[68] Proclus was born in the year of Christ 412, on the 6th of the Ides of February. But, for the sake of the astrologers, I have subjoined the following figure from the Prolegomena of Fabricius to this life: and though I am not skilled in the art myself, I am persuaded, from the arguments of Plotinus, that it contains many general truths; but when made subservient to particulars, is liable to great inaccuracy and error. In short, its evidence is wholly of a physiognomic nature; for such is the admirable order and connection of things, that throughout the universe, one thing is signified by another, and wholes are after a manner contained in their parts. So that the language of the obscure and profound Heraclitus is perfectly just, when he says, “You must connect the perfect and the imperfect, the agreeing and the disagreeing, the consonant and the dissonant, and out of one all things, and out of all things one.” Illustration: A Scheme of the situation of the Stars, such as it was at Byzantium, when the philosopher Proclus was born. [69] It was formerly the custom of almost all nations, to have their burial places in the suburbs, and not in the city itself. [70] This eclipse happened, according to Fabricius, in A. C. 484. 19 Cal. Feb. at sun-rise. [71] All the ancient theologists, among whom Plato holds a distinguished rank, affirmed that the soul was of a certain middle nature and condition between intelligibles and sensibles: agreeable to which doctrine, Plotinus divinely asserts that she is placed in the horizon, or in the boundary and isthmus, as it were, of eternal and mortal natures; and hence, according to the Magi, she is similar to the moon, one of whose parts is lucid, but the other dark. Now the soul, in consequence of this middle condition, must necessarily be the receptacle of all middle energies, both vital and gnostic; so that her knowledge is inferior to the indivisible simplicity of intellectual comprehension, but superior to the impulsive perceptions of sense. Hence the mathematical genera and species reside in her essence, as in their proper and natural region; for they are entirely of a middle nature, as Proclus proves in this and the sixth following chapter. But this doctrine of Plato’s, originally derived from Brontinus and Archytas, is thus elegantly explained by that philosopher, in the concluding part of the sixth book of his Republic. “Socrates, know then, they are, as we say, two (the Good itself, and the Sun,) and that the one reigns over the intelligible world, but the other over the visible, not to say the heavens, lest I should deceive you by the name. You comprehend then, these two orders of things, I mean the visible and the intelligible?--Glauco. I do.--Socrates. Continue this division then, as if it were a line divided into two unequal segments; and each part again, i. e. the sensible and intelligible, divided after a similar manner, and you will have evidence and obscurity placed by each other.