls and the most partitioned souls there must be 'the whole number... the middle plenitudes (πληρώματα)'; procession admits no gaps.
[531] The most refined objection — a double life-making from the world-soul, one fore-taken (vivifying even the soulless), one supervening and common — is conceded and turned: even so, either everything is soulless save an alien common life, or each ensouled thing has its proper soul; 'after the one soul of the All, then, there are the many self-complete souls — as may be gathered by reasoning from the appearances (ἀπὸ τῶν φαινομένων συλλογίσασθαι)' — the chapter's announced method fulfilled.
[532] The closing proportion lifts the result one story higher: as the ensouled to soul, so the in-intellected (ἔννουν) to intellect. The ensouled body is 'gathered together with a self-complete soul'; therefore the in-intellected soul is 'attached, by nature, to a proper intellect' — for it cannot be that the better arrangement (union with a self-complete principle) 'subsisted in the worse things... while in the betters it should not have come to be.' The ladder of self-complete numbers is climbing toward intellect — and beyond.
[533] Kopp's margin places Cap. 101 here (p. 317). The method of Chapter 100 climbs a story: intellect confessedly lives, but its life is its own, subsisting in it — therefore before it a self-complete Life, which intellect participates 'according to attachment... yoked to her as to a better, as body to soul.' And the participation is two-staged, on the model just established for body: through its proper, attached life, intellect 'will participate also of the unparticipated life' — as the body, through its own soul, participates of the soul of the one that has obtained it by lot (the soul of the All, in the Platonic phrase). Each level reaches the unparticipated monad only through its own self-complete intermediary.
[534] The ascent continues to substance, participated and unparticipated; and then to the boldest extension: the unified itself is triple — as state (ἕξις) in the substance, as participated subsistence, as unparticipated — and 'the same argument will demand that of the simply One also... there be a triple subsistence': the illumination come to be in another ('according to which we call each thing, however it has subsisted, one'), the unparticipated existence, and the middle, participated one, 'through which the participants enjoy something also of the unparticipated.' The henadology of the school — unparticipated One, participated henads, the one-in-each-thing — is here derived by the method of evidences; but Damascius, with his usual restraint before the highest things, defers: 'this perplexity awaits us again hereafter.'
[535] The announcement of the second ascent: the same conclusion — not only the monads, but the numbers (many souls after the one, many intellects, many lives and substances) — to be demonstrated again through evidences (διὰ τεκμηρίων); with the standing promise that 'the same perplexity will again be hung (ἀπαρτήσεται) for us, concerning the unified and the One' — the question of whether the unified proceeds, suspended over the whole inquiry.
[536] The three-kinds proof, credited to 'the more ancient philosophers' (the argument of Phaedrus 245c–246a and Laws X, sharpened by Aristotle's regress): the moved body is moved by another; a bodily mover regresses to infinity; a [merely] unmoved mover leaves intermittent motion unexplained ('how will this sometimes move, and sometimes not?'), since the unmoved cannot begin change 'lest it too should change'; therefore the self-moved begins change — its own and the other-moved's — and stands necessarily before the other-moved.
[537] The completion and crown of the proof: the first mover is wholly unmoved (else infinity); the self-moved cannot be first, since qua moving-and-moved it is 'first of the moved... and last of the movers,' and 'the unmixed toward the worse must be set before the mixed' — even self-change is change: 'not, then, unmoved in truth.' And then the chapter's great flowering: the unmoved is triple in nature — intellect, life, or substance can be wholly unmoved — 'she as supra-eternal (ὑπεραιώνιος); intellect as eternal (αἰώνιος); and life as Aiōn itself (ὡς αἰὼν αὐτός)': substance above eternity, intellect within it, and Life identified with Eternity in person — the Aiōn of the Chaldaeans and of the Timaeus, standing between. Or better (the corrected division): intellect circumscribed by forms and differentiated; substance uncircumscribed and undifferentiated; life in the middle, 'roused toward differentiation and circumscription, yet not yet standing completely in the having-been-differentiated' — the triad once more as the grammar of determination (Chapter 99: still being determined). And before all three, the closing vision: 'there will be also, stretched out alongside all (ἀναπαρατεινόμενον πᾶσι), the One; for one and unified are not the same; for the latter was the undifferentiated' — the One not a summit merely, but co-extended with everything, everywhere present alongside each rank of the real.
[538] Kopp's margin places Cap. 102 here (p. 319). The inquiry descends a level: from the numbers under each archic monad to the many under each genus — the many forms of soul. The pre-determination is the principle of co-formation: parts are form-given together with their wholes and characterized by the whole's activity — so 'the opinative part is not the same in form in the divine soul, and in the daimonic, and in the human; but the one is itself also human, the other daimonic, the other divine.' Even the lowliest faculty bears the formal signature of its owner; hence the self-moved itself differs in form from soul to soul, and so does its appearance below.
[539] The evidentiary engine is then run in reverse: 'the appearances, being different in form, proceed from true things differing in form; so that the many apparent forms are evidences (τεκμήρια) of the many true forms.' The warrant is Platonic: 'if we make the apparent self-moved in the other-moved an evidence of the true self-moved — as is shown more completely in the Phaedrus' (the immortality proof of Phaedrus 245c, where all body moved from without points to soul as self-mover) — then many forms of appearance prove many forms of truth, 'as each image, differing in whole form, is evidence of its proper paradigm.' The conclusion arrives with the force of a theorem: 'many, therefore, are the souls.'
[540] The Procline-style objection — the many souls as psychic reason-principles determined within the one single-form soul, on the analogy of paradigms in the one intellect — is met with a magnificent descent into the concrete: the parts of the whole soul are all divine, all-complete, 'whole-like, and in very truth cosmic'; but the ensouled things before us are not — 'one is divine, another daimonic, another human; and one is the ensouled body of Pythagoras, another of Kylon; and one, if it so chance, of Plato, another of Kleon.' Pythagoras and his persecutor Kylon of Croton, Plato and the demagogue Kleon: the moral spectrum of history itself is the evidence that souls are many and formally diverse — the world-soul has no wicked parts.
[541] The 'separate substances illumining from afar' escape is granted and shown harmless — proper souls there must be, 'whether from afar, or from near, or in whatever place and manner.' Then the phenomenology of the soul's own activities, beyond the inseparable and animal-like ones: 'fighting against the ensouled, or ordering it and setting it in array, or withdrawing from it headlong, or not even seeming to be present, through the greatness of the separation' — manifest in us, dimmer in the daimonic kinds ('and yet many indeed have met with such'), hardest in the divine, where ensouled, souls, 'and the gods themselves, from whom the souls are hung' interweave. The capstone is the organ-argument: 'our soul uses the ensouled as an organ — as she makes plain when at times she does not use it'; and where there is an organ there con-exists the user: 'the rational soul of each, seen according to its co-ordering toward its proper organ — which indeed we also call the vehicle (ὃ δὴ καὶ ὄχημα καλοῦμεν).' The ensouled body is the soul's ὄχημα — the doctrine of the vehicle given its dialectical derivation.
[542] The chapter's imperative — 'Ascend now (Ἀνάβηθι δή) from the self-moved to the unmoved, as you have ascended from the other-moved to the self-moved' — and the new apparent term: the heavenly revolutions, 'circling ever according to the same things and in the same manner.' Their sameness-in-change imitates intellect, 'as Plotinus says — or rather, as Plato himself, in the Laws, projected it as an image of the motion of intellect' (Laws X 897d–898b, the circular motion likened to the revolution of νοῦς). The diagnosis of its apparentness is exact: 'the always has been blended together with the at-some-time — for it is always at this or that moment that it moves — and the in-the-same-manner with the now-thus-and-now-otherwise'; even in the circulation of souls the moved is 'con-kneaded (συμπεφυρμένον)' with the unmoved.
[543] The refined objection: the celestial sameness images the psychic unchanging, not the intellectual — with its striking corollary doctrine, which Damascius accepts as true: there is an unchanging-according-to-substance in bodies as well as souls; and not all the unchanging is eternal, 'for the substance and subsistence, say, of the sun, though everlasting (ἀΐδιος) and unchanging, would not be eternal (αἰώνιος). For how could the body be eternal — standing apart, one part in one place and another in another, and dispersed abroad? For the eternal is impartible both according to place and according to time.' Everlastingness is endless duration; eternity is impartibility — body can have the first, never the second.
[544] The reply turns on the treatise's signature figure of nested appearances: the first unmoved is 'the truly eternal, or even supra-eternal'; the generated, however unchanging, is still other-moved. And the proportion rings like a bell: 'as the true other-moved is an apparent self-moved, so also the true self-moved is an apparent unmoved.' The soul, mover-and-moved at once, is not properly unmoved — 'the moved is significant of something generated; wherefore the self-moved is also interpreted as self-generated (αὐτογέννητον): for it is becoming — but by itself.' Each apparent term leads proximately to its proper substance and properly to the true term above it: the ladder of evidences passes through soul's apparent unmovedness to the first unmoved itself.
[545] The theorem in two lines, the whole chapter compressed: 'if the self-moved is, the unmoved is before it; and if there are many self-moveds, differing in form from one another, each will carry us up, like-formedly, to its proper unmoved.'
[546] The last objection — one unmoved containing many forms, as paradigms in the one intellect — is dissolved by the distinction the whole inquiry has earned: 'it is not the same thing to speak of the heliac part of the one intellect, and of the heliac intellect.' The example is pressed to the highest names: my soul differs from the pre-taking of me in the whole soul (where I am 'viewed There as a part'); the soul of Kronos differs from 'the Kronian psychic cause pre-taken in the whole soul'; hence from the one we ascend to a part in the whole intellect, from the other 'to a Kronian proper unmoved intellect.' Many self-complete souls thus force many self-complete intellects. And the chapter closes at the edge of a vertiginous question: if every apparent unmoved evidences a true one, 'there will be even a proper, self-complete intellect of my own soul. And why not?... But let this remain awaiting us, inquired into thus far' — the personal intellect of each soul left standing as an open possibility.
[547] Kopp's margin places Cap. 103 here (p. 324). The question advances from the bare plurality of intellects to their co-ordination: are the many intellects co-ranked with the many souls 'as with organs or as with vehicles' — the soul to the intellect what the vehicle was to the soul in Chapter 102? The celestial test-case answers yes: the heliac and selenian apparent unmoveds evidence heliac and selenian self-complete intellects, each co-ranked by kinship with its own soul and using it 'as an organ toward the perfecting of the third things' (the natural forms below). But the diagnosis is exact: this evidentiary ladder — from the in-given to the givers — reaches only the participated intellects, joined to their participated souls by 'the likeness of their properties, and the symmetry of the equal measures of the partition from the wholes.'
[548] The corrective doxography: the philosophers (the Athenian school's standard architecture) know hypercosmic souls before the encosmic, and, above even the hypercosmic participated ones, 'the intellectual and unparticipated intellects' — so the unparticipated multitude still waits above everything the ascent has touched.
[549] The pre-determination is a little summa of the riding-doctrine: every rider pre-takes the property of its mount. The deity riding intellect is 'a unitary intellect'; the intellect riding soul, 'an intellectual soul: intellect by subsistence, soul by the property'; and the presiding henad 'projected the psychic peculiarity, and is a unitary soul' — as there are unitary substances and unitary lives, gods named by what they ride: the whole hierarchy doubled in the unitary mode, 'and before all of them is the henad.'
[550] The chapter's theological jewel, and a doctrine of great consequence: the 'last gods' are called encosmic, sensible, enmattered — 'not, as the philosophers seem to say, as if the god were form-given from the lasts; for nothing is characterized, or named, from the worse, in justice; but because everywhere the henads, projecting their properties before them, give these in shares to their proper vehicles.' The divine names descend, never ascend: the gods are first — 'encosmic, and enmattered, and sensible, and bodily — in the unitary manner'; then the intellects in the intellectual manner, the souls in the self-moved manner; and only at the last does body itself proceed 'according to the last subsistence.' Even 'sensible god' names a henadic goodness, not a glorified body: 'each such name is, as it were, a property — a goodness coming from gods. For what would not be an offspring of god, and of one?' — the whole world religious from top to bottom, every level a divine property before it is a thing.
[551] The two-target structure of every ascent, stated as method: from each appearance the transition runs 'nearer, because more con-generic, to the participated; further, because truer, to the unparticipated' — from the apparent unmoved first to the participated intellect ('self-moved according to property alone, unmoved according to subsistence'), then to the wholly unmoved, the unparticipated intellect. And the multiplication carries up: 'as the participated are many, so also the unparticipated must be many' — each participated property having 'its own purified counterpart in its proper unparticipated one.'
