On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians

necessary that the progression of beings should be continuous, and that no vacuum should exist in either incorporeal or corporeal natures. It is also necessary that everything which has a natural progression should proceed through similarity. Consequently, every producing principle must generate a number of the same order as itself: nature generates a natural number; soul, a psychic number (belonging to the soul); and intellect, an intellectual number. For if whatever possesses the power of generating creates things similar before it creates things dissimilar, every cause must impart its own form and characteristic peculiarity to its offspring. Before it generates that which gives rise to progressions far distant and separate from its own nature, it must constitute things that are proximate to itself in essence and conjoined with it through similarity. Therefore, it is necessary from these premises, since there is one unity (the principle of the universe), that this unity should produce from itself, prior to anything else, a multitude of natures characterized