PROCLUS, THE PLATONIC SUCCESSOR

What has been said, however, will become
more [ evident by assuming that intellect
produces both body and that which is
incorporeal, but each of these incorporeally,
and that it knows and produces them
conformably to its own nature. And as the
productive principle of incorporeal natures is in
intellect incorporeal, so likewise the cause of
body in it is incorporeal; the former
assimilating to itself the things which are
produced, but the latter, on account of
diminution a with respect to intellect, producing
things more foreign to the incorporeal species.
Soul itself likewise generates those vital and
motive productive powers or forms which are
in other souls ; but of those forms which fall
into mat-
a The words in italics are in Morbeka's version
"propter submissionem"; but the original was, I have no
doubt, dia huphesin.
[18]
ter, some it produces of a gnostic, but others of
a fabricative nature. And it produces indeed all
these vitally, some proceeding through life into
life, but others proceeding through life into the
privation of vitality. And, in short, everything
which generates, and at the same time knows
that which it generates from different causes,
generates and knows the thing produced by it,
by a knowledge superior to the object of its
knowledge. Of the natures, however, which are
produced by this cause, some are produced
conformably to it, but others according to
diminution. Hence, you may say that
Providence, possessing through the one of
itself the cause of definite natures, but through
infinity the cause of such as are indefinite,
knows and generates both of them definitely;
just as intellect knows and produces incorporeally,
both that which subsists according