Front Matter, p. 4 (part 3)

Because it is also necessary that the soul, essentially rational, should receive intellect by participation, and that intellectual energy should be of p. 22 two kinds; one primarily subsisting in the divine intellect; but the other subsisting secondarily in its offspring soul. You may add too, the presence of intellectual illumination in body, which is received in as great perfection as its unstable and obscure nature will admit. For how is it possible that the celestial orbs should be for ever circularly moved in one definite order, preserving the same form, and the same immutable power, unless they participated of an intellectual nature. For soul is indeed the constant supplier of motion; but the cause of perpetual station, of indentity and uniform life, reducing unstable motion to a circular revolution, and to a condition eternally the same, must be more ancient than soul. Body, indeed, and whatever is the object of sense, belongs; to the order of things moved by another. But soul is self-motive, p. 23 embracing in itself, in a connected manner, all corporeal motions. And prior to this is immovable intellect. And here it is requisite to observe, that this immaterial nature must not be conceived as similar to any thing inert, destitute of life, and endued with no spirit, but as the principal cause of all motion, and the fountain of all life; as well of that whose streams perpetually return into itself, as of that which subsists in others, and has, on this account only, a secondary and imperfect existence. All things, therefore, depend upon unity, through the medium of intellect and soul. And intellect is of an uniform essence; but soul of a mental form νοειδήσ, and the body of the world vivific, or vital ζωτικὸς. The first cause of all is indeed prior to intellect, but intellect is the first recipient of a divine nature; and soul is divine, so far as it requires an intellectual medium. But the p. 24 body which participates a soul of this kind is divine, in as great a degree as the nature of body will admit. For the illustration of intellectual light, pervades from the principle of things, to the extremes; and is not totally obscured, even when it enters the involutions of matter, and is profoundly merged in its dark and flowing receptacle. Hence we may with reason conclude, that not only the universe, but each of its eternal parts is animated. and endued with intellect, and is in its capacity similar to the universe. For each of these parts, is a universe if compared with the multitude it contains, and to which it is allied. There is, therefore, according to the Orphic and Platonic theology, one soul of the universe; and after this others, which from participating this general soul, dispose the entire parts of the universe into order; p. 25 and one intellect which is participated by souls, and one supreme God, who comprehends the world in his infinite nature, and a multitude of other divinities, who distribute intellectual essences, together with their dependent souls, and all the parts of the world, and who are the perpetual sources of its order, union, and consent. For it is not reasonable to suppose that every production of nature, should have the power of generating its similar, but that the universe and primary essences should not more abundantly possess an ability of such like procreation; since sterility can only belong to the most abject, and not to the most excellent natures. In consequence of this reasoning, Orpheus filled all things with Gods, subordinate to the demiurgus of the whole Δημιυργῷ, every one of which performs the office destined to his divinity, by his superiour p. 26 leader.