CHAPTER XI.

And thus much for the developement of such particulars in the speech of the demiurgus as relate to the junior or mundane Gods. Others, however, no less important respecting the fabrication of these Gods remain to be collected from another part of the Timæus; and which accompanied with the admirable elucidations of Proclus are as follow: After the demiurgus had instructed souls in all that was necessary to their well being, and had disseminated some of them into the earth, others into the moon, and others into the remaining different instruments of time, Plato adds: “But after this semination he delivered to the junior Gods the province of fabricating mortal bodies, and generating whatever else remained necessary to the human soul; and gave them dominion over every thing consequent to their fabrications.” Who the junior Gods are, says Proclus, must now be shown; for that the mundane Gods are thus denominated is evident. But it seems they are thus called by Plato, either from a comparison with the more ancient dignity of the unapparent [i.e. the intellectual] fabrication, and with the transcendency of the power in it, and the perfection of intellectual vision. For that which is more intellectual is with the Gods more ancient.

“But Jove was born the first, and more he knows,” says Homer. Or they are thus denominated, because they always make generation to be new; and when it becomes old and imbecil through its subject nature, again recall it to a subsistence according to nature by their motions, sending into it effluxions of all-various productive principles and powers, and thus render it perpetually new. Or, they are thus called, because having intellectual essences suspended from them, they eternally energize with the acme of intellectual vigor. For as the poets say, Hebe pours out their wine, and they drink nectar, and survey the whole sensible world. Employing, therefore, immutable and undeviating intellections, they fill all things with their demiurgic providence. Or they have this appellation, because Curetic deity is present with them, [or deity belonging to the order of the Curetes,] illuminating their intellectual conceptions with purity, their motion with inflexibility, and supplying the whole of them with rigid power, through which they govern all things without departing from the characteristics of their nature. Or, which is the truest reason of all the preceding, they are thus denominated, because the monad of them is called the recent God. For theologists give this appellation to Bacchus, who is the monad of all the second fabrication. For Jupiter established him the king of all the mundane Gods, and distributed to him the first honours. On this account also, theologists are accustomed to call the sun a recent God, and Heraclitus says, that the sun is a diurnal youth, as participating of Dionysiacal power. Or, for a reason most appropriate to Platonic principles, they are thus denominated, because bodies which have generation are suspended from them; and the essence of these is not allotted a subsistence in eternity, but in the whole of time. They are junior, therefore, not as once beginning to exist, but as being always generated, and as we have before observed, subsisting in becoming to be, or perpetually rising into existence. For every thing which is generated has not the whole of what it possesses present at once, nor a simultaneous infinity, but an infinity which is perpetually supplying. Thus, therefore, they are called junior, as having a subsistence co-extended with time, and always advancing into existence, and as possessing a renovated immortality.

Again, the delivery of the first fabrication is a communication and generation of demiurgic powers, exempt from every thing which the second fabrication produces proximately, a progression of production from the unapparent into the apparent, and a division of uniform power into the multiplied government of the world. But the formation of bodies assimilates the junior Gods to the unapparent fabrication. For that was the cause of bodies that rank as wholes, just as they are the causes of partial bodies, at the same time exhibiting a diminution of power. For of the body of which they are the makers and formers, the demiurgus also is the cause; but they are the formers of partial bodies, which are bodies endued with certain qualities. Hence body indeed is simply unbegotten as from time, and incorruptible as was also the opinion of Aristotle. “For,” says he, “there would be a vacuum if body could be generated, external to the body of the universe. But this particular body is corruptible, as being of a partial nature; for the wholes of the elements derived their subsistence from total fabrication. The accession, however, of the human soul which remained to be generated, assimilates the mundane Gods to the paternal power. For it is the province of a father to generate life; since the first father, and every father is the cause of life; the intelligible father, indeed, of intelligible, but the intellectual of intellectual, and the supermundane of supermundane life. And hence, the mundane Gods who generate corporeal life are fathers. The fabrication, however, adapted to these Gods, produces the nature of partial animals. For this partial animal which is suspended from the immortal soul, consists of soul and body. But the dominion which the demiurgus gave the junior Gods, excites their providential inspection, their connective power, and their guardian comprehensions. For without these, the bodies that are fashioned, and the mortal form of life, would rapidly vanish into non-entity. Prior, therefore, to the generation of these, the demiurgus made their ruling Gods to be the guardians and saviours of them. In the junior Gods, therefore, there are demiurgic powers, according to which they invest generated natures with forms; vivific powers, according to which they give subsistence to a secondary life; and perfective powers, through which they give completion to what is deficient in generation. There are also many other powers in them besides these, which are inexplicable by our conceptions.