of their nature, they can in no degree at all contract pollution, whatever they either eat or perform, they have derived it from the Cynics, since they do in fact belong to the same society as do these [philosophers]. They also strive to transfer to [the treatment of matters of] faith that hairsplitting and subtle mode of handling questions which is, in fact, a copying of Aristotle.
6. Again, as to the desire they exhibit to refer this whole universe to numbers, they have learned it from the Pythagoreans. For these were the first who set forth numbers as the initial principle of all things, and [described] that initial principle of theirs as being both equal and unequal, out of which [two properties] they conceived that both things sensible[1] and immaterial derived their origin. And [they held] that one set of first principles[2] gave rise to the matter [of things], and another to their form. They affirm that from these first principles all things have been made, just as a statue is of its metal and its special form. Now, the heretics have adapted this to the things which are outside of the Pleroma. The [Pythagoreans] maintained that the[3] principle of intellect is proportionate to the energy wherewith mind, as a recipient of the comprehensible, pursues its inquiries, until, worn out, it is resolved at length in the Indivisible and One. They further affirm that Hen—that is, One—
- ↑ The Latin text reads "sensibilia et insensata;" but these words, as Harvey observes, must be the translation of αἰσθητὰ καὶ ἀναίσθητα,—"the former referring to material objects of sense, the latter to the immaterial world of intellect."
- ↑ This clause is very obscure, and we are not sure if the above rendering brings out the real meaning of the author. Harvey takes a different view of it, and supposes the original Greek to have been, καὶ ἄλλας μὲν τῆς ὑποστάσεως ἀρχὰς εἶναι ἄλλας δὲ τῆς αἰσθήσεως καὶ τῆς οὐσίας. He then remarks: "The reader will observe that the word ὑπόστασις here means intellectual substance, οὐσία material; as in V. c. ult. The meaning therefore of the sentence will be, And they affirmed that the first principles of intellectual snhstancc and of sensible and material existence were diverse, viz. unity viz the exponent of the first, duality of the second."
- ↑ All the editors confess the above sentence hopelessly obscure. We have given Harvey's conjectural translation.