[552] The essential restriction, protecting the taper of the hierarchy: not every appearance licenses the full ascent — no unparticipated 'soul of Plato,' no unparticipated intellect for each daimon ('for every daimon is encosmic'). Otherwise everything would be 'determined everywhere,' the whole multitude of gods differentiated already in the intelligible, and the great law would fail by which 'the things above, compared with the things below, are gathered in quantity while exceeding in the quality of their worth' — the higher orders fewer and worthier. The criterion for which appearances carry up and which do not is deferred, with Damascius's customary honesty about open accounts.
[553] Kopp's margin places Cap. 104 here (p. 327). The demand is for the missing middle term: between the simply unparticipated one and the participated multitude there must stand what is 'unparticipated indeed, and yet a multitude' — for the one is joined to the many both as one-to-multitude and as unparticipated-to-participated; and 'every number is like-formed to its proper monad,' so the first unparticipated leads a multitude of its own as surely as the first participated does. Then the triple division of the unmoved is re-derived from within: intellect, differentiated yet gathered, has a life that is intellectual rather than unmixed; before it therefore the supra-eidetic life (ὑπερείδεος ζωή) — 'life only, subsisting by herself, substantified in the being-differentiated alone — nay rather, herself projecting the being-differentiated': life not merely located in differentiation, but its very source.
[554] The same step secures the truly substance ('substance only, and completely unified') — and then the law is extended from monads to multitudes: unparticipated multitudes of lives and of substances above the participated ones; and 'nothing prevents bringing the same necessity of the argument to bear upon the unified as well.' The conclusion is the boldest extension of the henadology in the treatise: 'before the participated many, many unparticipated henads' — substantial, vital, and (in the chapter's most beautiful phrase) 'those that have kindled intellect from themselves (αἱ νοῦν ἐξάψασαι ἑαυτῶν), intellectual'; 'many unparticipated gods — and not one only; and one also, before the many: the simply god.'
[555] The placement of the new multitude: these henads are not the undifferentiated ones 'unified according to the One Being of Plato' (the henads before one and substance), but stand 'according to the One alone, counter-divided against Being according to the first otherness that appeared.' The first otherness, separating one from substance, generates the full order: the simply One in front of all; the many unparticipated henads; then the participated ones, down through substances, lives, intellects, souls, to the bodiform natural forms — while 'Plato, after the undifferentiated One Being, set against each other the two columns (στίχοι) of the participated henads and the participated substances' (the double series of the Parmenides' second hypothesis: one and being woven down the whole deduction). And the conclusion the whole inquiry has driven toward: from the simply unified, as from every monad, 'a double multitude of unifieds will show itself — the one unparticipated, and not co-stretched alongside the participants as far as the encosmic animals; the other participated, reaching down to these... so that there comes to be a procession of the unified also.' The question of Chapter 97 receives its affirmative.
[556] But the engine, pushed one step higher — to the One above the unified — meets the absolute wall, and the chapter ends among the summits of the treatise's negative theology: There 'the participating and the participated have not yet been differentiated; nor the participated and the unparticipated; nor the many and the one.' The second principle is recalled in her exact character: 'called many as being one nature... being, of herself, a power of the One, differentiative and prolific' (the unlimited-begetting henad of Chapter 99). The One 'wishes to be one only — even the all-various one — and before all things'; where all is one, not even one difference subsists; hence no simply / unparticipated / participated one — and no procession 'in any manner whatsoever: neither according to appearance, nor according to the analogy of remaining and proceeding and reverting, nor of begetter and begotten; for these too are certain differences.' The archic nature endures nothing of what proceeds from it, 'and will not so much as indicate (ἐνδείξεται) one of these — it which we say is not only one, but not even anything at all': even indication (ἔνδειξις), the treatise's last instrument for the highest, here fails by the One's own rigor.
[557] The closing aporiai turn the One's titles against themselves: how is the principle still common to all, if it is the proper monad of its own unparticipated multitude? how un-co-ranked, if it has a participated multitude — 'for everything of that kind is co-ranked with the things that participate it'? The dilemma between the One as principle-of-all and the One as monad-of-henads is left standing, the bridge into the next chapter's reckoning with the first cause.
[558] Kopp's margin places Cap. 105 here (p. 330). The first cause is dismissed in a single breath of perfect apophasis — it has 'nothing in common with all the others save this alone: that it is exalted above all, and is cause of all — and does not even have the title cause as something determined apart from the one' — and the whole weight falls on the unified. The concession of Chapter 104 (a double multitude proceeding from it) is first restated, then revoked: 'is it perhaps truer to say that not even the unparticipated proceeds?' The reason is the unified's own erotic posture: 'inclining together, whole, toward the One... willing nowhere and in no wise to subsist apart from it; for it is in this that the first unified has its being' — and the first of every kind is the truest of its kind: 'assuredly it is most truly unified.'
[559] The double approach to the unified — from below (one being, simple, before one and being, superior even to 'the processional principle, the one that differentiates the One and the Being from each other; for this differentiation showed itself first') and from above (one-and-many by participation, as the two principles were by cause). The second principle receives her most exact characterization yet: 'not many in the sense of a many in multitude, but as a One of such a kind — as it were an out-stretching (ἐκτένεια) of the One; wherefore it is hymned both as the power of it, and as its all-bearing, and as cause of all.' And then the great negation, the sentence for which the chapter exists: no difference, otherness, differentiation, procession, descent, excess, begetter or begotten — 'for the nature of the unified has drunk down all things (καταπέπωκεν) into the one union of all — as, if it be lawful to say, the One itself has drunk down all into the one simplicity of all.' The verb of Chapter 96's fount-theology (all drunk down in the summit of the intelligible) becomes the constitution of the intelligible itself.
[560] The profession of faith — 'that the truth stands thus, I am persuaded beyond everything' — sealed by Iamblichus's contemplative method, cited as a discipline: 'compelling us to press our many intuitions together, as into one centre; and to make the circumference a centre; and so to approach the unified... with one great intuition (μιᾷ μεγάλῃ νοήσει).' Then the unforgettable concession to the human condition: 'since it is no easy thing for one who is a man to project such an intuition — above all while still dwelling upon the earth' — we compress what we cannot gather, splitting the one nature into unified and multiplied, 'though both of these are folded together (συνέπτυκται) according to the unified'; and the final epistemic settlement: the one nature 'we conceive in two ways: either as one and not one; or as neither one nor not one; or as one and many.'
[561] Do we then speak falsely? The answer is the treatise's whole semantics in one line: 'in the differentiation we speak falsely; but in the union even of these terms we speak truly — and yet we cannot, as yet, meet with this truth.' And then the magnificent cosmological image: all the cosmoi proceed from 'the truly hypercosmic abyss (βυθός)' — the Chaldaean-Orphic depth — which we call 'a hidden cosmos (κρύφιος κόσμος), having gathered up in itself all the cosmoi... or rather their undifferentiated birth-pang (ὠδίς): not yet enduring the cosmic form, and yet simply fore-travailing it.' Of the cause of all there is 'one birth-pang, common and undifferentiated, of all the whole births' — the unified as 'the borderland (μεθόριον) of the cosmoi... and, from above, of the one exalted simplicity.' Being itself is a labor not yet delivered.
[562] The most famous page of the chapter, and among the most famous in Damascius. The order of firsts, middles, and lasts 'came running in together with our conception' — it is ours, not There's; real differentiation first appears 'from the limit of the intelligibles-and-intellectuals, as is said in the Parmenides.' Even the triadic division must be conceived as a birth-pang, or 'seminally; for the seed is more partless than the birth-pang; or even beyond the seminal analogy.' And then the confession: attempting to grasp 'the truly undetermined, abysmal embrace of all things, we were ourselves partitioned, and partitioned about it; and fearing the rending of our conceptions (τὸν τῶν ἡμετέρων ἐννοιῶν σπαραγμόν) — dreadful, and titanic in very truth... about that which is in every way altogether impartible — we gladly caught hold of the triad, having run the risk of being dragged down into the last partition; and, contenting ourselves with this fall, we dared to predicate of the intelligible the threefold division.' The sparagmos of Dionysus by the Titans becomes the figure of thought itself before the intelligible: the triad is a controlled fall, accepted 'to give rest to our conceptions, which can no longer be gathered together any further, and yet cannot be released from the contemplation of the intelligible, through longing for the archaic causes of the whole of nature (πόθῳ τῶν ἀρχαίων αἰτίων τῆς ὅλης φύσεως)' — philosophy as unappeasable longing, theology as its merciful discipline.
[563] The discipline follows: three purifications of the triadic predication. First, ascend only from what proceeded from There — substance, life, intellect, not chance things. Second, ascend from the term before the separation: the intelligible life is 'unified life, before the unitary life and the as-it-were mixed'; the intelligible intellect 'neither the unitary one, nor the one counter-divided toward it as vehicle toward ridden... but the one before both' — intellect simply, 'the first intellect, from which were differentiated both the first unitary and the first substantial intellect — each being first, yet each relative to something; while that one was first simply.' All things are gathered There 'according to the both-together,' and the Chaldaean Oracle is quoted once more as the seal: 'for all things are, but intelligibly, says the Oracle.' If anything shines forth There, it is the firsts — the most generic, simple, and divine — projected in the birth-pang 'according to their own highest perfection... sufficing to con-subsist with the intelligible, and to shine forth along with it — and not to be hidden beneath the coruscation (μαρμαρυγῆς) of That, nor con-fused by the union of That': only what is nearly unified can stand visible in that light.
[564] The third purification dissolves the names themselves: substance, life, and intellect There are 'the one nature of the unified, projecting itself toward itself alone, according to the seeming descent' — first bound, middle, and last 'of the same nature,' like the separable, inseparable, and middle aspects of one nature in a body. The intelligible intellect is so called 'not because it thinks, but because it is cause of the one that thinks' — and even its thinking is causal; the intelligible life is 'before both — but as the birth-pang of these.' The chapter's last word is its first: 'the division itself is an appearance (ἔμφασις) of the division of the things begotten from There; while the very existence of the intelligible is the unified, and the undifferentiated' — the triad we predicate is the shadow cast backward by our own birth.
[565] Kopp's margin places Cap. 106 here (p. 335). The chapter returns to first principles with the inquiry's final verdict in its opening clause: the intelligible cannot proceed outwardly, 'it which does not even proceed inwardly' — neither participated nor unparticipated multitude comes from what is 'single-form, and undifferentiated.' Its inner multitude is then given its exact pedigree: not forms, parts, or elements — not a multitude of certain things, but 'only multitude... of that famous race: of the unlimited, and the much, and the chaos-like (τοῦ ἀπείρου καὶ πολλοῦ καὶ χαώδους)' — the lineage of the second principle, the ἄπειρον πλῆθος of the Parmenides' third intelligible rank. And the double inheritance is stated with arithmetical precision: from the first principle it changed into unified-instead-of-one; from the second, into 'unlimited instead of unlimitedness, and one form instead of the manifold one' — each principle bequeathing its character in the participial, softened mode.
[566] The unified as the gathering of the two principles — and of everything after itself: 'having gathered within itself the whole procession of the things after it... above all according to their most generic differentiation, which has appeared as substance, and life, and intellect.' Then the diagnosis of our whole predicament in one clause: 'of which, wishing to see the gathering There, we see, in place of that, the differentiation that comes from There' — every look at the unified is refracted into the triad it begets; we cannot behold the seed except as the harvest.
[567] And therefore the chapter's — almost the treatise's — final counsel of method, delivered as a command: 'one must not dwell upon it, but flee headlong (φεύγειν προτροπάδην) — positing That not intellect, but as-it-were intellect (οἷον νοῦν); nor life, but as-it-were life; nor substance, but as-it-were substance; nor procession at all, but as-it-were procession.' The little word οἷον — as-it-were — becomes the entire grammar of intelligible theology: every name is kept, and every name is unsaid in the keeping; and the only safe motion of thought before the unified is flight.
