  Even if we cannot definitively clear him of this charge, we may be able to point to extenuating circumstances. The Neoplatonic commentators, too, espouse the ontological argument for the immortality of the soul. They also accept Aristotle’s analysis of movement as necessarily an irreflexive relation; they believe, however, that “movement” in this context refers exclusively to physical movement, and thus that the analysis does not concern the self-movement of the soul. That is to say, they affirm the compatibility of the premises of the ontological argument with Aristotle’s analysis of movement. They do not try to deduce the former from the latter. That is why it is interesting to find in Proclus’ Elements of Theology (14, 16.15–23) an attempt to deduce the existence of a self-moved soul à la Plato from that of an unmoved intellect à la Aristotle. It is not clear that it is a successful attempt; but it may still have predisposed some of Proclus’ readers to understand Aristotle’s cosmological argument in Physics 8.5 as a proof of the existence of both an unmoved mover and (by implication) a self-moved soul. At any rate, if this is how Metochites understood it, his suggestion that the premises of the ontological argument for the immortality of the soul are implied by Aristotle’s analysis of movement may seem less far-fetched.