some indeed arranging and adorning the universe with the first, middle, and last forms of production; others educing the rivers of life, and pouring them on all things; others elevating the natures that have proceeded, and recalling them to the father; and others presiding over purity, and being the guardians of secondary natures. CHAPTER VI. Again, therefore, receiving the beginning of the theory of Plato from the paternal cause, we assert as follows: The demiurgus and father of this universe, being allotted this order in the intellectual kings, as was before demonstrated, as he produced wholes totally, and referred all things to the one form of the world, and the one perfection of the universe, thus also he arranged and adorned the parts of the world, and gave completion to the whole, contriving that all immortal and mortal natures should be generated for the sake of the universe. And this is what Plato introduces him saying in the Timæus to the junior Gods: “That mortal natures therefore may exist, and that this universe may be truly all, convert yourselves according to nature to the fabrication of animals.” Since, however, after the monad, it is every where necessary that a multitude should be generated proximate to the monad, and that prior to an all-perfect division, united number should subsist (for that which has proceeded to all things is not allied to that which abides, nor is it possible that what is all-variously divided, should be connascent with that which is impartible)--this being the case, the demiurgus of wholes, produces indeed from himself, and his father a number proximate to the monad of the fathers. But the three [fathers] deriving their subsistence from one father, and first receiving the power and dominion of fabrication, produce other second and third fabricators from themselves, till through a diminution proceeding according to [appropriate] measures, they evolve the whole demiurgic number, the cause of which indeed, the demiurgic monad comprehends in itself.