It remains, therefore, for us to adduce the Parmenides as a witness of the doctrine concerning these gods. For Plato in that dialogue most clearly delivers the one peculiarity of them. For after the progression of the assimilative orders, in which the similar and dissimilar shine forth to the view from intellectual sameness and difference, at one time indeed according to analogy, but at another according to a generation which is different [from that of the other orders], and difficult to be surveyed, he demonstrates that _the one_ touches and does not touch,[62] both itself and other things. For all the divine genera after the demiurgic monad double their energies or they are naturally adapted to energize both towards themselves, and other things, posterior to themselves, rejoicing in progressions, being subservient to the providence of secondary natures, through the will of their father, and calling forth his supernatural, impartible, and all-perfect production, and communicating the streams of it to secondary natures. Does not, therefore, this contact and division with things subordinate, represent to us the liberated peculiarity? For to touch, is an indication of alliance with us, and of a co-arranged providence. But again, not to touch, is an indication of a transcendency exempt and separate from mundane natures. In what has been before said, therefore, we have demonstrated that a thing of this kind pertains to the genus of the liberated Gods, who at one and the same time come into contact with celestial natures, and are expanded above them, and proceed to all things with an unrestrained energy, and free from all habitude. On this account also, we have placed the Fates in the supercelestial order. For Socrates says that they touch the [celestial] circulations; and in the Cratylus he asserts that the mundane Core (or Proserpine) who associates with Pluto, and administers the whole of generation, comes into contact with a mutable essence, and that through this contact she is called Pherephatta.