[568] The margin numeral for this chapter is not legible in the scan; the division follows the text's own articulation, with Kopp's explicit Cap. 108 at p. 339 confirming two chapters within this stretch. The opening move gathers the imagined procession 'into one — being the same within and without,' on the strength of the unified's unique constitution: in intellect, life, and substance the cosmos is the monad together with its differentiated multitude; but in the unified, the multitude 'being con-sown (συνεσπαρμένον) within it, and not having stood apart into monad and number, the same has been established as at once monad and number.' Hence the chain of identifications that levels the entire architecture: monad and cosmos the same There ('the uncircumscribed union of the intelligible... and, in real truth, the hypercosmic abyss'); whole and all the same; forms, parts, elements, and the very blend of the elements the same — 'for none of these has been determined off There... but the One Being alone, and this unified.'
[569] The reading of the Parmenides' three intelligible moments as three grammatical postures of one nature: undifferentiated — 'one name only, and one showing (ἓν δήλωμα)'; being-differentiated — one and being as its parts; differentiated — unlimited multitude, 'even if, always, the one runs together with the other.' And then the most paradoxical doctrine in the chapter: the differentiation that appeared There 'came to be into a one-ment (ἕνωμα), according to its own limit' — it 'refuted itself in the argument as being no differentiation; for it unified rather than differentiated... it showed the fragments (κέρματα) of the unified to be unified — so that they are not fragments'; its only work in the intelligible was 'the confirmation of the union.' The simile seals it: 'as if a man, wishing to divide the form of gold, should find the divided parts also being no less gold; the division has come to be of the quantity only, and not of the gold according to its form; but There it is of the unified only; for there is no quantity There' — division without a dimension to divide along accomplishes nothing but the proof of indivisibility.
[570] Plato's procedure in the Parmenides receives its boldest characterization: 'wishing to indicate that it is indivisible, he supposed a division, and found it without issue — or rather, found it to have accomplished some great thing: for it indicated the undifferentiatedness of the unified... even at the extremes, where it would seem most of all to be differentiated from itself'; 'and it was for this that he gave subsistence to the lying hypothesis (τὴν ψευδομένην ὑπόθεσιν ὑπεστήσατο).' The second hypothesis is a deliberate falsehood maintained for the sake of indication — dialectic as sacred fiction, failing on purpose so that its failure may show what no success could.
[571] The grammar of οἷον from Chapter 106 is now applied systematically: the seeming fragments are 'as-it-were forms... as-it-were parts'; Plato himself confirms it by re-introducing whole-and-parts below, after the intelligible — 'making clear that the parts and whole above were spoken of in some other manner' — and by setting multitude before number in the unified: a multitude 'undetermined, before every determination,' neither composed nor even continuous ('for the continuous comes after the determined'), but 'unlimited and chaos-like.' Even the elements There are 'as-it-were elements'; and the chapter's geometry concludes: breadth and depth There 'wholly undifferentiated — according to actuality and according to truth,' admitted only 'in potency, and according to analogy... gathered up equally — not into a blending, but into all-complete union.'
[572] The closing theorem completes the cosmology of containment begun in Chapter 99: as no intellect escapes the intellectual world-order and no soul the psychic, nothing goes forth outside the intelligible — and the participated and unparticipated multitudes themselves 'have been gathered up into one.' The final formula is the chapter's crown: 'the same both rides upon all, and is exalted above all; for the participated has not been counter-divided against the unparticipated; rather, ranked before the counter-division, it holds the power of the both-together — before both — so as, being the same, to be both participated and unparticipated.' The unified is above the great Procline division itself — unparticipated insofar as above the participated, participated insofar as belonging to all — with the standing deferral that closes so many of these chapters: 'concerning participation, again hereafter.'
[573] Kopp's margin places Cap. 108 here (p. 339, explicit). The new question completes the survey of the simply terms: granted the simply substance, the simply life, the simply intellect — must there also be a simply One, separated from substance 'according to the otherness that appeared in the middle,' leading an unparticipated multitude of bare henads? The advocacy is built from Parmenides 144e: 'there are as many fragments (κέρματα) of substance as of the one' — the participated henads carry the participated substances, so the architecture seems to demand the unparticipated multitude above them and its monad above that: the common one in the substantial, vital, and intellectual monads must come 'from the common cause.'
[574] The advocacy's strongest engine is the ladder of staggered dependencies, a signature analysis: the simply soul hangs from a particular intellect (not the simply intellect), the simply intellect from a particular life, the simply life from a particular substance — so the simply substance itself should ride a particular henad, with the simply henad above it; 'for the unparticipated is always simply, while the participated is never simply.' Then the most striking sentence in the chapter — Damascius pauses on the threshold of refutation with a prayer: 'persuasive is the advocacy of the hypothesis; yet I do not think the matter stands so; for great also is the counter-pulling surmise (ἀντίξοος ὑπόνοια); and may some Mercy (ἔλεός τις), taking pity upon us, steer the onset of the argument into the truth itself.' Dialectic under divine pilotage — the philosopher of the unsayable asking grace for an argument.
[575] The refutation from Plato: better to 'run the risk together with Plato,' whose two columns set One against Substance immediately after the One Being — with substance 'minced into just as many fragments as the One,' leaving no room for an extra unparticipated multitude on the one side of the ledger. The 'greater evidence' is the opening of the second hypothesis (Parmenides 142b–d): the One participates substance and Being participates the one; if they counter-participate in the unified, they counter-participate when differentiated — 'so that the One is called substantial, and the being henized.' One and Being are woven into each other at every level: a bare one, stripped of all substance, has no Platonic standing.
[576] The refutation 'from the matters themselves' is topological: the simply One has nowhere to live. Not in the intelligible — 'for that was the unified'; not in the intelligible-and-intellectual — where the Phaedrus's 'really being substance' (οὐσία ὄντως οὖσα, Phaedrus 247c) holds the place, counter-divided against the one; Damascius notes Plato's care in saying 'the really being' rather than 'substance simply.' And the rescue attempt — give the intelligible-and-intellectual a summit with its own unparticipated multitude, as the intellectual and psychic orders have — breaks on the chronology of manifestation: 'we cannot suppose many gods before the otherness; and the otherness, together with the henad, showed forth the substance.' Before otherness there is no manyhood for gods to stand in.
[577] The closing reductio multiplies the hypothesis into absurdity: an unparticipated otherness with its own multitude yields 'a gathering (συναγερμός) of many more gods before substance'; a simply many over against the simply one yields 'many manynesses (πολλότητες) after the one' — and even softened into 'a power or fertility (γονιμότης) of the One,' the many There would already stand apart as 'another henad, as-it-were many-making (πολλοποιός).' The last step names the cost outright: if the much-hymned otherness is herself the principle opposed to the One, she opposes substance too — 'there are three monads together: the One, the Otherness, the Substance' — a triad of co-ordinate principles in place of the single ineffable principle, which is the reductio's terminus.
[578] Kopp's margin places Cap. 109 here (p. 341, explicit). The opening disclaimer — 'no wayside task (πάρεργον ὁδοῦ) for an argument that seeks precision' — marks the question as one Damascius will not fully adjudicate in passing; but the demand is pressed home symmetrically: if there is a simply many, gods must proceed from the Manyness (πολλότης) as from the One. The dissolution is the doctrine of Chapter 99 redeployed: the One has 'nothing multiplied within itself,' and the many are 'undetermined and unmultiplied' — one nature, itself many-making; even the element-analogy fails, for both principles are 'without procession both within and without,' so that not even a like-formed procession of a proper multitude can be spoken of them.
[579] The grand survey of the doubled hierarchy: at every rank a unitary term (the god, named by pre-taken property) and a substantial term (its mount), each 'a such-and-such, and a particular' — substance, life, intellect, soul, and even body, where 'the unitary body makes the encosmic god.' The simply of each rank is never one of the pair but 'the both-together before both,' pre-existing in the intelligible. And the reason is given in the Oracle's own words once more: 'That is all things, but intelligibly... wherefore the intelligible is said, even by the philosophers, to be the simply substance; and as from the simply and before-all One all things are begotten, so from the intelligible all things are wound off (ἐκμηρύεται)' — the great unwinding-verb of the treatise, the intelligible as the skein from which every order is drawn.
[580] The settlement of Chapter 108's question: the simply Being is the unified ('which is also all being'), the simply One above it ('for it too is supposed all One' — πάντα Ἕν matching πάντα ὄν); below them the particular henads and substances pair off as rider and mount. The dilemma — are these simplys monads of their own series only, or causes of all? — is resolved by denying both horns their shared assumption: the simply One is Being 'neither in subsistence nor in property,' the simply Being likewise not One; each is what it is 'by whole existence alone (κατὰ τὴν ὅλην ὕπαρξιν).' They are not co-ordinate series-heads but total natures: 'the one must be hymned as simply One, the other as simply Being; and this is that simply one over which our conceptions hover before the many henads.'
[581] The chapter ends by grading the term ὑπερούσιον itself — a remarkable piece of semantic theology. Supersubstantial is said in ascending senses: (1) the participated henad, above the by-subsistence substance that participates it; (2) the unified, above both substances (by property and by subsistence); (3) the two principles, above the simply substance before both — 'the simply supersubstantial'; and (4) the One, the one principle, 'most properly so of all, because it is above even the unified that is before both.' Along the way the mixed receives its own three grades — the unified 'firstly and most of all,' the mixed by property second, the mixed by subsistence third ('rather a commixture (σύγκρατον) of elements') — and the closing law gathers the whole nomenclature: 'the participant always shares the name of the participated according to each property.' Every divine name below is a borrowed name, lent downward along the riding-order.
[582] Kopp's margin places Cap. 110 here (p. 344, explicit). After a hundred chapters of aporia, the long-deferred positive doctrine is at last ventured — and with the treatise's characteristic double apology: it is dared (τολμήσαντα) 'toward a more precise indication' (ἔνδειξις, never description) and toward the satisfaction of 'this truly much-laboring conception of ours' (the πολυπράγμων ἔννοια — our busy, restless faculty that cannot rest in silence). The declaration itself: from the simply One grows out (ἀποφύεσθαι) one con-generic (συγγενές) multitude only — the unparticipated, 'the intelligible race of the gods, remaining in the unity of That... the hidden world-order (κρύφιος διάκοσμος)' — the same hidden cosmos of Chapter 105, now identified as that which 'the gods have hymned as undifferentiated, and as hypercosmic, ranked above all cosmic good order': the Chaldaean Oracles' own name for the intelligible gods, cited as divine warrant.
[583] The sentence that gives the chapter its weight: 'the unturned (ἀνεπίστροφος) first principle, begetting, begets all things indeed; but she kindled (ἐξῆψεν) from herself only the unparticipated generation of the gods, holding it together into one union and one nature.' The first principle does not revert — there is nothing above her toward which to turn — and the kindling-verb of Chapter 104 (the henads 'that have kindled intellect from themselves') is here given its supreme instance: the gods are flames lit from the One, not products separated from it. The supporting analogy runs from below: the sensible heaven produces only a participated, sublunar multitude, never an unparticipated one — 'for neither was the begetter himself the participated one'; like begets like in respect of participation.
[584] The architectural necessity of the middle: between the principle 'exalted in every way and above all things' (no multitude whatsoever) and the principles below (each with both unparticipated and participated multitudes) there must be a principle with exactly one multitude — the unparticipated alone. This is the intelligible principle; the great taper of Chapter 103 ('the things above gathered in quantity, exceeding in worth') receives its summit-case.
[585] And the close re-secures everything Chapters 105–107 won: the intelligible is One, 'beheld, again, threefold: itself remaining in itself according to the One; itself, in itself and from itself, somehow proceeding according to the triad' — an inner procession that never leaves home; 'and its triad is not a differentiation of its substances, but an indication only (ἔνδειξις μόνη) of the multitude — how much, and of what kind, has been unified in the intelligible.' The triad is a gesture toward the gathered, not a census of the divided — the exact key in which the theological doxography of the following chapters must be read.
[586] Kopp's margin places Cap. 111 here (p. 344, explicit); and Kopp records that from this chapter onward fifteen chapters had already been published by Wolf in the Anecdota Graeca (vol. III, pp. 198–261, 1723) — the one portion of the treatise in print before his own edition. The doxography of the nations is announced as the inquiry's final movement: the hypotheses of the ancient theologians are to be read 'according to these philosophic conceptions we have set forth' — concordance, not refutation, is the program. First the Chaldaean, 'confessed to be the most mystic of all' — and the most challenging: its three intelligible triads seem 'to answer back against our surmises, which yearn to gather the intelligible into one union.' Nine gods where Damascius has labored to show one undifferentiated nature.
