“The scope of this speech (says Proclus) is to insert demiurgic power and providence in the mundane genera of Gods, to lead them forth to the generation of the remaining kinds of animals, and to place them over mortals, analogously to the father of wholes over the one orderly distribution of the universe. For it is necessary that some things should be primarily generated by the demiurgic monad, and others through other media; the Demiurgus, indeed, producing all things from himself, at once and eternally, but the things produced in order, and first proceeding from him, producing together with him the natures posterior to themselves. Thus, for instance, the celestial produce sublunary Gods, and these generate mortal animals; the Demiurgus at the same time fabricating these in conjunction with the celestial and sublunary divinities. For in speaking he understands all things, and by understanding all things he also makes the mortal genera of animals; these requiring another proximate generating cause, so far as they are mortal, and through this receiving a progression into being. But the character of the words is enthusiastic, shining with intellectual intuitions, pure and venerable as being perfected by the father of the Gods, differing from and transcending human conceptions, delicate and at the same time terrific, full of grace and beauty--at once concise and perfectly accurate. Plato, therefore, particularly studies these things in the imitations of divine speeches; as he also evinces in the Republic, when he represents the Muses speaking sublimely, and the prophet ascending to a lofty seat. He also adorns both these speeches with conciseness and venerableness, employing the accurate powers of colons, directly shadowing forth divine intellections through such a form of words. But in the words before us he omits no transcendency either of the grand and robust in the sentences and the names adapted to these devices, or of magnitude in the conceptions and the figures which give completion to this idea. Besides this, also, much distinction and purity, the unfolding of truth, and the illustrious prerogatives of beauty, are mingled with the idea of magnitude, this being especially adapted to the subject things, to the speaker, and to the hearers. For the objects of this speech are, the perfection of the universe, an assimilation to all-perfect animal [i.e. to its paradigm], and the generation of all mortal animals; the maker of all things, at the same time, presubsisting and adorning all things through exempt transcendency; but the secondary fabricators adding what was wanting to the formation of the universe. All, therefore, being great and divine, as well the persons as the things, and shining with beauty and a distinction from each other, Plato has employed words adapted to the form of the speech.