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 duad possess all multitude according to cause; the former paternally, but the latter maternally. And on this account intelligible multitude is not yet number, but is intelligibly established in the uniform principles, I mean the monad and the duad; generatively indeed, in the duad, but paternally in the monad. For the third God was father and mother; since if animal itself is in it, it is also necessary that the cause of the male and the female should there primarily preexist. For these are in animals. Hence according to Timæus, and according to Parmenides, the maternal and the paternal cause are there. And in these, intelligible animals, and intelligible multitudes are comprehended. From these first principles also number together with difference proceed, and they generate the monads and the duads which are in number, and all numbers. For both the generative and the paternal subsist in these in a feminine manner.

All the monads likewise of this triad are paternal. Hence prior to other things they participate of the monadic cause, but according to the power of difference. For there indeed, I mean in the intelligible, the maternal was paternally; but here the paternal subsists maternally; just as there, the intellectual subsists intelligibly, but here the intelligible, intellectually. From that order therefore, the first number subsists proximately, but being generated analogous to the first triad of intelligibles, it also evidently proceeds from it. Hence also, Parmenides beginning his discourse about number, reminds us of the first hypothesis through which he generates the one being, asserting that the one participates of essence, and essence of the one, in consequence of this subsisting according to that triad. And this very properly. For being intelligible and intellectual, so far indeed, as it is allotted an intelligible order in intellectuals, it proceeds from the summit of intelligibles, but so far as it precedes the intellectual orders, it proceeds from the intellectual of intelligibles. In that intelligible triad, however, the one was of being, and being of the one, through the ineffable and occult union of these two, and their subsistence in each other. But in the intelligible and at the same time intellectual triad, difference presenting itself to the view, which is the image of the concealed and ineffable power in the first triad of intelligibles, and