[587] The witness-list of the whole coming doxography in miniature: the theurgists (the Julians, authors of the Chaldaean Oracles), 'taught by the gods themselves'; the Egyptians and Phoenicians with their 'great generation of gods in the intelligible' ('as a little later we shall relate' — the promise kept in the famous concluding chapters on the national theologies); 'the divine Orpheus,' whose theogony runs 'from Chronos down to the first-born Phanēs'; and Plato, whose 'three conclusions upon the One Being' (the articulations of the second hypothesis) are equated outright with 'three intelligible divine ranks.' The hermeneutic question is posed with the treatise's deepest reverence: how did 'the gods, and the men near-sown of the gods (θεῶν ἀγχίσποροι ἄνδρες)' — Homer's phrase — understand what they handed down?
[588] The 'newer philosophers' (the analysis of Proclus and his school) read each triad as limit–unlimited–mixed: two henads (Father and Power) and one composite substantial monad (the paternal Intellect). Damascius's objection is theological before it is logical: why should the third member alone be demoted from godhead? 'Intellect too ought to begin from a henad'; the school itself ranks the unitary intellect before the substantial among the intellectual gods. And the principle that decides the whole question: 'the theologians... hand down to us the generations and the ranks not of the vehicles, nor of the things that have proceeded from the gods, but of the gods themselves.' Revelation speaks of gods; an exegesis that quietly substitutes their mounts has changed the subject.
[589] The dilemma pressed home with the Chaldaean orders themselves: the paternal Intellect is said to produce 'the triadic world-orderings — iynges, connectives, teletarchs (ἴυγγες, συνοχεῖς, τελετάρχαι)' and all below. If he is a composite substance, the gods derive from the non-god — 'the superior from the worse... as if one should derive the souls from bodies'; if instead the iynges and connectives are themselves substantial rather than unitary, 'we shall speak against both our own selves and the gods.' Either way the standard exegesis collides with the rule of Chapter 103: nothing is named — or begotten — from the worse.
[590] The Orphic parallel: if Phanēs, 'who bears the seed of all the gods,' leapt forth from the egg, the exegete who glosses the egg as Being must explain a god born from the not-yet-god. And the system's asymmetry is exposed in one stroke: substances, lives, intellects, souls are all doubled into unparticipated and participated — 'yet all the henads participated; among whom, most of all, the unparticipated was fitting.' The gods alone, on this scheme, lack the higher mode of being that everything else enjoys.
[591] The autobiographical jewel of the chapter: the corrected scheme — each triad three henads, with substance hung from the last only — 'as once seemed good also to our own guide (τῷ ἡμετέρῳ καθηγεμόνι), when I communicated to him these reflections concerning the third member.' The guide is Isidore, Damascius's master, to whom he devoted his biography; the Peri Archon here preserves a trace of their actual conversations — the disciple bringing his ἐπιστάσεις, the master assenting. But the assented scheme is then refuted too: it scatters the unparticipated multitude (unparticipated–unparticipated–participated, repeating), against the law that the unparticipated form a continuous block — 'we should not find a participated soul in the middle of the unparticipated ones.'
[592] The further reductios: whole must follow whole, so the alternation cannot stand; the substantial intelligible 'will be torn apart along with them, and will not be whole inclined together toward whole, itself toward itself'; and a triad of unlike monads — some unparticipated, some participated — is 'as if a man should make one number out of certain hypercosmic gods and certain encosmic; or out of archic ones and archangelic; or out of these and the azonic' — the census-orders of the Chaldaean hierarchy (ἀρχαί, ἀρχάγγελοι, ἄζωνοι) invoked to show the absurdity of mixed enumeration.
[593] The cosmological objection: every unparticipated multitude completes its own world-order, every participated multitude another; the scheme therefore splits the intelligible into two cosmoi and cannot say which is 'the' intelligible — while if the both-together is intelligible, consistency demands the same both-together reading of every cosmos in the descent (intelligible-and-intellectual, intellectual, hypercosmic, encosmic).
[594] And the final, fatal instrument — Damascius's own deepest principle turned upon the scheme he is examining: if the third member is a henad with a substance hung from her, separated by otherness, then 'the unified before both is manifest — and it will fall into the midst of the triad, and tear it apart; or else it will be before the triad... and then we shall no longer rank the triads immediately after the one principle, as they themselves wish to say, and as the Oracles bear witness — not the newer men only, but Iamblichus also, and Porphyry.' Every henad-plus-vehicle pair presupposes the unified that precedes all such pairing; place it anywhere and the received architecture breaks.
[595] The resolution: the third member is 'neither the one, nor the being, nor the one together with the being yoked to it, but the unified before both' — answering at once to the Chaldaean paternal Intellect, to 'the Mixed of Plato' (the Philebus's third kind — 'yet intelligible, and supersubstantial'), and to 'the Being of the philosophers... undetermined toward one and being alike.' Its mixture is genealogical, not compositional: 'one and not one' — the not-one from the second principle, the being-unified from the first — yet, since the principles themselves 'subsist more excellently than according to all determination,' the unified is 'neither composite, nor com-blended, nor elemented, nor from elements — save by some analogy... when our conception yearns to lay hold, most dimly, of the truth that is impracticable (ἀμήχανος) and truly beyond nature (ὑπερφυής).'
[596] The chapter's last page is one of the great moments of the treatise — the cosmogonic image and the identification it serves. The One 'was supposed as the very withdrawal from all things'; the many as 'the all of the One'; and the unified — 'the first one-all' — is imaged in an Orphic register: 'what for a while was the One; then this stood apart into its own unlimitedness, as into a kind of chaos; for it was limit alone, and the aether of all things; but the chaos, having stood together and come forth as one... has become a kind of one, ample on every side (ἀμφιλαφές), in place of the ungraspable principles.' Aether and Chaos — the first Orphic pair after Chronos — become limit and unlimited; their issue is the unified, third after the second and the first, 'before both of the two below... out of both of those above... toward those above, as third; toward those below, as first.' And then the sentence toward which the whole chapter has driven, the concordance of Damascius's three principles with the first revelation: 'This triad, then, comes to be: the One as Father, and the many as Power, and the unified as paternal Intellect.'
[597] Kopp's margin places Cap. 112 here (p. 349, explicit). The resolution of Chapter 111 — One as Father, many as Power, unified as paternal Intellect — is now tested against the revelation's own arithmetic: the Oracles give three intelligible triads, and 'the powers are three, and the fathers three.' To repeat the Damascian triad three times would require 'tripling both the simply one and the simply many — neither of them, then, will be simply; for the simply is everywhere one'; the unified can be threefold 'within its single-form character' (an internal, indicated triplicity), but a tripled simply-One 'is difficult even to feign'; and making the unified into three monads would leave it 'dis-spanned from itself.'
[598] The supporting volley: the ranking problem (the unified would fall between the triads, 'before the second and the third father'); the number problem ('how could there be any number at all among those — whether in the wholly unified, or, what is harder still, in the things before the unified?' — number cannot live above differentiation); and the recurring unlikeness problem — a triad of limit, unlimited, and mixed, or of Father, Power, and paternal Intellect, is a number of unlike-formed members, which Chapter 111 already disallowed.
[599] The cosmological audit, run on the corrected scheme: if the cosmoi are assigned by subsistence — the intellectual to intellect-in-subsistence, the one before it to life-in-subsistence, the intelligible to substance-by-subsistence — then the unified, 'the one before substance and life and intellect,' is above the intelligible itself, and could be called only 'the simply cosmos, both without difference, and gathering up the others in common.' But then 'the intelligible' falls to the really being substance of the Phaedrus — which Damascius has shown to be 'the principle of the being-differentiated... of life, then, this is the principle': the summit of the intelligible-and-intellectual order, not the intelligible. Every consistent assignment pushes the received names one step out of place.
[600] The Chaldaean middle order is then bounded with the Oracles' own personnel: the pure intellect begins the intellectuals, so 'the connective world-order, together with the teletarchic, make up the middle'; 'the teletarchs, according to the Oracle, are comprehended together with the connectives; and the connectives themselves are three'; before them the iynges 'occupying the intelligible substance.' The tentative assignment — iynges to the really being substance ('because of its gathering character'), connectives to the first life — rests on a beautiful analysis of συνέχειν: 'it is the proper work of life to hold together... for the continuous signifies both dis-stancing and partition, and, at once, the holding-together and union of the parts' — continuity is exactly the union-of-the-divided, which is life's signature; the philosophers agree this manner displays 'the very prime (ἀκμή) of life.'
[601] A jewel set into the argument: 'perhaps the time that consorts with this heaven is an image of the Aiōn that consorts with that heavenly one, and measures its revolution — since this heaven also is assuredly the truest image (ἄγαλμα) of that heaven' — the Timaeus's moving image of eternity (37d) transposed into the Chaldaean architecture, with the heaven below as the cult-statue of the heaven above. And the first intellectual intellect 'differentiates himself from the Father, and partitions that one relative to himself' — the demiurgic separation (the Oracles' Kronian severing) grounded in life's own partition by the forms.
[602] The chapter closes with the alternative census a defender might draw: intelligible = the iyngic monad; middle = the dyad of connectives and teletarchs ('for the dyad is vital, and rejoices in the processions that step out least far from their proper monad'); intellectual = the triad of the world-leaders (κοσμαγοί) — or, in the philosophers' division, the pure, the life-generating, and the demiurgic intellect. Monad, dyad, triad descending — a tidy arithmetic theology, reported with the cool formula that gives the next chapter its spring: 'perhaps a man might also order matters in this way, using such reasonings.'
[603] Kopp's margin places Cap. 113 here (p. 351, explicit). The most personal opening in the treatise, and one of the most quoted sentences in Damascius: 'I am wary of counterfeiting (παραχαράττειν) the ancestral hypothesis — which pleased not only the most renowned among men... but the gods themselves.' The verb is from coinage — to restamp the currency with a false die (the charge laid against Diogenes) — and the warrant is triple: Orpheus, 'the theologian of the Greeks,' who made Phanēs 'the first who is beheld by the gods'; the Oracle-giving gods, who handed down the first triads as intelligible, announcing that 'the intellectual gods know the hypercosmic abyss'; and Iamblichus — 'I should feel shame, too, before the divine Iamblichus, were I to innovate anything in these matters — a man who is the best exegete of divine realities.' The radical of the school presents himself as its most scrupulous conservative: the whole critique of Chapters 111–112 is offered not as innovation but as purification.
[604] The Iamblichean program stated: the intelligible cosmos is 'that unified abyss,' containing 'not the really being substance... but the simply substance: neither unitary nor mixed, but only one substance, before either.' Whoever — god or man — has placed the intelligible in substance is to be heard as meaning this; exegesis proceeds by 'purifying the substance up into that simply and unified and wholly undifferentiated one.' And the witness-portrait of Iamblichus is precious testimony: he gave the intelligible 'a second union, after the one principle of wholes'; insisted it 'subsists about the One' and is 'in every way not to be torn away (ἀναπόσπαστον) from the One'; refused 'every division upon it, or doubling, or dis-stancing'; 'making many objections of this kind against the elder' — πρὸς τὸν πρεσβύτην, that is, against Porphyry: a glimpse of the foundational controversy of the later school, Iamblichus contra Porphyry on the first principles.
[605] The proverb and the Homeric jewel: joining the determined substance (consorting with otherness, suffering 'a determination of elements') to the unified intelligible is 'not, as the saying goes, joining linen to linen (οὐ λίνον λίνῳ)' — like must be joined with like — but rather 'to gather together, by our discourse, a kind of poetic meeting-of-the-glens (μισγάγκειαν) upon the most holy spectacles' — the word from Iliad 4.453, where winter torrents crash together in the mountain cleft: a violent confluence of unlike waters, forced by rhetoric upon the holiest objects of contemplation.
[606] The corrected map, stated as from the beginning: the intelligible in the wholly undifferentiated; the intelligible-and-intellectual in the being-differentiated, where 'the otherness begins, and makes the first dis-stancing, of being and of one' — the one keeping its simplicity, the being taking 'the containment of all things, bereft of simplicity... though participating it nevertheless.' Hence the really being substance is 'the first elemented; and in it are the first elements; and the first number is There; and further, the first determination' — everything that Plato, the Oracles, and Damascius himself have repeatedly denied of the intelligible proper.
