35 In Alc. § 235, 15-18; cf. O'Neill (1965), ad loc.

Whatever the true sense of the passage, it is Proclus' general view that we attain higher truths through the guidance and mediation of gods and demons. And the analogy between our reliance on superior guidance for such insights and the function of guides (teachers) in self-discovery again points to some continuity between divine inspiration and discovery. Thus the combination of revelation with discovery in the figure of Pythagoras (or Plato) is no more a contradiction than that of discovery with learning.

The theory of discovery and learning in the Commentary on the Alcibiades also points to an answer to the question of the fallen souls' need for guidance and teaching. The degree of indispensability of such guidance must depend namely on the degree to which the soul has fallen. Proclus leaves little doubt that souls at lower levels require

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guides and teachers if they are ever to achieve self-discovery. He interprets this action of the teacher on the pupil's soul with the help of Aristotle's account of learning and of change in general. The teacher represents the prior actuality of knowledge, the moving cause actualizing the potential knowledge in the pupil's soul (§ 228, 16-20), or the perfection that brings the imperfect to perfection (§ 235, 10-12). Proclus warns us, however, against certain inferences that this account of teaching might produce. The pupil's soul is not a tabula rasa, as in Aristotle, but possesses innately the knowledge that is learned, i.e. discovered, by the pupil (§§ 277, 10-18; 280, 19-281, 7). Furthermore the teacher's action on the pupil is not to be seen as the sole agency responsible for the pupil's self-discovery (§ 281, 10-14):

If, then, one should declare the matter accurately, souls are moved by external agencies, but determine of themselves their scientific replies and so spontaneously demonstrate the truth of Plato's statement that the soul knows everything including itself and requires only an outside stimulus by means of scientific questions. (O'Neill transl.)

The primary agent, then, of the pupil's progress in knowledge is himself. To illustrate this Proclus emphasizes the Socratic idea that it is Socrates' companion who refutes himself, who brings upon himself the discovery of the falsity of his opinions. The situation is quite different from that of

irrational animals . . . 'shepherded with a staff' (Crit. 109 b) . . . all those who await healing from outside causes, and wherever the leader leads there the led are led, bereft of the power of ruling and saving themselves; but the human soul, on account of its peculiar characteristic of spontaneity and self-movement (Phaedr. 245 c e) is of such a nature as to be active in its own regard, move itself and provide itself with the good. (§ 279, 18-23; O'Neill transl.)

To illustrate the particular kind of action whereby the teacher stimulates the pupil to discover himself, acting on the pupil in such a way as not to override the primary agency for which the pupil himself is responsible, Proclus refers to the way the gods and demons work upon us from within, not from without, and in communion with our own natures as self-movers. ³⁶ 

³⁶ §§ 281, 15-20; 241, 14-18; cf. In Parm. 1031, 11-19; Trouillard (1957), 335.

These considerations indicate that for Proclus the primary agency for the salvation of fallen souls is to be found in their own selves. In this sense these souls can save themselves. At the same time, however,

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another agent is required to provoke the souls into self-discovery, a teacher, a guide, a soul of superior insight, a Parmenides, a Socrates, a Plato, a Plotinus, a Syrianus. ³⁷ 

³⁷ Cf. In Alc. §§ 73, 1-5; 133, 6-13; In Parm. 617, 23-618, 13; 1030, 22-35; Theol. Plat. I, ch. 1.; Trouillard (1957), 335-8 (a good discussion of the question of guidance as a whole); Steel (1987), on Parmenides' maieutic role in the Parmenides as interpreted by Proclus.

In this way Socrates' mission of unsettling, pricking, provoking the citizens of Athens had become an expression, some thousand years later, in the same city, of the necessity and role of the succession of 'divine' Platonic philosophers in the world.

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8 Proclus on Mathematics

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