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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Farther still, Socrates says that souls standing on the back of the
heaven, are carried round by the circumvolution itself of the heaven;
but Timæus, and the Athenian guest say, that souls lead every thing in
the heavens by their own motions, externally cover bodies with their
motions, and living their own life through the whole of time, impart
to bodies secondarily efficient powers of motion. How therefore do
these things accord with those who make this heaven to be sensible?
For souls do not contemplate and dance round intelligibles, through
the circulation of the heavens; but through the unapparent convolution
of souls, bodies revolve in a circle, and about these perform their
circulations. If therefore any one should say that the sensible heaven
circumvolves souls, and that it is divided according to the back,
the profundity, and the subcelestial arch, many absurdities must
necessarily be admitted.
But if some one should say that the heaven is intelligible, to which
Jupiter is the leader, but all the Gods, and together with these,
dæmons follow him, he will unfold the divinely-inspired narrations of
Plato consentaneously to the nature of things, and will follow the
most celebrated of his interpreters. For Plotinus and Jamblichus are
of opinion that this heaven is a certain intelligible. And prior to
these, Plato himself in the Cratylus following the Orphic theogonies
calls the father indeed of Jupiter, Saturn, but of Saturn, Heaven. And
he evinces that Jupiter is the demiurgus of the whole of things through
the names [by which he is called,] investigating for this purpose the
truth concerning them. But he shows that Saturn is connective of a
divine intellect; and that Heaven is the intelligence, or intellectual
perception of the first intelligibles. For sight, says he, looking
to the things above, is Heaven. Hence Heaven subsists prior to every
divine intellect, with which the mighty Saturn is replete; but it
intellectually perceives the things above, and such as are beyond the
celestial order. The mighty Heaven therefore, is allotted a kingdom
which is between the intelligible and intellectual orders. For the
circulation mentioned in the Phædrus is intelligence, through which
all the Gods and souls obtain the contemplation of intelligibles.
But intelligence is a medium between intellect and the intelligible.
It must be said therefore, that the whole of heaven is established
according to this medium, and that it contains the one bond of the
divine orders, being the father indeed of the intellectual genus, but
being generated from the kings prior to it, which also it is said to
see. But on one side of it the supercelestial place, and on the other
the subcelestial arch must be arranged.
CHAPTER VI.