[607] Why, then, do we all instinctively call that second substance 'the' really being substance and take it for the intelligible? Two causes: its summit-character ('neighboring upon the undifferentiated, and still preserving safe a gathered form of substance') and the instructive contrast with the differentiated below it. The mimēsis-chain follows — its one imitates the simply One ('being a one of substance, while That is all things one'), its substance imitates 'the simply unified, and the all-unified' — and then the epistemological confession, among the most striking in the treatise: this substance is grasped by substantial knowledge, the one by unitary knowledge, the simply intelligible by 'the knowledge above either; but we, as we now are, do not use even the substantial knowledge with precision... but something dimmer still, and at a still greater distance. With good likelihood, then, the intelligible does not strike upon us.' We name as highest the highest we can reach — and mistake the ceiling of our knowledge for the roof of reality.
[608] The Platonic seal: 'Plato also, leading the souls up as far as this place, supposes the being substance to be in this region, and beheld by the steersman of the soul alone' — Phaedrus 247c, the οὐσία ὄντως οὖσα visible ψυχῆς κυβερνήτῃ μόνῳ νῷ; with the alternative exegesis recorded by name: unless 'really and being' intimates participation in 'another intelligible substance lying above it; as Proclus too thought fit to understand him' — Proclus cited as a fellow-witness that even the Phaedrus's summit points beyond itself.
[609] The demotion is then argued from the inside: this substance is 'com-blended out of elements; and every blending is somehow vital'; its elements are determined apart and yet 'press on toward union... eager to con-fuse the determination.' Hence the oscillation that defines it — and the splendid formula: 'to speak more truly, it is the summit of life — wishing to be substance rather than life — just as the completion of life has been eager to be intellect rather than life.' The really being substance is life at its dawn, dissembling stillness; intellect is life at its setting, hardened into circumscription; only the semblance (ἰνδάλλεται) differs.
[610] The honest counter-aporia is allowed its full weight: the intelligible too should contain the simply life and simply intellect (so simply substance is not alone the intelligible); and below, alongside life-by-itself counter-differentiated toward intellect, there ought to be a substance-by-itself, 'not being the summit of life, but another kind' — the objection that keeps the triad from collapsing into a mere ladder of life.
[611] The chapter's close is among the most beautiful physiologies of being in late antiquity — the three orders distinguished by their relation to differentiation: in the third, all things differentiated, each 'a whole form... and every form has its proper circumscription, as intellect does'; in the middle, nothing circumscribed yet nothing unified — 'it has suffered, as it were, a certain pouring-forth (χύσις), able neither to remain, nor to be turned back into circumscription; there came to be, accordingly, a kind of flowing and seething (ῥοή τις καὶ ζέσις) — which we call life'; and in the first, no seething and no flowing, 'wholly unmoved... so that it is substance only.' Substance is the stillness before the pour; life is the pour; intellect is the pour frozen into figure: 'according to truth, these things have been ordered thus, and stand apart by bounds of this kind.'
[612] Kopp's margin places Cap. 114 here (p. 355, explicit). After the strict bounds of Chapter 113 ('according to truth... these stand apart by such bounds'), the law of analogy restores the triad within each member: 'there is nevertheless, by analogy, in each all things.' And in stating it, the chapter delivers one of the great phrases of the treatise: in the whole substance, the substance-moment is 'the very flower of substance (τὸ ἄνθος αὐτὸ τῆς οὐσίας)' — the Chaldaean flower (the Oracles' ἄνθος νοῦ, the flower of intellect by which the soul touches the One) transposed into the anatomy of being: each nature has its blossom, the point of itself that is most itself. The middle order yields an equally exact formula: life at its prime is 'only the being-differentiated, unmixed (ἄκρατον)' — mastered by neither stillness nor figure; and the intellectual intellect, ripened into full differentiation, 'for this reason became commensurate with the world-ordering of matter' — only the fully circumscribed can give bounds to the boundless below.
[613] The differentiated whole receives its own internal triad — intellectual substance at its head (where the undifferentiated still shows through), intellectual life in its midst, intellectual intellect at its bounding — completing the nine-fold lattice: three wholes, each bearing the three by analogy.
[614] The doubter who demands an undifferentiated life or intellect is granted them — in the unified, where all things are — but 'let him know that he is overstepping the stated determinations.' Then the criterion, the chapter's theoretical centre: each of the three kinds is constituted by a posture of the one toward the being — 'where the one stands thus toward the being, there the proper kind subsists, simply.' Unified: substance. Being-differentiated: life ('all things have now been moved toward differentiation'). Differentiated: intellect ('now in him the rest also have been circumscribed'). The triad is not three things but three tenses of one relation.
[615] The self-correction that closes the chapter is Damascius's scholarly conscience at work: earlier formulations (life and intellect 'before both,' the doubled substances) 'also hold the truth aforesaid; but now, speaking with precision (ἀκριβολογούμενοι)': substance is the unified nature 'worthy to be ranked immediately after the One; and to be substance is just this — to be unified.' Everything else — vital, intellectual, psychic, enmattered substance; intellectual, eidetic, psychic, enmattered life — is 'a certain one, and relative (τὶς καὶ πρός τι).' Only one of each kind is simply; all the rest are indexed to their orders; and the closing aporia — the One Being before both would demand a life before either life — hands the problem to the next chapter.
[616] The margin numeral for this chapter is not legible in the scan; the division follows the text's articulation, with Kopp's explicit Cap. 117 at p. 360 confirming two chapters within pp. 355–360. The philosophers' formula — the intelligible as 'one leading, and being following' — is granted or refuted by a single test: meant undifferentiatedly, it agrees with Damascius; meant as rider and ridden, it has smuggled differentiation into the intelligible — 'and this is proper to intellect.' The decisive observation is among the finest in the treatise's analysis of mind: the school itself everywhere hymns 'the reversion of intellect into himself (ἡ εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἐπιστροφὴ τοῦ νοῦ)'; but 'the reversion into oneself comes about together with differentiation from the others, and with otherness' — self-return presupposes a self set apart; intellect's signature glory is therefore proof of its posteriority. Hence the strict order: substance undifferentiated, intellect differentiated, life the being-differentiated between them — and no life 'before both.'
[617] The chapter's lapidary centre, the resolution of Chapter 114's closing aporia in three prepositions: substance is before both (πρὸ ἀμφοῖν) — 'neither the one nor the being showing forth in her by itself'; intellect is out of both (ἐξ ἀμφοῖν) — 'out of two that are differentiated, and only then co-ranked together'; and life is with both (μετ' ἀμφοῖν) — 'in the middle of these two states... still keeping something of the archaic union, yet already showing forth from beneath something of the differentiation also.' And the definition of the first life follows with its splendid paradox: she is first and simply 'because in her is also otherness, and the differentiation that is eldest of all (ἡ πασῶν πρεσβυτάτη)' — life is constituted by the seniormost of all partings.
[618] The confirmation from common speech: even in the mixed, substantial realm we 'noise abroad' the same three — knowledge, life, substance — and define the animal as 'a substance living and knowing,' tacitly distinguishing the three in everything that lives. And the closing stroke extends the lattice upward: 'the unitary is nowhere here; nay, we divide that also in three, after the same fashion, naming a supersubstantial intellect, and a life likewise, and a substance' — even the henadic order is spoken of triadically, with substance 'standing on either side, in the one and in the being': the triad is the universal grammar, above being as in it, and the next chapters must reckon with what such talk can mean where no number is.
[619] The margin numeral for this chapter is not legible in the scan; the division follows the text's articulation, with Kopp's explicit Cap. 117 at p. 360. The objection — has the strict identification of substance with the undifferentiated done violence to usage? — is answered by the most vivid ladder in the treatise, run from the very bottom: the soulless form, 'unmoved by itself'; then nature, the first life, 'who does not allow it to remain undifferentiated, chilled fast upon itself, but warms the substance out into her own activity, rendering it a seething substance' — the ζέσις of Chapter 113 found already in physics; then the plant (life more complete), then the animal — sensation 'differentiating and articulating life into its proper bound... judging by pain and pleasure toward what is its own'; then the self-moved soul, in whom being, living, and knowing are differentiated though blended — its gnostic part bounding, its vital part 'a kind of flowing, ever continuous toward itself,' which is why soul gives even to bodies their dimensional holding-together.
[620] Above soul, the intellectual triad — where knowledge alone is simply ('it form-gives intellect, and is form-given, according to the differentiated'), while the life and substance in intellect are 'as-it-were' only: 'all is intellect, and all belongs to intellect.' Then the two supreme stations, in the chapter's most beautiful formulations: the life that truly is, 'life only... nor circumscribed according to the reversion into herself, but poured forth more excellently than according to reversion (ἀναχεομένη κρειττόνως ἢ κατὰ ἐπιστροφήν)' — a pouring that outranks return; and substance, 'which endures no pouring at all, neither the upward flowing nor the downward, but is most firmly compacted (συμπαγεῖσα), altogether, in the undifferentiated' — differing from her own offspring by nothing but her remaining.
[621] The semantic doctrine that resolves the whole difficulty, and one of the treatise's deepest: when we 'see' substance, life, and intellect as three, we are seeing their eidetic counterparts — 'certain parts taken apart, homonymous with the principles — from which we also name the principles, which are by nature nameless (φύσει οὔσας ἀνωνύμους).' All theological language is borrowed upward from the forms — indeed perhaps not even from the unmoved forms, but from self-moved or even opinable ones; the right method is not bare homonymy but παρένδειξις, 'indicating alongside, according to analogy — the supra-eidetic from the eidetic.'
[622] The proportion stated exactly: as eidetic substance is to eidetic life and this to knowledge, so, among the first subsistences, the unmoved-toward-differentiation is to the being-moved and to the having-been-moved — the simply substance, the simply life, the simply intellect; only the last coincides with its form ('the simply intellect and the simply form are the same'); the higher two are supra-eidetic. Then the chapter's most haunting sentence, the rule for all reading of this treatise: let the hearer understand our words 'according to indication, from the familiar — of the nature that remains in the untrodden places (ἐν ἀβάτοις μενούσης), and is surmised by us from afar.' And yet — the law of Chapter 114 stands at the summit of contemplation: 'to see the three in each, because each is all things: doubling the analogy upward.'
[623] The closing notice opens a door into the next great inquiry: 'where the Animal-itself (τὸ αὐτοζῷον) must be laid away' — the Timaeus's intelligible paradigm; with the anticipation that, 'being sated full of life, and holding the second rank after her,' it will be ranked everywhere analogously to life — 'as being, however, the first paradigm.'
[624] Kopp's margin places Cap. 117 here (p. 360, explicit). The chapter opens the final reckoning with the Chaldaean arithmetic: 'number is not in the intelligible — neither of like-formed members, nor of unlike-formed; for the nature of the determined is not There at all.' The 'hymned ennead' (the three triads as nine) is dissolved into 'the all-complete perfection of the triad There,' which we, 'being unable to gather together by our reasoning, set apart in three' — and the catalogue of its glories ends in the chapter's first jewel: all such intuitions gathered are 'one after-intuition (ἓν μετανόημα)' — what thought thinks of the intelligible is always a thought after the fact, conceived 'according to indication alone.'
[625] The triad is 'not three monads — as Iamblichus also says' (the master cited as authority for the chapter's whole program) — nor even a form ('what circumscription could there be in the unified?'), nor the One 'that is of a nature to blossom upon (ἐπανθεῖν) some one of the forms' — the Chaldaean flower-One that crowns each immaterial form — nor the one upon all the forms together (that belongs to the differentiated). It is 'the one of the undifferentiated triad'; the triad names 'the beginning of the unified, and the middle, and the end — yet these also unified.'
[626] The genetic reading of monad, dyad, triad: the monad 'made plain the one simplicity of all things'; the undetermined dyad 'was not a dyad set upon two monads,' but the generative cause; by both, the One is 'a Father able to beget all things'; and the unified is 'as it were an activity having proceeded from power' — a triad that is 'a dyad turned back toward the one, and for this reason paternal Intellect.' The honest check follows at once — 'but in saying these things we make three' — resolved into the formula: 'the triad is a monad; and a monad that is not the principle of number, but cause of monad and of all number... the single-form simplicity of all things.'
[627] The chapter's dialectical summit: not sameness, not otherness, not triad, not monad — 'for there is no antithesis in the intelligible.' The three names refuse both identity and difference ('Is then the unified the very thing the one is?... I shall certainly not say so'), and the great correction of the treatise's own earlier usage arrives: all and many are not the same — 'the many, taking determination in addition, became all; for the many, insofar as many, are still unlimited. Therefore the Father is one; and the undetermined power of the One is many; and the Intellect of the Father is all' — with the all defined as 'the many, determined by one according to reversion,' and the lapidary close: 'as in the intellectual all things are circumscribed according to form, so in the unified all things are gathered up according to one, uncircumscribedly.'
