in the monad. For this first principle is all things prior to all: and
many principles are multiplied about the one principle, and in the one
goodness, many goodnesses are established. This too, is not a certain
principle like each of the rest: for of these, one is the principle of
beauty, another of symmetry, another of truth, and another of something
else, but it is simply principle. Nor is it simply the principles of
beings, but it is the principle of principles. For it is necessary that
the idiom of principle, after the same manner as other things, should not
begin from multitude, but should be collected into one monad as a summit,
and which is the principle of principles.

Such things therefore as are first produced by the first good, in
consequence of being connascent with it, do not recede from essential
goodness, since they are immovable and unchanged, and are eternally
established in the same blessedness. They are likewise not indigent of
the good, because they are goodnesses themselves. All other natures
however, being produced by the one good, and many goodnesses, since they
fall off from essential goodness, and are not immovably established in
the hyparxis of divine goodness, on this account they possess the good
according to participation."

From this sublime theory the meaning of that ancient Egyptian dogma, that
God is all things, is at once apparent. For the first principle,[6] as
Simplicius in the above passage justly observes, is all things prior
to all; i.e. he comprehends all things causally, this being the most
transcendent mode of comprehension. As all things therefore, considered
as subsisting causally in deity, are transcendently more excellent than
they are when considered as effects preceding from him, hence that mighty
and all-comprehending whole, the first principle, is said to be all
things prior to all; priority here denoting exempt transcendency. As the