a repetition as this in any one of the other conclusions. For whole, which he seems to assume twice, is not the same whole, viz. the intellectual is not the same with the intelligible; but these, as we have said, differ from each other. For how could he unfold to us the different progressions of divine natures, if he collected the same conclusions? According to all these conceptions, therefore, we must separate the difference which is generative of numbers from the genus of beings.
But if difference itself is not the nature of the different, but a power generative of beings, it will be collective of being and the one. For every where power is allotted an hyparxis of this kind. For through power the one participates of being, and being of the one. Power therefore was the cause, not of division, but of communion, of contact without separation, and of the habitude of the one to being, and of being to the one. Hence it is necessary that it should neither be arranged according to intelligible power, nor according to the intellectual difference of beings; but that being the middle of both, it should subsist analogous to intelligible power, but should generate in the extremities of intellectuals the portion of the different. What else therefore is it than the feminine nature of the Gods? Hence also it imitates intelligible power, and is prolific of many unities, and of many beings. And how could it otherwise separate number from itself, and the forms and powers of number, unless it was the cause of the divine progressions in a feminine manner. Multitude therefore is paternally in intelligibles, but maternally in intellectuals. Hence, in the former indeed, it subsists monadically, but in the latter according to number. Very properly therefore, in the second genera of the Gods also, union is derived from the male, but separation from the female divinities. And bound indeed proceeds from the males, but infinity from the females. For the male is analogous to bound, but the female to infinity. The female, however, differs from infinite power, so far as power indeed, is united to the father, and is in him; but the female is divided from the paternal cause. For power is not only in the female divinities, but is also prior to them, since the intelligible powers are in the male divinities, according to Timæus, who says that the power of the demiurgus is the cause of the generation
