steps of ascent, but all of them extend to the paternal port, and the paternal initiation, in which may the teletarchs, who are the leaders of all good, likewise establish us, illuminating us not by words, but by deeds. May they also think us worthy of being filled with intelligible beauty under the mighty Jupiter, and perfectly free us from those evils about generation with which we are now surrounded as with a wall. May they likewise impart to us by illumination this most beautiful fruit of the present theory, which, following the divine Plato, we have sufficiently delivered to those who love the contemplation of truth.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Let us now therefore again follow Parmenides in another way, who after the intelligible triads generates the intelligible, and at the same time, intellectual orders, and unfolds the continued progression of divine natures, through successive conclusions. For the connexion of the words, and their dependence on each other, imitates the indissoluble order of things, which always conjoins middles to extremes, and proceeds through middle genera to the last progressions of beings. This therefore we must survey prior to the several intellectual conceptions, how the intelligible, and at the same time, intellectual triads, proceed analogous to the intelligible triads, that we may comprehend by a reasoning process the well-arranged order of things. There were three intelligible triads therefore, viz. the one being, whole, and infinite multitude. And three intelligible, and at the same time, intellectual triads, have also presented themselves to our view, viz. number, whole, and the perfect. Hence from the one being, number is derived; from the intelligible whole, the whole that is in these; and from infinite multitude, the perfect. For the
