The philosophical and mathematical commentaries of Proclus on the first book of Euclid's elements (Vol. 1 of 2) : $b To which are added, A history of the restoration of Platonic theology, by the latter Platonists: And a translation from the Greek of Proclus's Theological elements
Plato · en
divine, when, flying from all multitude, we retire into the depths of
our unity, and, being collected into one, uniformly energize. Thus far
we admonish to shun the multitude, by steps proceeding from the order
of knowledge: in the next place, we shall proceed in the same design
by the series of knowable objects. Fly then every sensible species,
for they are heaped together, are divisible, and perfectly mutable,
and incapable of affording sincere and genuine knowledge. From these
dark informations, therefore, betake yourself to incorporeal essence;
since every sensible object possesses adventitious unity, is by itself
scattered and confused, and full of formless infinity. Hence its good
is divisible, and adventitious, distant and separated from itself, and
residing in a foreign seat. When you have ascended thither, and are
placed among incorporeal beings, you will behold above the fluctuating
empire of bodies, the sublime animal order, self-moving, spontaneously
energizing in itself, and from itself possessing its own essence, yet
multiplied, and anticipating in itself a certain apparition or image
of the essence divisible about the unstable order of bodies. You will
there perceive many habitudes of reasons, various proportions, and
according bonds. Likewise the whole and parts, vivid circles, and
a multiform variety of powers; together with a perfection of souls
not-eternal, not subsisting, together as a whole, but, unfolded by
time, gradually departing from their integrity, and conversant with
continual circulations. For such is the nature of the soul.