In the next place follows Venus, who is the cause of beauty to generated natures, which is an imitation of intelligible beauty. This goddess also is the source of the union of form with matter; connecting and comprehending the powers of all the elements; and her principal employment consists in beautifully illuminating the order, harmony, and communion of all mundane concerns. She likewise governs all the co-ordinations in the celestial world and the earth, binds them to each other, and perfects their generative progressions through a kindred conjunction. And she unites and leads into communion the Hermaic production which has a remitted subsistence, and is in subjection to the solar fabrication. The next celestial divinity in order after Venus is the sovereign Sun, whose essence and dignity are so great, according to the theology of Plato, as to possess a supermundane prerogative among mundane natures. This Plato indicates in the Timæus, when speaking of the sun he says: “In order that these circles might possess a certain manifest measure of slowness and swiftness with reference to each other, and that the motion of the eight circulations might be conspicuous, the divinity enkindled a light which we now denominate the sun, in the second revolution from the earth; that the heavens might become eminently apparent to all things, and that such animals might participate of number as are adapted to its participation, receiving numerical information from the revolution of a nature similar and the same.” On these words Proclus admirably comments as follows:[104] Plato here delivers the one ruling cause of the generation of apparent time. For as the Demiurgus gives subsistence to unapparent time, thus also the sun to the time which is apparent, and which measures the motion of bodies. For through light he leads into visibility every temporal interval, gives bound to all periods, and exhibits measures of restoration to a pristine state. Deservedly, therefore, is the sun a manifest measure, as especially unfolding the progression[105] of time according to number, into the universe. For it has a more accurate period than that of the five planets, its motions being less anomalous than theirs; and also than that of the moon, by always terminating at the same point, its progressions to the north and the south. But if it has a more accurate period, it is deservedly a measure of measures, and from itself bounds[106] the periodic measures of the other planets, and the swiftness of their motions with reference to each other. It also in a greater degree imitates the perpetual permanency of eternity, by always revolving after the same manner. In this way, therefore, it differs from the planets.