[628] 'It is we who divide, being unable to comprehend one thing that gathers the three' — the diagnosis of all triadic theology, with the elemental simile: defining anything, 'we say many in place of one — running around the elements instead of the elemented.' The remedy is the same ascent as with forms: 'let go the determined peculiarities, and lead up to one simple nature.' The triad of the supreme principles is a triad only 'according to the one of the triad — not the arithmetical'; its monad 'the monad of all, in which all things are pre-taken — as every number is in the monad.'
[629] The geometric icon, among the most influential images of the school: arithmetic peculiarities are 'symbols of the numberless'; and beyond them the figure — 'the one is the centre of all things; and the dis-stancing from the centre is the second principle, being a flowing (ῥύσις) of the centre; and the surround, the last circumference after the dis-stancing — being a kind of reversion toward the centre — is the paternal Intellect; and the whole is one circle — or, to say it more naturally, a sphere.' Father, Power, Intellect as centre, radius, and circumference of one sphere 'more uniform than every form' — whose form-giver is 'the very one.'
[630] And then the great command, the contemplative heart of the chapter: 'let us not count the intelligible upon our fingers (μὴ ἐπὶ δακτύλων ἀριθμῶμεν τὸ νοητόν), nor touch it with determined conceptions; but, gathering together all our intuitions at once, and closing them — opening the one and greatest eye of the soul (τὸ ἓν καὶ μέγιστον ὄμμα τῆς ψυχῆς), by which nothing differentiated is beheld... looking Thither, even if from afar, and as it were from the last things.' What that eye sees: the intelligible 'wholly undifferentiated, and wholly numberless' — though imaged in us as 'its simplicity, its manyness, its allness (παντότης)': 'the intelligible is one many all, so that the one nature is traversed in three ways' — the many its 'unlimited-in-power,' the all its 'all-holding activity (ἐνέργεια παντοῦχος)'; with the immediate retraction even of these ('that, again, is to say three instead of one').
[631] The semantics of revelation stated with final candor: Father, Power, and paternal Intellect 'are, according to truth, neither one nor three, nor one and three at once; it is by us that they must needs be shown through such names... by poverty of those that befit them; or rather, by eagerness for showings that in no way befit them' — theology as the eager use of unfitting signs. Every triadic vocabulary — one/many/all, Father/Power/Intellect, limit/unlimited/mixed, monad/dyad/triad — is purified and disallowed alike; and of the union itself 'we could never be early enough in saying anything that comes near it.'
[632] The peace-making with the three triads: as the monads of three are triadic and those of four tetradic, so the monads of 'that all-great triad' are 'not simply monads, but monads of a triad, of their own peculiar manner' — and in the one of that triad is comprehended 'the whole procession of the intelligible into three triads, not even thus departing from its proper union.' The ordering difficulty of Chapter 112 dissolves: each monad has the triadic in its own rank — 'the whole Father will be co-ranked with the whole intelligible through the whole Power as middle — the one through the one to the one; and again the triple with the triple through the triple'; the unified 'remains unified in the same manner... and far more greatly does the one remain — unified — one holding-three (ἓν τριοῦχον); and the Power likewise, even if she should shine forth three-natured (τριφυής).'
[633] The triadized one explained without differentiation: the one 'has pre-taken in itself the tripleness (τριπλόην) of the unified,' turning it back toward itself; the Power, a dyad between one and triad, 'carried along with the one becomes one-formed; while with the unified she is co-imaged as triple.' And the permitted alternative — 'one Father and three — the same being one and three-formed (τρίμορφον)... I mean not what is partitioned in three, but the impartible one of the triad' — the trimorphic Father of the Oracles given his exact metaphysical sense.
[634] The closing answer to the standing objection seals the chapter with two coinages worthy of the whole treatise: the simply one is 'in real truth, the numberless — and, if one must speak more plainly, the untriaded and the unmonaded (ἀτρίαστον καὶ ἀμονάδιστον); for it is not even monadic, seeing that it is not even one according to truth, but is so called according to indication alone.' The first principle is beyond the very monad — and the unified, and even the many between them, share the same mode: 'simply — without all determination, and all addition.'
[635] Kopp's margin places Cap. 118 here (p. 366, explicit). The opening completes Chapter 117's verdict — 'three, then, they must no longer be called, as though they had suffered the being-three' — and then delivers one of the most celebrated passages in Damascius: the theology of revelation itself. The gods do not teach 'such things as they themselves intellect, nor in the manner in which they intellect'; rather, 'as they converse with Egyptians, or Syrians, or Greeks, using the speech proper to each — else they would have uttered themselves to them in vain — so also, being earnest to deliver to men what is their own, they will justly use the human dialect.' And the decisive extension: human dialect is composed 'not only of such-and-such verbs and nouns, but of intuitions also' — the gods translate not merely into our words but into our concepts; every revelation, Chaldaean or Orphic or Egyptian, is the divine accommodated to the grammar of a finite mind. Triads, fathers, powers are the Greek of the gods.
[636] The epistemology of the deviation: searching the intelligible abyss we are 'carried aside toward the things below and partial... with the necessity of our small-fashioned nothingness (μικροπρεποῦς οὐδενείας)' — and yet 'there is need of the carrying-aside'; without it, nothing can be conceived at all. What remains is to 'touch upon them sideways... like a lightning-flash suddenly about our eyes' — and even a flash 'roused from somewhere within, from the soul herself... small, and not shining very much,' is 'a token, by way of analogy, of that super-brilliant and super-vast one.' And then the sentence that crowns the treatise's whole method: the present discourse is to be praised precisely because 'it disparages itself (ἑαυτὸν ἐκφαυλίζει), and confesses that it is abashed, and cannot look back against that light.' The argument's self-refutation is its truthfulness.
[637] The corrected semantics of the numbers: triad = undifferentiated multitude; dyad = cause of that multitude; monad = the one beyond it. The ennead is diagnosed as our own compounding ('we escape our own notice setting it forth still more variegated') — and then explained by the most gorgeous simile in the late chapters: the third member is 'by nature three-formed (τρίμορφος),' and in him the prior principles appear 'as in a mirror, imaged triadic, shining down upon his three forms on every side: as, in a cloud holding three mirror-like dimensions, the single-form color of the sun is shown forth as the imaged, many-colored rainbow.' The nine gods of the intelligible are the rainbow of the monochrome sun — one light, refracted in the triple mirror of the lowest member.
[638] The Platonic seal: 'Socrates also, in the Philebus, not being able to look full against that One, made known instead the triad ranked, as he says, in its forecourt (ἐν προθύροις)' — Philebus 64c, the good apprehended in the triple form of beauty, symmetry, and truth at the threshold — 'assuredly because, gazing upon the unified, he saw the triad glittering (μαρμαίρουσαν) in the one ray of the henad.' Even Plato's triad is forecourt-vision: the glitter of one ray. And the doctrine restated: monad by remaining, dyad by procession, triad by reversion — yet the whole is 'one all-complete union, the same remaining, and proceeding, and turning back... one before the three, having power for the three.'
[639] The question of questions in the briefest form — 'are the Fathers, then, three, or one?' — answered by the treatise's deepest negation: 'neither three nor one: above every triad; so that also above the whole one which we counter-distinguish toward these.' The things There are above 'the eldest determination of all — and this is the determination of one, and of two, and of three': counting itself is the first and oldest of the differentiations, and the principles precede it.
[640] The closing concession and its precision-instrument: we still lead up to that nature 'the most august of the things that have proceeded from it' — one, many, unified; Good, cause of all; limit, unlimited, mixed — but with the modes exactly graded: by subsistence these stand after the intelligible; 'according to appearance, or cause, or analogy, in the unified; and in what is above it, nothing other than pre-appearance, or pre-cause, or pre-analogy (προέμφασις, προαιτία, προαναλογία)' — three coinages for the mode above all modes, glossed by the figure of the numbers pre-subsisting 'unarticulated, nay rather undifferentiated' in pure multitude, as forms in formless matter. And the last sentence climbs the Orphic ladder of Chapter 111 once more: 'at a third step upward, one ascending from the chaos will surmise that these things are pre-taken in the aether of the simplicity of all' — chaos-like unlimitedness and 'the unified, undifferentiated com-paction (σύμπηξις) of all things' consorting in the aether — the final image of the intelligible before the treatise turns to existence, power, and activity.
[641] Kopp's margin places Cap. 119 here (p. 369, explicit). The opening sentence is the treatise's whole predicament made into a program: 'since we do dare, in whatever way, both to number the numberless, and to order what is above all order, and nevertheless to world-order the truly hypercosmic abyss — come now, let us say in what manner it must be done.' The procedure is the one used on the lower worlds: each of the three sections divided in three 'according to analogy with the orders that come after,' under the proportional law (the intellectual's having-been-differentiated : the middle's being-differentiated : the intelligible's undifferentiated — each 'no less all-full'). Then the worry that gives the chapter its spring: dividing Father into three fathers, Power into three powers, Intellect into three intellects, and matching rank to rank, threatens triads 'scattered abroad (διερριμμέναι)' — each triad assembled across the three orders would contain 'members unlike in rank, and unlike in form,' resurrecting the unlikeness objection.
[642] The correction from the middle world's own constitution: there we do not assemble each triad out of the three natures (iyngic-paternal, connective-dynamic, teletarchic-intellectual); we divide each nature internally. So here: each monad of the intelligible triad is itself trebled — and the analysis of the paternal monad is among the most delicate in the treatise: the one whole Father, 'insofar as he is by himself, is father only; but insofar as the power is carried along with him, and he himself shares in common with her, in a certain manner he becomes power; and insofar as he is father of the intellect, and the intellect is his, in this respect he becomes intellect... even being one, he nevertheless shows forth the triad of his own simplicity.' The Power is trebled by remaining and by consorting with either extreme; the Intellect by reversion (paternal), by growing-together with Power, and by 'remaining upon himself, unmixed relative to his betters' — intellect's proper moment defined by its self-possession.
[643] The vertical union that prevents all scattering: the triads gather into their monads 'according to the one beheld in each triad, not according to its multitude'; and the three wholes are united 'above every monad united toward herself' — by the One 'bracing his own first one-making power upon the principles continuous with him, and snatching them up (ἀναρπάζοντος) into his own unspeakable union.' The unified itself stands 'above monadic analogy': the descending test — every monad is a form, or something determined, or at least 'the principle of a determined constitution' — is passed at every level by the unified, which is 'above form, and above all determination... not the principle of number, but simply of all things after itself,' holding no 'multitude of many numbers coiled together (συνεσπειραμένον),' but 'wholly numberless and undifferentiated — this very thing alone which is called unified.'
[644] The chapter's most extraordinary movement — the triad melting upward in our very gaze: 'the unified is poured back up into the many, according to the dominance of the power; and the power... is folded back up into the one (ἀναπλοῦται), letting go her own pouring, and running back up into the simplicity of the One; the one, then, has seized all things, not allowing the determination of the triad to appear, but declaring all things to be the One.' And the counterpart downward: the power 'shows even the intellect to be an unlimited chaos, flying in the undetermined of the power'; while intellect 'in so far as, by himself, he falls short of the elder principles — by so much only does he appear intellect.' Each principle is what it is only by the perspective of another; held to the One, the whole triad is One.
[645] The final disanalogy with all number: in every ordinary triad the monads are lesser than the whole and help constitute it; 'but here the one is the most masterful of all, and there is nothing before it; so that neither is this whole a triad; for then the many would be before the one. Further: the one even makes the triad vanish; for in it every determination is drunk down (καταπίνεται)' — the verb of Chapter 105 returning for the last word on intelligible arithmetic. The closing scale fixes the modes: in the one, the triad is 'one alone'; in the many, 'a dyad — for it is power'; only in the unified is there 'a certain clear showing-forth of the triad, because it is the first to have suffered both the one and the many' — as the number three is the first composed of one and two, 'unified-and-multiplied, monadic-and-dyadic.'
[646] Kopp's margin places Cap. 120 here (p. 372, explicit). The chapter turns from the arithmetic of the triads to the natures of the three monads, and opens the treatise's great analysis of ὕπαρξις (hyparxis, existence). The hypothesis is set by proportion — paternal : dynamic : intellectual = substance : power : activity — and grounded in a remarkable concordance-table of indications: 'the Pythagoreans through monad and dyad and triad; Plato through the limit and the unlimited and the mixed; we ourselves, earlier, through the one and the many and the unified — this the Oracles of the gods have indicated through existence and power and activity.' Four traditions, one triad. And the proof-text from revelation: 'the Father, at any rate, they clearly name existence; and the power they hand down by no other name either.'
