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
In the next place, let us survey the immortal. For with Plato there
are many orders of immortality, pervading from on high as far as to
the last of things; and the last echo, as it were, of immortality, is
in those visible natures that are perpetual; which the Elean guest,
in his discourse about the circulation of the universe, says, are
allotted from the father a renovated immortality. For every body is
allotted a being and a life dependent on another cause; but is not
itself naturally adapted to connect, or adorn, or preserve itself.
The immortality of partial souls is, I think, more manifest and
more perfect than this; which Plato evinces by many demonstrations
in the Phædo, and in the 10th book of the Republic. But I mean by
the immortality of partial souls, that which has a more principal
subsistence, as containing in itself the cause of eternal permanency.
We shall not, however, err if prior to both these we establish the
immortality of dæmons. For the genera of these through which they
subsist are incorruptible, and they neither verge to mortality, nor are
filled with the nature of things which are generated and corrupted. But
I infer that the immortality of divine souls is still more venerable
and essentially more transcendent than that of dæmons; which divine
souls we say are primarily self-motive, and are the fountains and
principles of the life divided about bodies, and through which bodies
obtain a renovated immortality. If, however, prior to these you
conceive the Gods themselves, and the immortality in them, and how in
the Banquet Diotima does not attribute an immortality of this kind
even to dæmons, but defines it to subsist in the Gods alone, such an
immortality as this will appear to you to be separate, and exempt from
the whole of things. For there eternity subsists, which is the fountain
of all immortality, and through it all things live and possess life,
some things indeed a perpetual life, but others a life dispersed into
non-being. In short, therefore, that which is divine is immortal so far
as it generates and comprehends in itself a perpetual life. For it is
immortal, not as participating of life, but as the supplier of a divine
life, and as deifying life itself, whether you are willing to call such
a life intelligible, or by any other name.