Hymn IX. NATURE (part 2)

And Proclus in forms us, that she connects all the parts of the universe together: containing in herself intellectual life, by which she illuminates the whole, and unifying powers by which she superintends all the opposing natures of the world. Nature, therefore, from her connecting, and unifying power, and from her plenitude of seminal reasons, has an evident agreement with Minerva, whose divine arts according to the Orphic theology, reduce whatever in the universe is discordant and different, into union and consent. Again, agreeable to this theology, primary natures impart their gifts to such as are secondary by an abundant illumination, and effects are established in the causes from which they proceed: so that in the obscure language of Heraclitus, all things are one, and one all things. Hence Nature though the last of the demiurgic causes, is with perfect conformity to this symbolical Theology, said to be both communicable and incommunicable; without a father and at the same time the father of her own being. For considered as full of operative reasons, she is communicable to every sensible nature: but considered as the representative of divine unity, she is incommunicable. And in like manner as symbolising with the first cause, she is both without any origin, and at the same time the source of her own essence. 128:12 Ver. 12.] Finite and infinite, &c. Philolaus according to Demetrius (in Laert.) published a discourse concerning Nature, of which this is the beginning φύσις δὲ ἐν τῳ κόσμῳ αῤμόχθη ἑξ ἀϖειρηον τε καὶ ὅλ# ( ) κόσμοσ καὶ τὰ ἑν αυτῳ παντα. i. e. "Nature, and the whole world, and whatever it contains. arc aptly connected together from infinites and finites." 129:33 Ver. 33.] By thee the world , &c. Since the world has an extended and composite essence, and is on this account continually separated from itself, it can alone be connected by a certain indivisible virtue infused from the divine unity. Again, since from a natural appetite, it is ever orderly moved towards good, the nature of such an appetite and motion must originate from a divine intellect and goodness. But since, from its material imperfection, it cannot receive the whole of divine infinity at once, but in a manner accommodated to its temporal nature: it can only derive it gradually and partially, as it were by drops, in a momentary succession. So that the corporeal world is in a continual state of flowing and formation, but never possesses real being; and is like the image of a lofty tree seen in a rapid torrent, which has the appearance of a tree without the reality; and which seems to endure perpetually the same, yet is continually renewed by the continual renovation of the stream.