things, and the good itself? If these things, however, are thus true of
the one, it will thus also be indigent of things posterior to itself,
according to those very things which we add to it. For the principle is,
and is said to be the principle of things proceeding from it, and the
cause is the cause of things caused, and the first is the first of things
arranged, posterior to it.[3]

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[2] See the Sophista of Plato, where this is asserted.

[3] For a thing cannot be said to be a principle or cause without the
subsistence of the things of which it is the principle or cause. Hence,
so far as it is a principle or cause, it will be indigent of the
subsistence of these.
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Further still, the simple subsists according to a transcendency of other
things, the most powerful according to power with relation to the subjects
of it; and the good, the desirable, and the preserving, are so called with
reference to things benefitted, preserved, and desiring. And if it should
be said to be all things according to the preassumption of all things in
itself, it will indeed be said to be so according to the one alone, and
will at the same time be the one cause of all things prior to all, and will
be thus, and no other according to the one. So far, therefore, as it is the
one alone, it will be unindigent; but so far as unindigent, it will be the
first principle, and stable root of all principles. So far, however, as it
is the principle and the first cause of all things, and is pre-established
as the object of desire to all things, so far it appears to be in a certain
respect indigent of the things to which it is related. It has therefore, if
it be lawful so to speak, an ultimate vestige of indigence, just as on the