"But let us return to unity itself, asserting that it always remains the same, though all things flow from it as their inexhaustible fountain. In numbers, indeed, while unity abides in the simplicitly of its essence, number producing another is generated according to this abiding one. But the one which is above beings, much more abides in ineffable station. But while it abides, another does not produce beings, according to the nature of one: for it is sufficient of itself to the generation of beings. But as in numbers the form of the first monad is preserved in all numbers, in the first and second degree while each of the following numbers do not equally participate of unity; so in the order of things, every nature subordinate to the first, contains something of the first, as it were his vestige or form in its essence. And in numbers, indeed, the participation of unity produces their quantity. But here the vestige of one gives essence to all the series of divine numbers, so that being itself, is as were the footstep of ineffable unity."
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Proclus (ca. 450 A.D.) The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries of Proclus on the First Book of Euclid's Elements (1791) Tr.Thomas Taylor, p. 243.
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