[647] The construction completed under Iamblichus's authority ('the great Iamblichus also beholds this matter in this way'): the third is activity — and intellect 'has been named from intellecting, that is, from activity — whatever to intellect may signify: whether the knowing, or the turning back toward the Father, or the longing after him.' The cumulative reading follows (the Father exists only; the Power adds being-able; the Intellect adds acting), with its great recommendation: 'such an indication would preserve much of the union of the first principles... united toward one another even more greatly than the one nature is toward herself — the nature that exists and is able and acts, being one and three-formed (τρίμορφος).' The three principles are more one than a single thing is one with itself.
[648] The terminological crux: if the third (the unified) is the simply substance, and substance = existence, the Father cannot be 'sketched according to substance.' The philosophers' escape is reported — 'existence would be said of gods, and substance of the things hung from them (τῶν ἐξημμένων); for thus the philosophers are accustomed, in many places, to distinguish' — the standard Procline distinction between the hyparxis of the henads and the ousia of their dependents; but Damascius notes that even so, in the intelligible the being is not yet determined off from the one, so the title 'the one' belongs strictly to neither Father nor unified.
[649] Then the startling verdict, in the first person: 'I for my part do not see such a difference (οὐχ ὁρῶ ἔγωγε τὴν τοιαύτην διαφοράν): for to be and to exist we say of the same thing... with the ancients this is altogether customary.' The etymological concession is precise: being, 'as ranked before the others, and as furnishing being to the others,' earns the name ὑπάρχειν (to pre-obtain, to stand under as beginning) — existence is being in its role as first. The consequence is the chapter's pivot: if substance and existence are the same, neither belongs to the Father at all; 'does not the paternal peculiarity itself wish to be the cause of being for another — and not to be itself, insofar as it is paternal?'
[650] The Father's transcendence stated in the treatise's most absolute idiom: 'the simply Father — not being something else first and then father, but father only: he would not himself be; but he will be cause of being to others, and first of all to the simply being... so that in this way also the Father is before all existence and substance.' The same logic lifts the Power ('bringing-forth (οἰστική) of substance') above substance — and threatens to lift the activity too, yielding the sharp aporia: 'the unified, then, is not the simply substance — if indeed it is a paternal activity begetting the beings; unless the activity runs together with what is activated' — with the elegant double aspect: the paternal activity is unified by its reversion toward the One, while as gathering its own offspring it stands before all determined substance.
[651] Two resolutions are weighed. First: the third, 'having taken together the acting, the being-able, and the paternal and generative peculiarity, has become substance simply' — substance in herself, the Father's activity relative to him. Second, the actuality-potency scale read upward in the better mode ('the things that are in the lower orders in a worse manner are There taken in a better'): the third is substance and existence in actuality; the second still in potency — 'and it is this that the Power makes plain.' And then the sentence that crowns the chapter: 'but the Father is not even in potency yet; rather, he snatched himself away (ἥρπασεν ἑαυτόν) even from the aptitude toward substance, in whatever manner conceived' — with the precise lower analogue: matter's one is beyond the in-potency on the worse side, since 'the in-potency has already been pre-determined by its aptitude toward the form.' The Father is above even readiness for being.
[652] The final and 'more natural' settlement — the doctrine that became canonical for the school's analysis of the triad: existence signifies 'the subsistence only,' power 'the being-able only,' activity 'the acting only,' while substance is 'the whole, and has taken the three together' (what subsists without power, or is able without acting, 'either is not at all, or is in vain' — and nothing is in vain). Hence the beautiful cumulative scale: in the third the three run together; in the second two; in the first 'the one alone — truly: whence this first is existence only, and subsistence — as it were powerless and actless, if it be lawful to say so (οἷον ἀδύνατος καὶ ἀνενέργητος, εἰ θέμις εἰπεῖν), being conceived according to what is better than power and than activity'; the second supplies 'what is before activity' to all, as the first 'what is before power.'
[653] The closing definition fixes the term for the chapters to come: 'existence will differ from substance as the being alone, by itself, from the being that is beheld together with the others; for existence is an element (στοιχεῖον) of substance, and has been taken up for the indication of the simplest principle.' Hyparxis is substance's first element, borrowed upward as the least inadequate name for the simplest of the principles — the definition Chapter 121 will unfold through the figure of the foundation and the floor.
[654] Kopp's margin places Cap. 121 here (p. 375, explicit). The chapter opens with the etymology that fixes ὕπαρξις for the whole later tradition: 'as the name shows, it makes plain the first principle (ἀρχή) of each subsistence — as it were a certain foundation (θεμέλιον), or as it were a floor (ἔδαφος), laid down beforehand for the whole, and for all the building-upon' — the name-giver 'set in front the preposition of beginning' (ὑπό + ἀρχή: the under-beginning). Existence is 'the simplicity before all things, to which all composition accrues... cause of all substance, but not yet substance; for every substance is composite — whether by union, or by blending'; and since all composition requires the simple 'pre-underlying, and pre-existing, artlessly,' the conclusion follows in the chapter's lapidary equation: 'to the same point, then, come for us one, and existence, and father.'
[655] The genesis of the triad from the foundation up: the second supposal is 'as it were a multitude of that one, and as it were a dis-stancing of it, when the one willed to be all things before all things' — power, named by analogy ('power too was an out-stretching of substance'); the third 'gathers together the most complete and all-perfect form... united into substance in place of existence,' and so 'the paternal Intellect is made like to his own father, and has been turned back toward him — as the unified toward the one, and substance toward existence.' The portrait of the Power is among the treatise's loveliest: 'not yet circumscribed into a union, but wishing to be only a pouring (χύσις), and an unlimitedness, of the one; wherefore she also consorts with the father — as a one being poured with a one that remains' — μένον and χεόμενον ἕν, the remaining one and the poured one; 'whence the second principle is not yet unified, but still one — even if become, in a certain way, truly into chaos.'
[656] The scale of hyparxis stated for every level: the simply one is existence only (as are the simply many); the one counter-divided toward being is existence, and the being relative to it substance — 'though according to its own simplicity it too is existence'; the unified, 'a mixture of the one and the many taken simply,' is the simply being — with the Sophist invoked for the definition: the being is 'what has suffered the one and yet nevertheless is not one' (Sophist 245a–b, the whole as πεπονθὸς τὸ ἕν). The triad is then sealed: 'rightly is the one the Father of the triad — because he is before the being, and begetter of the being; and the power of the Father is the many — the out-stretching of the one toward the begetting of the being; and the paternal Intellect is the unified and the being, beheld according to the reversion toward the paternal one.'
[657] The analysis of that reversion is the chapter's metaphysical summit: it is neither gnostic ('knowledge is not yet differentiated There') nor vital nor appetitive, but the substantial reversion, 'the eldest of all reversions, not turned back into substance, but into the simply One... reversion simply, and not a certain reversion'; not even a reversion toward the being of the unified, 'for that would be a certain, and a relative, reversion'; but 'the reversion toward the simplest of all, and itself simplest of all: that of the unified toward the One, of the first toward the first' — holding so little of differentiation, 'or rather, of undifferentiated excess, that it is a union rather than a reversion (ὡς ἕνωσις εἶναι μᾶλλον ἢ ἐπιστροφή).' At the summit, return collapses into union: the first turning-back is indistinguishable from never having left.
[658] The closing concession to analogy: since 'reversion is proper to intellect,' the analogy will go on naming the third 'intellect' — 'because third from the Father; however one may discourse, it will be so called according to some analogy, and an indication supernatural in its greatness.' The formula 'so far as speaking in common goes, let it have been said thus' closes the general account and opens the door to the 'more particular manner' (the threefold division of the unified) of the next chapter.
[659] Kopp's margin places Cap. 122 here (p. 377, explicit). The 'more particular manner' promised at the close of Chapter 121: the unified itself divided in three — undifferentiated summit, being-differentiated middle, differentiated bound ('so far as one may speak at all of a differentiated of the unified'). The warrant is the second hypothesis of the Parmenides (142b–143a): the one-being whose members each become 'the both-together,' the whole-of-parts, with the elegant supplement of dominance — at the summit 'the being mastered by the one'; at the last, 'conversely, the one mastered by the being'; in the middle, 'either of equal weight (ἰσοστάσιον).'
[660] The Parmenidean ladder completed (one-being; whole and parts; unlimited multitude — Parm. 143a, ἄπειρον πλῆθος): the third answers to intellect 'as intellect into the forms, so this into the many... many before all number.' The excursus on the unlimited multitude is a small jewel of number-theory: 'number does not admit the unlimited' — infinity belongs to multitude, not to number; and this multitude is 'a matter, as it were, of number, needing an arithmetical limit — or rather, neither matter, nor needing a limit, but beyond the subsistence of all the numbers': above number, not below it.
[661] The genesis of the third member, in the imagery of fragments (κέρματα) first minted in Chapter 108: in the middle the many are 'still held fast in the one, and only beginning to be differentiated' — whole in place of one, parts in place of impartibles; but when the complete differentiation came, 'so many and such fragments coming to be, in this third member the many appeared at once' — and the whole unlimited multitude answers to intellect and its forms, 'wherefore it has been hymned as the intelligible intellect of the whole intelligible.'
[662] The Chaldaean correspondences, with three magnificent epithets from the Oracles' theology: in the third (intellectual) world-order, the summit of the unified is mirrored by 'the uncarved intellect (ἀμιστύλλευτος νοῦς), the once-beyond (ἅπαξ ἐπέκεινα)' — the intellect never cut into portions; the middle by 'the both-ways-shining Hecate (ἀμφιφαὴς Ἑκάτη), appearing whole and many-parted'; and the bound by the demiurgic 'twice-beyond (δὶς ἐπέκεινα) intellect, flashing with intellectual severings (νοεραῖς στράπτων τομαῖς)' — whose archetype is the intelligible intellect itself, 'flashing, he also, if it be lawful to say it, with intelligible severings': the first lightning of division within the unified.
[663] The completion of Chapter 119's program with the full table of nine: the Father divided into 'father of the fathers,' power, and paternal intellect; the Power into a paternal first, 'the power of the powers,' and 'the intellect of the first' — with the lovely observation that the powers are 'always both-ways-shining (ἀμφιφαεῖς), and commensurate toward either distance,' Hecate's epithet generalized into the law of every middle term; and the third triad closing as 'father of the intellects, power, and the unified intellect — even that of the unified father.'
[664] The chapter's close marks a boundary observed with reverence: 'we having in no way pried into the holy rite (ἁγιστεία) handed down by the Oracles concerning them; for the examination of those things did not yet belong to the present occasion' — the theurgic mystery reserved, as the treatise turns from the Chaldaean triads to the traditions of the other theologians: the doxography of nations that begins in the next chapter.
[665] The margin numeral for this chapter is not legible in the scan; the division follows the text's articulation, between Kopp's explicit Cap. 122 (p. 377) and the Eudemus chapter beginning at p. 382. With this proem the treatise opens its most celebrated stretch: the comparative doxography of the nations' theologies, undertaken not as curiosity but as devotion — 'if from these too we are able to take up a reverence (σέβας) still greater — and, so far as may be, greatest — of that surpassing union.' The chapters that follow preserve, in many cases uniquely, the first principles of the Orphic, Phoenician, Egyptian, and Babylonian theogonies.
[666] The Rhapsodic summary that became the standard testimony for the late Orphic theogony: Time (Chronos) for the one principle of wholes; Aether and Chaos for the two; the Egg for the being — the first triad; the second triad gathered around the hatching ('the Egg conceiving and conceived — the god — or the silvery tunic (ἀργῆτα χιτῶνα), or the cloud, because from these leaps forth Phanēs'); and the third the famous trinity read by the philosophers as Mētis the intellect, Ērikepaios the power, Phanēs himself the father. Note Damascius's source-critical aside — the father-and-power of the second triad are 'things in no way belonging to Orpheus,' the exegetes' addition, not the poem's.
[667] Damascius's own emendation of the school exegesis: the middle triad should be set 'according to the three-formed god, while still being conceived in the egg,' on the structural law he has used throughout — 'the middle always images forth the both-together of the extremes.' The mapping is exact to his own triad: 'the egg is the unified; the three-formed — and in real truth many-formed — god is the differentiated... while the middle is, according to the egg, still unified, but according to the god, already differentiated — and, to say the whole of it, being-differentiated.'
