he notes on that Dialogue. In addition therefore to
what I have staid on this subject, I shall further observe at present
that this doctrine, which is founded in the sublimest and most scientific
conceptions of the human mind, may be clearly shown to be a legitimate
dogma of Plato from what is asserted by him in the sixth book of his
Republic. For he there affirms, in the most clear and unequivocal terms,
that the good, or the ineffable principle of things is superessential,
and shows by the analogy of the sun to the good, that what light and
sight are in the visible, that truth and intelligence are in the
intelligible world. As light therefore, immediately proceeds from the
sun, and wholly subsists according to a solar idiom or property, so truth
or the immediate progeny of the good, must subsist according to a
superessential idiom. And as the good, according to Plato, is the same
with the one, as is evident from the Parmenides, the immediate progeny of
the one will be the same as that of the good. But, the immediate
offspring of the one cannot be any thing else than unities. And, hence we
necessarily infer that according to Plato, the immediate offspring of the
ineffable principle of things are superessential unities. They differ
however from their immense principle in this, that he is superessential
and ineffable, without any addition; but this divine multitude is
participated by the several orders of being, which are suspended from and
produced by it. Hence, in consequence of being connected with multitude
through this participation, they are necessarily subordinate to the one.

No less admirably, therefore, than Platonically does Simplicius, in his
Commentary of Epictetus, observe on this subject as follows: "The
fountain and principle of all things is the good: for that which all
things desire, and to which all things are extended, is the principle and
the end of all things. The good also produces from itself all things,
first, middle, and last. But it produces such as are first and proximate
to itself, similar to itself; one goodness, many goodnesses, one
simplicity and unity which transcends all others, many, unities, and one
principle many principles. For the one, the principle, the good, and
deity, are the same: for deity is the first and the cause of all things.
But it is necessary that the first should also be most simple; since
whatever is a composite and has multitude is posterior to the one. And
multitude