In the next place with respect to Fate, in the fable in the Politicus, Plato says, that “Fate and connate desire convolve the world, when it is considered by itself as a corporeal nature, without the intellectual Gods.” And in the Timæus he represents the demiurgus exhibiting to souls the nature of the universe, and announcing to them the laws of Fate. On which Proclus admirably comments as follows: It must not be said, that Fate is a partial nature, as some of the Peripatetics assert it is; as for instance, Alexander; for such a nature is imbecil and not perpetual. For from common conceptions, we pre-assume that the power of Fate is something very great and stable. Nor must it be said, that it is the order of the mundane periods, as Aristotle asserts it to be, who denominates the increase which is contrary to order _preterfatal_, as if order and Fate were the same. For the cause of order is one thing, but order itself is another. Nor is it soul subsisting in habitude, as Theodorus says; for such a form of life in wholes is not a principle. Nor is it simply Nature, as Porphyry says it is. For many things which are supernatural, and out of the dominion of Nature are produced by Fate, such as nobility, renown, and wealth. For where is it seen that physical motions become the cause of these? Nor is it the intellect of the universe, as again Aristotle says in a certain place, if the treatise On the World was written by him. For intellect produces every thing which it produces at once, and is not at all in want of an administration which proceeds according to a certain period, and a continued and well-ordered series of things. But the chain, the order, the periodic production of many causes constitute the peculiarity of Fate.