The Theology of Plato, in six books — trans. Thomas Taylor

genuine worship of a divine nature. For Socrates himself in the Cratylus, unfolds to us the Saturnian bonds, and their mystic meaning, and in a remarkable manner demonstrates that the visions of those ancient and illustrious men do not fall off from the truth.

After the same manner therefore, he will permit his friends to assume intellectual sections, and the power which is productive of these, according to divinely-inspired conceptions, and will suffer them to survey these together with bonds in the intellectual Gods. Farther still, the fable in the Gorgias, in a clearer manuer separates the empire of Jupiter from the Saturnian kingdom, and calls the former the second from, and more recent than the latter. What is the cause, therefore, which separates these paternal monads ? What intellectual power produced the intellectual empire from that which is exempt from it ? For it is necessary that there should be with the Gods themselves the first-effective fountain of division, through which Jupiter also separates himself from tlie monad his father, Saturn from the kingdom of the Heaven, and the natures posterior to Jupiter, proceeding into an inferior order, are separated from his all-perfect monad.

Moreover, the demiurgus himself in the production of the genera posterior to himself, at one and the same time is the cause to them of union, and the source of their all-various divisions. For fabricating the soul one whole, he separates it into parts, and all-various powers. And in the Timaeus where the demiurgus is said to do this, Plato himself does not refuse to call these separations, and essential divisions, sectiom.

chap, xxxvii.

He likewise cuts off parts from thence, places tliem in that which h between these, and again separates parts from the whole, and thus the mixture from which he had cut off these parts, was now wholly consumed. Is it therefore any longer wonderful that the framers of fables should denominate the divisions of the intellectual leaders, sections, since even Timaeus himself who does not devise fables, but indicates the essential progression of souls into multitude, uses as a sign the word section ? And does not also Plato in the greatest degree accord with the highest of theologists, when he delivers to us the demiurgus glittering with intellectual sections ? As therefore the demiurgus, when producing the essence of souls, constitutes it according to true being, when generating life, he generates it according to the life which is in real beings, and produces the intellect which is in souls 3intellectual sections ? As therefore the demiurgus, when producing the essence of souls, constitutes it according to true being, when generating life, he generates it according to the life which is in real beings, and produces the intellect which is in souls according to the intellect which is in himself, — thus also when cutting the essence of the soul from itself, and separating it, he energizes according to the sections and separations which are in the intellectual order, and according to the one and intellectual cause of them. According to Plato, therefore, there is a first monad of the total divisions in intellectuals, and together witb the twofold triads, I mean the paternal and the undefiled, it gives completion to the whole intellectual hebdomad. And we, following Plato, and other theologists, concede the same things.

Let us now, however, return to the beginning, and demonstrate that Parmenides delivers the same things concerning this intellectual hebdomad, and that he produces this hebdomad ic aibn {eternity) and the peculiarity of the Gods which is intellectual alone, in continuity with.

the triple orders of the intelligible, and at the same time intellectual Gods. And, in the first place, let us survey what he says concerning the father of the intellectual Gods, and the undefilcd power which is co-arranged with him. For after the threefold figure, and the order of the Gods which perfects all things, that which is in itself and in another, becomes apparent. These things, however, are demonstrated to be signs of the intellectual summit of the intellectual monads. For the first father of the Gods in this order, at one and the same time is allotted a paternal transcendency with respect to those posterior to him, and is the intellect of the first intelligibles. For every imparticipable intellect is said to be the intellect of the natures prior to itself, and towards them, from whom it is produced, it has an intellectual conversion, and in theni as first-effective causes it establishes itself. Whence also the demiurgic intellect is the intellect of the natures above itself, and proximately indeed of its own father, from which likewise it proceeds, but eminently of the intelligible unities beyond [Saturn].

The first king, therefore, in intellectuals, is both an intellectual father, and a paternal intellect. lie is, however, the intellectual father indeed of the Gods that proceed from himself; but he is the paternal intellect of the intelligibles prior to himself.