If you are willing also from the words of Plato that follow the preceding, we will show that to be the recipient neither of language nor of knowledge is adapted to the first principle. For the words: “This your inquiry concerning the cause of all beautiful things is as of a nature endued with a certain quality,” are to be referred to this principle. For it is not possible to apprehend it intellectually, because it is unknown, nor to unfold it, because it is uncircumscribed; but whatever you may say of it, you will speak as of a _certain thing_; and you will speak indeed _about_ it, but you will not speak _it_. For speaking of the things of which it is the cause, we are unable to say, or to apprehend through intelligence what it is. Here therefore, the addition of quality, and the busy energy of the soul, remove it from the goodness which is exempt from all things, by the redundancy of its conceptions about it. This likewise draws the soul down to kindred, connate, and multiform intelligibles, and prevents her from receiving that which is characterized by unity, and is occult in the participation of _the good_. And it is not only proper that the human soul should be purified from things coordinate with itself in the union and communion with that which is first, and that for this purpose it should leave all the multitude of itself behind, and exciting its own hyparxis, approach with closed eyes, as it is said, to the king of all things, and participate of his light, as much as this is lawful for it to accomplish; but intellect also, which is prior to us, and all divine natures, by their highest unions, superessential torches, and first hyparxes are united to that which is first, and always participate of its exuberant fulness; and this not so far as they are that which they are, but so far as they are exempt from things allied to themselves, and converge to the one principle of all. For the cause of all disseminated in all things impressions of his own all-perfect transcendency, and through these establishes all things about himself, and being exempt from the whole of things, is ineffably present to all things. Every thing therefore, entering into the ineffable of its own nature, finds there the symbol of the father of all. All things too naturally venerate him, and are united to him, through an appropriate mystic impression, divesting themselves of their own nature, and hastening to become his impression alone, and to participate him alone, through the desire of his unknown nature, and of the fountain of good. Hence, when they have run upwards as far as to this cause, they become tranquil, and are liberated from the parturitions and the desire which all things naturally possess of goodness unknown, ineffable, imparticipable, and transcendently full. But that what is here said is concerning the first God, and that Plato in these conceptions leaves him uncoordinated with and exempt from the other causes, has been, I think, sufficiently evinced.