CHAPTER IV.
It is, however, I think, necessary syllogistically to collect the progression of them according to hebdomads, from images. The demiurgus therefore, [in the Timæus] fabricates the soul of the universe an image of all the divine orders, in the same manner as he fabricates this sensible world an image of intelligibles. And in the first[255] place indeed, he constitutes the whole essence of the soul, and afterwards divides it into numbers, binds it by harmonies, and adorns it with figures, I mean the rectilinear and the circular. After this also, he divides it into one circle and seven circles. Whence therefore, are this monad and hebdomad derived, except from the intellectual Gods? For figure, number, and true being, are prior to them. And as in the fabrication of the soul, after the subsistence of the psychical figure, the division of the circles according to the monad and hebdomad follows, thus also in the Gods, after intellectual and intelligible figure, the intellectual breadth, and that sphere of the Gods succeed. The multitude therefore of the seven hebdomads subsist from the divine intellectual hebdomad entering into itself. And on this account, the demiurgus thus divides the circles in the soul, because he, and every intellectual order, produce an intellectual hebdomad from each monad. I do not however assert, and now contend, that the seven circles are allotted an hyparxis similar to the seven Gods that proceed from the demiurgus, but that the demiurgus dividing the soul according to circles, introduces number to the sections from the intellectual Gods, I mean the monadic and the hebdomadic number. For the monad indeed subsists according to the circle of sameness, but the division, according to the circle of difference. Shortly after however, it will appear that same and different belong to the demiurgic order.
Farther still, after the division of the circles, the demiurgus assumes some things which are symbols of the assimilative, and others which are symbols of the liberated Gods, and through these, he refers the soul to these orders of the Gods. If therefore figure is prior to the intellectual Gods, but the similar and dissimilar are posterior to them, it is evidently necessary that the monadic and at the same time hebdomadic, should be referred to this order, and that the progression from the monad to the hebdomad should pertain to this order. Each therefore of the seven intellectual Gods, is the leader of an intellectual hebdomad, as we may learn from images. There however indeed, the hebdomad is one, and allied to itself. But in souls, the circles differ from each other, according to the divine peculiarities. For they receive number in such a manner as to preserve the proper nature which they are allotted, connectedly containing mundane natures, and convolving the apparent by their own circles. And thus much concerning these particulars, which afford arguments that are not obscure of the arrangement of them by Plato.