The six books of Proclus, the Platonic successor, on the theology of Plato (vol. 2 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 p
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which is dissoluble after such a manner as the corruptible, not being
indissoluble, is so far from being not in every respect indissoluble,
that it is in every respect dissoluble. Hence it is not proper to
say that the mundane Gods are of themselves corruptible, but remain
incorruptible through the will of the father; but we ought to say that
they are in their own nature[81] incorruptible.
CHAPTER VIII.
In the next place let us attend to the meaning of the following part
of the speech of the demiurgus to the mundane Gods, as beautifully
unfolded by Proclus: “Hence so far as you are generated, you are not
immortal, nor in every respect indissoluble, yet you shall never be
dissolved, nor become subject to the fatality of death; my will being
a much greater and more excellent bond than the vital connectives
with which you were bound at the commencement of your generation.”
Since all the mundane Gods to whom these words are addressed consist
of divine souls, and animals suspended from them, or in other words,
since they are participated souls, and since the demiurgus denominates
them indissoluble and at the same time dissoluble, in the way above
explained, he now wishes to collect in one point of view, and into one
truth, all that he had said separately about them. For at one and the
same time he takes away from them the immortal and the indissoluble,
and again confers these on them through a subversion of their
opposites. For media are allotted this nature, not receiving the nature
of the extremes, and appearing to comprehend the whole of both. Just
as if some one should call the soul impartible and at the same time
partible, as consisting of both, and neither impartible, nor partible,
as being different from the extremes. For see how a middle of this kind
may be surveyed in the mundane Gods.