And such is the mode of their subsistence according to Orpheus,
Pythagoras and Plato. Or if it be requisite to speak in more familiar
language, an intellect sufficient to itself, and which is a most perfect
cause, presides over the wholes of the universe, and through these
governs all its parts; but at the same time that it fabricates all
mundane natures, and benefits them by its providential energies, it
preserves its own most divine and immaculate purity; and while it
illuminates all things, is not mingled with the natures which it
illuminates. This intellect, therefore, comprehending in the depths of
its essence an ideal world, replete with all various forms, excludes
privation of cause and casual subsistence, from its energy. But as it
imparts every good and all possible beauty to its fabrications, it
converts the universe to itself, and renders it similar to its own
omniform nature. Its energy, too, is such as its intellection; but it
understands all things, since it is most perfect. Hence there is not any
thing which ranks among true beings, that is not comprehended in the
essence of intellect; but it always establishes in itself ideas, which
are not different from itself and its essence, but give completion to it,
and introduce to the whole of things, a cause which is at the same time
productive, paradigmatic, and final. For it energizes as intellect, and
the ideas which it contains are paradigmatic, as being forms; and they
energize from themselves, and according to their own exuberant goodness.
And such are the Platonic dogmas concerning ideas, which sophistry and
ignorance may indeed oppose, but will never be able to confute.

From this intelligible world, replete with omniform ideas, this sensible
world, according to Plato, perpetually flows, depending on its artificer
intellect, in the same manner as shadow on its forming substance. For as
a deity of an intellectual characteristic is its fabricator, and both the
essence and energy of intellect are established in eternity the sensible