6. Unity was not to exist alone; for if unity remained self-enclosed,
all things would remain hidden in unity without having any form, and no
beings would achieve existence. Consequently, even if constituted by
beings born of unity, plurality would not exist, unless the inferior
natures, by their rank destined to be souls, issued from those beings
by the way of procession. Likewise, it was not sufficient for souls to
exist, they also had to reveal what they were capable of begetting.
It is likewise natural for each essence to produce something beneath
it, to draw it out from itself by a development similar to that of a
seed, a development in which an indivisible principle proceeds to the
production of a sense-object, and where that which precedes remains in
its own place at the same time as it begets that which follows by an
inexpressible power, which is essential to intelligible natures. Now
as this power was not to be stopped or circumscribed in its actions by
jealousy, there was need of a continuous procession until, from degree
to degree, all things had descended to the extreme limits of what was
possible;[178] for it is the characteristic of an inexhaustible power
to communicate all its gifts to everything, and not to permit any of
them to be disinherited, since there is nothing which hinders any of
them from participating in the nature of the Good in the measure that
it is capable of doing so. Since matter has existed from all eternity,
it was impossible that from the time since it existed, it should not
participate in that which communicates goodness to all things according
to their receptivity thereof.[179] If the generation of matter were
the necessary consequence of anterior principles, still it must not
be entirely deprived of the good by its primitive impotence, when
the cause which gratuitously communicated "being" to it remained
self-enclosed.