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 — Plato — John Shaqi
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
Plato · en
And every thing which is deprived of good, so far indeed as pertains to
itself, and its own subsistence, is deprived of it through imbecility
of nature; but it is good to the whole, and so far as it is a part of
the universe. For it is not possible that either a privation of life,
or deformity and immoderation, or in short privation can be inserted
in the universe; but its whole number is always perfect, being held
together by the goodness of wholes. And life is every where present,
together with existence, and the being perfect, so far as each thing
gives completion to the whole. Divinity therefore, as we have said,
is the cause[121] of good; but the shadowy subsistence of evil does
not subsist from power, but from the imbecility of the natures which
receive the illuminations of the Gods. Nor is evil in wholes, but
in partial natures, nor yet in all these. For the first of partial
natures and partial intellectual genera are eternally boniform. But the
media among these, and which energize according to time, connecting
the participation of the good with temporal mutation and motion, are
incapable of preserving the gift of the Gods immoveable, uniform and
simple; by their variety obscuring[122] the simplicity of this gift,
by their multiform its uniform nature, and by their commixture its
purity and incorruptibility. For they do not consist of incorruptible
first genera, nor have they a simple essence, nor uniform powers, but
such as are composed of the contraries to these, as Socrates somewhere
says in the Phædrus. And the last of partial natures and which are also
material, in a much greater degree pervert their proper good. For they
are mingled with a privation of life, and have a subsistence resembling
that of an image, since it is replete with much of non-entity, consists
of things hostile to each other, and of circumstances which are
mutable and dispersed through the whole of time, so that they never
cease to evince in every thing that they are given up to corruption,
privation of symmetry, deformity, and all-various mutations, being not
only extended in their energies, like the natures prior to them, but
being replete both in their powers and energies with that which is
preternatural, and with material imbecility. For things which become
situated in a foreign place, by co-introducing whole together with
form, rule over the subject nature; but again receding to that which is
partial, from their proper wholeness, and participating of partibility,
imbecility, war and the division which is the source of generation,
they are necessarily all-variously changed. Neither, therefore, is
every being perfectly good; for there would not be the corruption and
generation of bodies, nor the purification and punishment of souls.
Nor is there any evil in wholes: for the world would not be a blessed
god, if the most principal parts of which it consists were imperfect.
Nor are the Gods the causes of evils, in the same manner as they are