monad and the centre of a circle are images from their simplicity of this
greatest of principles, so likewise do they perspicuously shadow forth
to us its causal comprehension of all things. For all number may be
considered as subsisting occultly in the monad, and the circle in the
centre; this occult being the same in each with causal subsistence.

-----------------
[6] By the first principle here, the one is to be understood for that
arcane nature which is beyond the one, since all language is subverted
about it, can only, as we have already observed, be conceived and
venerated in the most profound silence.
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That this conception of causal subsistence is not an hypothesis devised
by the latter Platonists, but a genuine dogma of Plato, is evident from
what he says in the Philebus: for in that Dialogue he expressly asserts
that in Jupiter a royal intellect, and a royal soul subsist according to
cause. Pherecydes Syrus, too, in his Hymn to Jupiter, as cited by Kercher
(in Oedip. Egyptiac.), has the following lines:
[Greek:
O theos esti kuklos, tetragonos ede trigonos,
Keinos de gramme, kentron, kai panta pro panton.]

i.e. Jove is a circle, triangle and square, centre and line, and all things
before all. From which testimonies the antiquity of this sublime doctrine
is sufficiently apparent.

And here it is necessary to observe that nearly all philosophers: prior
to Jamblichus (as we are informed by Damascius) asserted indeed, that
there is one superessential God, but that the other gods had an essential