All beings are beings because of the One. This is a brief but comprehensive treatise in which a system of dependence on the One or the Good is sketched. The One, especially understood as eternal presence, provides guidance and well-being to the soul.
§1. Everything is because of the One; while Soul provides unity it is not the One.
§2. Nor is Intellect the One, and nor are individuals.
§3. For the soul to be directed by the one requires the soul to leave off the variety it is accustomed to, and undergo habituation of character, and then use Intellect as a guide, while excluding all determinations from the One.
§4. The presence of the One is prior to that of science, and only direct vision, not teaching, provides contact with the One.
§5. The progress from awareness of body to that of the One leads via the possession of reason and virtue, then from the science to Intellect, and finally from Intellect to the One. The One is prior to the Intellect in that it has no parts.
§6. The One is not like a monad or a point because it is not in another thing. It is a maximum in being infinite in power: it has no need of anything. It has no good nor will, nor thought nor being with itself.
§7. The One is the object of investigation in that it may be present, not as a thing, and the presence is to be found in not knowing: the presence of the One is to be found within oneself.
§8. For we revolve around the centre, or better making our centre coincide with the centre of all things: in that way the eternal presence is present to us.
§9. By turning around the One, we receive being, in turning towards the One we receive well-being. For the soul has innate love of the Good which makes us desire death, even if true contemplation is possible in this life.
§10. This contemplation is interrupted, although it is unity with the One.
§11. One only remembers being like the One. The soul need not be afraid of proceeding to nothing. For virtue and contemplation take turns in guiding the soul.