The six books of Proclus, the Platonic successor, on the theology of Plato (vol. 1 of 2) : $b translated from the Greek, to which a seventh book is added, in order to supply the deficiency of another book on this subject, which was written by Proclus, but since lost, also, a translation from the Greek of Proclus' Elements of theology, to which are added a translation of the treatise of Proclus, On providence and fate, a translation of extracts from his treatise, entitled, Ten doubts concerning
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uniform knowledge of wholes; since it is also necessary that the soul
which is essentialized according to reason, should possess that which
pertains to intellect through participation, and that the intellectual
nature should be twofold; the one subsisting primarily in a divine
intellect itself; but the other, which proceeds from this, subsisting
secondarily in soul. To which, you may add, if you please, the presence
of intellectual illumination in body. For whence is the whole of this
heaven either spherical or moved in a circle, and whence does it
revolve with a sameness of circulation according to one definite order?
For how could it always be allotted the same idea and power immutably
according to nature, if it did not participate of specific formation
according to intellect? For soul, indeed, is the supplier of motion;
but the cause of a firm establishment, and that which reduces the
unstable mutation of things that are moved, into sameness, and also a
life which is bounded by one reason, and a circulation which subsists
with invariable sameness, will evidently be superior to soul.
Body, therefore, and the whole of this sensible nature belong to
things which are alter-motive. But soul is self-motive, binding in
itself all corporeal motions; and prior to this is intellect which
is immoveable. Let no one, however, suppose that I assert this
immobility of intellect to resemble that which is sluggish, destitute
of life,[107] and without respiration, but that it is the leading cause
of all motion, and the fountain, if you are willing so to denominate
it, of all life, both of that which is converted to itself, and of that
which has its hypostasis in other things. Through these causes also,
the world is denominated by Timæus, an animal endued with soul and
intellect; being called by him an animal according to its own nature,
and the life pervading to it from soul, and which is distributed about
it, but animated or endued with soul, according to the presence of a
divine soul in it, and endued with intellect, according to intellectual
domination. For the supply of life, the government of soul, and the
participation of intellect connect and contain the whole of heaven.