For again, according to another mode [of considering the subject] it is necessary that primary beings should participate of the first cause through their proximate unities. For secondary things are severally conjoined to the natures prior to them through similars; bodies indeed to the soul which ranks as a whole, through the several souls [which they participate]; but souls to universal intellect through intellectual monads; and first beings, through unical hyparxes to _the one_. For being is in its own nature dissimilar to _the one_. For essence and that which is in want of union externally derived, are unadapted to be conjoined with that which is superessential, and with the first union, and are far distant from it. But the unities of beings, since they derive their subsistence from the imparticipable unity, and which is exempt from the whole of things, are able to conjoin beings to _the one_, and to convert them to themselves. It appears therefore to me, that Parmenides demonstrating these things through the second hypothesis, connects _the one_ with being, surveys all things about _the one_, and evinces that this proceeding nature, and which extends its progressions as far as to the last of things is _the one_. For prior to true beings it was necessary to constitute the unities; since it neither was nor is lawful, says Timæus, for that which is the best of things to effect any thing else than that which is most beautiful. But this is in a remarkable degree most similar to that which is best. To _the one_ however, a unical multitude is most similar; since the demiurgus of the universe also being good, constituted all things similar to himself through goodness itself. Much more therefore, does the fountain of all good produce goodnesses naturally united to itself, and establish them in beings. Hence there is one God, and many Gods, one unity and many unities prior to beings, and one goodness, and many after the one goodness, through which the demiurgic intellect is good, and every intellect is divine, whether it be an intellectual or intelligible intellect. And that which is primarily superessential is _the one_; and there are many superessentials after _the one_. Whether therefore, is this multitude of unities imparticipable in the same manner as _the one itself_, or is it participated by beings, and is each unity of beings the flower as it were of a certain being, and the summit and center of it, about which each being[162] subsists? But if these unities also are imparticipable, in what do they differ from _the one_? For each of them is one, and primarily subsists from _the one_. Or in what being more redundant than the first cause were they constituted by it? For it is every where necessary that what is second being subordinate to that which is prior to itself, should fall short of the union of its producing[163] cause, and by the addition of a certain thing should have a diminution of the monadic simplicity of the first. What addition