[668] The Hieronyman theogony — preserved in this fullness only here: water and mud (compacted into earth) as the two named principles; 'but the one before the two he leaves unspoken; for the very fact of not even speaking about it indicates its unsayable nature' — silence itself read as the indication of the ineffable; then the tremendous third principle: the winged serpent with bull's and lion's heads and 'in the middle the face of a god,' named 'Unaging Time (Χρόνος ἀγήρατος), and Heracles'; consorting with him Necessity, 'the same nature as Adrasteia also — incorporeal, stretched arm-wide (διωργυιωμένην) through the whole cosmos, touching its bounds' — the third principle 'standing according to substance,' male-and-female 'for indication of the cause that is generative of all things.'
[669] The harmonization: the Rhapsodies 'set up their beginning from this third principle after the two, as being the first that holds anything speakable, and commensurate to the hearing of men' — the Rhapsodic Chronos is the Hieronyman serpent, the first utterable principle; what lies before him is handed down in silence. The triple offspring follows — 'Aether... intellectual, and Chaos unlimited, and third upon these, Erebos misty' — the second triad 'dynamic, as that one was paternal.' Kopp's text twice prints νοερόν/νοερῶς ('intellectual(ly)'), translated here; many critics read νοτερόν ('moist Aether'), which would make the triad moist Aether, unlimited Chaos, misty Erebos — three states of the primordial vapor.
[670] The third triad of the Hieronyman theogony: the Egg ('this tradition too making it the offspring of Time'); the dyad of male and female natures with 'the multitude of the all-various seeds in the middle' as the power; and the god of the hatching as the intellect — golden-winged, bull-headed at the flanks, 'upon his head a monstrous serpent, presenting the semblance of all manner of shapes of beasts.' Kopp prints ἀσώματον ('without body'), translated here; editors have proposed δισώματον ('two-bodied'), matching the male-female dyad. The closing identification gathers the whole tradition into one sentence: this theology 'hymns him as Prōtogonos (First-Born), and calls him Zeus, the disposer of all things and of the whole cosmos — wherefore he is also called Pan' — Phanēs, Zeus, and Pan as one god of the all.
[671] Kopp's margin places Cap. 124 here (p. 382, explicit). The chapter draws on the lost history of theology by Eudemus of Rhodes, Aristotle's pupil — preserved, for these traditions, only in Damascius. The Orphic theology in Eudemus 'kept silence about the whole intelligible — as altogether unsayable and unknowable in the manner of discursive traversal and announcement,' beginning from Night; and Damascius corrects Eudemus on Homer with a scholar's confidence, citing Iliad 14.261 — Hypnos's confession that Zeus 'dreaded to do things displeasing to swift Night' — to prove that Homer too knew Night as the eldest: 'so let Homer too, himself, begin from Night.'
[672] Hesiod's Theogony (116ff.) read twice over: first simply — Chaos as 'the incomprehensible and wholly unified nature of the intelligible'; then with the refined alternative that maps the opening of the poem onto the full architecture: Chaos the second of the two principles (the unlimited), and Earth–Tartaros–Erōs the triple intelligible — Earth the summit ('first compacted in a certain solid and substantial establishment' — the substance-moment), Tartaros the middle ('already stirred aside toward differentiation'), Erōs the third, 'beheld according to reversion — for Orpheus also, in the Rhapsodies, names it thus': love as the converting bound of the intelligible.
[673] Acusilaus of Argos (the early genealogist), in Eudemus's report: Chaos first 'as wholly unknown'; then Erebos and Night as the two — 'the former in place of limit, the latter in place of unlimitedness'; and from their mingling the intelligible triad Aether, Erōs, Mētis — Erōs the middle 'according to the natural middleness of love,' Mētis 'the much-honored intellect itself' (the same Mētis who crowns the Rhapsodic third triad of Chapter 123).
[674] Epimenides of Crete: Aēr and Night the two principles — 'plainly honoring with silence the one before the two' (the same hermeneutic of sacred silence as for the Hieronyman theogony); Tartaros their mixed offspring; then 'two Titans — so calling the intelligible middleness, because it stretches out (διατείνει) toward both' — the name Titan read from τείνειν, to stretch: the middle as the stretched-between; and from their mingling the Egg, 'this very thing, the intelligible animal in real truth (τὸ νοητὸν ζῷον ὡς ἀληθῶς)' — the Timaeus's αὐτοζῷον discovered inside a Cretan theogony.
[675] Pherecydes of Syros — the oldest of the Greek prose theologians — in the famous testimony (his book began: 'Zas and Chronos always were, and Chthonie'): the three first principles read as the one before the two and the two after the one; Chronos generating 'out of his own seed (ἐκ τοῦ γόνου ἑαυτοῦ), fire and breath and water — the triple nature of the intelligible'; and from these, 'divided in five recesses (ἐν πέντε μυχοῖς), a numerous generation of gods — the one called five-recessed (πεντέμυχος); which is perhaps the same as to say, the five-cosmosed (πεντέκοσμος).' The promise of 'another occasion' for these matters is one of the treatise's unredeemed pledges.
[676] The closing formula rules a line under the Greek evidence — 'such, then, and so many, for the present, let the suppositions conveyed through Greek myths stand as taken up by us; there being many others besides' — and turns the inquiry to the Barbarians: the Babylonian, Persian, Sidonian, and Egyptian theologies of the next chapter.
[677] Kopp's margin places Cap. 125 here (p. 384, explicit). This paragraph is one of the most precious pages of the treatise: the opening of the Babylonian Enuma Elish surviving in Greek through Damascius alone. Tauthe is Tiamat, the salt sea; Apasōn, Apsu, the sweet waters; their 'only-begotten son' Mōymis is Mummu, the vizier — read by Damascius as 'the intelligible cosmos, brought forth from the two principles.' Lachē and Lachos are Lahmu and Lahamu; Kissarē and Assōros, Kishar and Anshar; their three offspring Anos, Illinos, and Aos are Anu, Ellil (Enlil), and Ea; Daukē is Damkina; and Bēlos, 'whom they declare to be the demiurge,' is Bel-Marduk, the maker of the world in the epic. The Babylonians 'pass over the one principle of wholes in silence' — the hermeneutic of sacred silence applied once more.
[678] The Persian testimony, from Eudemus's history: 'the Magi, and the whole Areian race' name the intelligible and unified 'some Place, and others Time (οἱ μὲν Τόπον, οἱ δὲ Χρόνον)' — the earliest Greek witness to Zurvanism, the doctrine of Zurvan (Time) as the principle above the two spirits; from it 'were differentiated either a good god and an evil daimon — or light and darkness before these'; the 'twofold column (διττὴ συστοιχία) of the better beings' led by Ōromasdēs (Ahura Mazda) and Areimanios (Angra Mainyu) — Persian dualism read as the differentiation that follows an undifferentiated first.
[679] The Sidonian theogony from Eudemus: Time, Desire (Πόθος), and Mist (Ὀμίχλη) before all — the same Pothos that Phoenician cosmogony gives as the stirring of the primordial murk; from Desire and Mist mingled, Aēr and Aura ('the unmixed summit of the intelligible' and 'the living pre-figuration... moved out of it' — breath and breeze as being and life); and from both, the Egg — 'answering, I take it, to the intelligible intellect': the Sidonian triad mapped exactly onto substance, life, and intellect.
[680] The Phoenician account 'outside of Eudemus' — from Mōchos of Sidon, the legendary sage: Aether and Aēr beget Oulōmos (Phoenician ʿōlām, 'eternity' — the intelligible god, the summit); from Oulōmos 'coming together with himself' is born Chousōros, 'an opener first (ἀνοιγεύς)' — Chusor, the craftsman-god Kothar — read as 'the intelligible power, inasmuch as it first differentiated the undifferentiated nature'; then the Egg. The alternative scheme inserts the Winds (the one Wind; Lips and Notos, southwest and south) before Oulōmos, and reads the Egg as the heaven, 'for it is said that, when it was burst into two, heaven and earth came to be — each of the two halves' — the world-egg cleft into sky and earth.
[681] The Egyptian theology, on which 'Eudemus relates nothing accurate,' is supplied by 'the Egyptians who in our own time have become philosophers' — Heraïscus and Asclepiades, the Alexandrian-Egyptian brothers(-in-learning) of Damascius's own circle, who 'brought forth their hidden truth, having found it in certain Egyptian discourses.' The first principle: 'hymned as Unknown Darkness (Σκότος ἄγνωστον) — and this proclaimed three times as such' — the thrice-repeated acclamation of the unknowable dark, the most striking of all the doxography's figures for the ineffable. The two principles, water and sand (the Nile and its bank; Nun and the primeval mound); then the three Kamēphis (Kematef, the creator-serpent Kneph), grandfather, father, and son — the third, 'named from his father and his grandfather,' being the sun: 'surely the intelligible intellect.'
[682] The closing notice preserves two lost works of the last pagan generation: 'the record of Heraïscus, written for Proclus the philosopher as a complete account of the doctrine of the Egyptians' — Heraïscus writing to Proclus himself — 'and the Concord of the Egyptians with the Other Theologians, which Asclepiades began to write': the project of this very chapter, the harmony of all nations' theologies, already undertaken inside Egypt; with the canny observation that the Egyptians 'are dividers of the things that subsist according to union — since they have divided even the intelligible into the properties of many gods.'
[683] Kopp's margin places the final chapter here (p. 386; the numeral is damaged in the scan but follows in sequence). The treatise turns at the last to participation (μέθεξις) — the question that binds the whole hierarchy together: whether the first principles and the unified are participated by all the seconds, 'or in one way are, and in another are not'; recalling the earlier doctrine of each nature as twofold, participable and unparticipated; and opening the further questions — the subsistence of individuals, and whether participation reaches 'even to the things that come to be and perish' — which the surviving text does not live to answer.
[684] The semantic analysis of the name: participation is a having that is second, after another and from another — of something whose existence the participant is not, 'as of an original and prototype.' The participated is twofold — 'the one, that which gives; the other, the given itself' — with the school's classic illustration: 'the sun in heaven is, as it were, participated according to the light in-given by it to our eyes.' We participate the giver through the given: the sun by its light, every higher principle by its gift.
[685] The deniers of participation, named: 'as Protagoras attempts to suppose, and Lycophron declared outright' — Lycophron the sophist, who abolished the 'is' of predication. Their case is run with full force: the beautiful only beautiful, the just only just; even 'is' belongs to being alone; 'everything, then, is without share of everything; and one name only must be predicated of each'; no interweaving (συμπλέκειν — the Sophist's word for the weaving of forms), no true sentence about one nature; 'the man too is man only — neither animal, nor rational, nor mortal.'
[686] Their three supporting arguments: the participant that remains the same has gained nothing; the participated remains what it was; and the trilemma of modes — participation can be neither juxtaposition ('things lying beside one another are unaffected, while participation comes with some affection'), nor union ('union makes the two one, and there no longer remains a participant and a participated'), nor com-blending ('of two members of like rank... not of the one as participant and the other as participated') — sealed with the rule that 'the participant always wishes to be the substrate of the participated.'
[687] The refutation opens with the treatise's verdict — 'truly terrible (δεινός) is the argument, if it shall make all things dis-spanned (διεσπασμένα) from one another' — and runs to the beautiful self-destruction: the denial abolishes sameness, likeness, equality, wholeness ('each of the parts must participate of one wholeness'), and all science; and 'the argument will destroy even its very self. For it will not be permitted to it to say that the realities are separated from one another; for then all things will plainly participate of the same thing — of the separation toward one another.' Even universal severance is a thing shared.
[688] The evidence of the realities, rising rank by rank: elements and bodies ('our body is warmed, and is chilled, and is nourished'); the senses 'form-given by their sensibles'; the passions altered; and the rational soul 'educated, taking over the educator's culture — does she not become Pythagorean by philosophizing, or Platonic?' — the schools themselves as proof of participation; the saying of Socrates that recognition of another's affection requires 'something common — and the common is always from one'; matter shaped by form ('the wood... cut by the saw, and formed into a throne'); body ensouled from within; the sublunary lit by heavenly light; the immaterial supplying 'unceasing power'; and the logical capstone — man and horse, 'each a form, each an animal, each a being, each one,' the common terms being 'as it were elements of the peculiarity, yet not upon themselves.'