Page:ProclusPlatoTheologyVolume1.djvu/311

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that it is divided according to the back, the profundity, and the subcelestial arch, many absurdities must necessarily be admitted.

But if some one should say that the heaven is intelligible, to which Jupiter is the leader, but all the Gods, and together with these, dæmons follow him, he will unfold the divinely-inspired narrations of Plato consentaneously to the nature of things, and will follow the most celebrated of his interpreters. For Plotinus and Jamblichus are of opinion that this heaven is a certain intelligible. And prior to these, Plato himself in the Cratylus following the Orphic theogonies calls the father indeed of Jupiter, Saturn, but of Saturn, Heaven. And he evinces that Jupiter is the demiurgus of the whole of things through the names [by which he is called,] investigating for this purpose the truth concerning them. But he shows that Saturn is connective of a divine intellect; and that Heaven is the intelligence, or intellectual perception of the first intelligibles. For sight, says he, looking to the things above, is Heaven. Hence Heaven subsists prior to every divine intellect, with which the mighty Saturn is replete; but intellectually perceives the things above, and such as are beyond the celestial order. The mighty Heaven therefore, is allotted a kingdom which is between the intelligible and intellectual orders. For the circulation mentioned in the Phædrus is intelligence, through which all the Gods and souls obtain the contemplation of intelligibles. But intelligence is a medium between intellect and the intelligible. It must be said therefore, that the whole of heaven is established according to this medium, and that it contains the one bond of the divine orders, being the father indeed of the intellectual genus, but being generated from the kings prior to it, which also it is said to see. But on one side of it the supercelestial place, and on the other the subcelestial arch must be arranged.