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The six books of Proclus, the Platonic successor, on the theology of Plato (vol. 1 of 2) cover

The six books of Proclus, the Platonic successor, on the theology of Plato (vol. 1 of 2)

Chapter 44: CHAPTER XI.
By Proclus
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About This Book

The work expounds a Neoplatonic theology in which an ineffable first principle emanates successive orders—intellect, soul, natures, and the world—each sustaining series of beings that descend to corporeal existence. It argues that multiplicity issues from unity by similitude and that divine hypostases function as intermediate causes between the first principle and the sensible realm. Additional treatises consider providence, fate, and the subsistence of evil, while a concise set of doctrinal propositions lays out systematic metaphysical demonstrations. The style combines symbolic imagery with geometric and dialectical reasoning to reconcile mystical theism with rigorous philosophical argument.

CHAPTER XI.

Let us now therefore, if ever, abandon multiform knowledge, exterminate from ourselves all the variety of life, and in perfect quiet approach near to the cause of all things. For this purpose, let not only opinion and phantasy be at rest, nor the passions alone which impede our anagogic impulse to the first, be at peace; but let the air be still, and the universe itself be still. And let all things extend us with a tranquil power to communion with the ineffable. Let us also, standing there, having transcended the intelligible (if we contain any thing of this kind,) and with nearly closed eyes adoring as it were the rising sun, since it is not lawful for any being whatever intently to behold him—let us survey the sun whence the light of the intelligible Gods proceeds, emerging, as the poets say, from the bosom of the ocean; and again from this divine tranquillity descending into intellect, and from intellect, employing the reasonings of the soul, let us relate to ourselves what the natures are from which, in this progression, we shall consider the first God as exempt. And let us as it were celebrate him, not as establishing the earth and the heavens, nor as giving subsistence to souls, and the generations of all animals; for he produced these indeed, but among the last of things; but, prior to these, let us celebrate him as unfolding into light the whole intelligible and intellectual genus of Gods, together with all the supermundane and mundane divinities—as the God of all Gods, the unity of all unities, and beyond the first adyta,[158]—as more ineffable than all silence, and more unknown than all essence,—as holy among the holies, and concealed in the intelligible Gods. And again after these things descending into a reasoning process from an intellectual hymn, and employing the irreprehensible science of dialectic, let us, following the contemplation of first causes, survey the manner in which the first God is exempt from the whole of things. And let our descent be as far as to this. But opinion and phantasy and sense, prevent us indeed from partaking of the presence of the Gods, and draw us down from Olympian goods to earth-born motions, Titannically divide the intellect that is in us, and divulse us from an establishment in wholes to the images of beings.